Yahoo Finance, Aug 14 2026
Why Ciena and Nokia Are Rallying Off the Same Data
The read-through is that data center interconnect and coherent optical transport demand is inflecting hard. On Lumentum’s conference call earlier this week CEO Michael Hurlston said:
"Expanding, inferencing and training applications are driving full rate connectivity between data centers, while political and regulatory constraints favor smaller, more modular builds. These 2 factors among others are substantially increasing the demand for our pump laser solutions. To put this in perspective, for one major hyperscaler, the network capacity connecting just 2 AI data center sites could double the total global backbone capacity they built over the entirety of the last decade. To support the growth and scale across deployments, we have secured multiple long-term customer agreements that helped offset our planned capital expenditures. We continue to expect a fourfold increase in our pump laser shipments over the next several quarters to meet this escalating demand."
That quote is music to the ears of companies like Nokia and Ciena. In addition, Coherent CEO James Anderson said on last night’s call that "The demand just continues to go up for anything DCI or scale across related."Cisco said their Acacia optics unit had another $1 billion quarter that was “very strong.”
That is exactly the addressable market Ciena and Nokia sell into. Ciena’s most recent quarter showed 39.51% revenue growth with cloud provider revenue at 46% of total, growing 70% year over year. Nokia’s Q2 AI and Cloud revenue more than doubled year over year with $3.2 billion in AI and Cloud order intake. Nokia trades as a US-listed ADR.
Another catalyst for this group appears to be Wall Street commentary. Last night JPMorgan issued a note taht the strongest parts of Cisco’s earnings had positive read-through for Nokia as the company reported surprisingly strong telecom orders. That’s also positive read-through for Ciena itself.