Reviewing Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) & F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV)

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) and Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) are both large-cap technology companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, institutional ownership, profitability, valuation, risk, dividends and analyst recommendations.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares F5 and Ciena”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
F5	$3.31 billion	7.70	$692.38 million	$12.56	35.84
Ciena	$6.02 billion	8.59	$123.34 million	$4.48	81.40

F5 has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Ciena. F5 is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Ciena, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current recommendations for F5 and Ciena, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
F5	1	5	5	0	2.36
Ciena	0	5	14	1	2.80

F5 presently has a consensus price target of $416.62, indicating a potential downside of 7.44%. Ciena has a consensus price target of $492.68, indicating a potential upside of 35.11%. Given Ciena’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Ciena is more favorable than F5.

Risk and Volatility

F5 has a beta of 1.03, indicating that its share price is 3% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Ciena has a beta of 1.3, indicating that its share price is 30% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

90.7% of F5 shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 92.0% of Ciena shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.5% of F5 shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.6% of Ciena shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares F5 and Ciena’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
F5	21.95%	21.54%	12.16%
Ciena	10.87%	25.33%	11.27%

Summary

Ciena beats F5 on 11 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About F5

F5, Inc. provides multi-cloud application security and delivery solutions in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific region. The company’s distributed cloud services enable its customers to deploy, secure, and operate applications in any architecture, from on-premises to the public cloud. It offers unified, security, networking, and application management solutions, such as web app and API protection; multi-cloud networking; application delivery and deployment; domain name system; content delivery network; and application deployment and orchestration. The company also provides application security and delivery products, including NGINX Plus; NGINX Management Suite; NGINX Ingress Controller; NGINX App Protect; BIG-IP Packaged Software; and BIG-IP Systems. In addition, it provides a range of professional services, including maintenance, consulting, training, and other technical support services. F5, Inc. sells its products to large enterprise businesses, public sector institutions, governments, and service providers through distributors, value-added resellers, managed service providers, systems integrators, and other indirect channel partners. It has partnerships with public cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. The company was formerly known as F5 Networks, Inc. and changed its name to F5, Inc. in November 2021. F5, Inc. was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

About Ciena

Ciena Corporation provides hardware and software services for delivery of video, data, and voice traffic metro, aggregation, and access communications network worldwide. The company’s Networking Platforms segment offers convergence of coherent optical transport, open optical networking, optical transport network switching, IP routing, and switching services. Its products include 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, Waveserver stackable interconnect system, and the 6500 Reconfigurable line system, and the 5400 family of Packet-Optical platforms, as well as 8100 coherent routing platforms; 3000 family of service delivery switches and the 5000 family of service aggregation switches, as well as 8700 Packetwave Platform and 6500 Packet Transport System. This segment also sells operating system software and enhanced software features embedded in each of its products. The company’s Blue Planet Automation Software and Services segment provides multi-domain service orchestration, inventory, route optimization and analysis, multi-cloud orchestration, and unified assurance and analytics services. Its Platform Software and Service segment offers MCP domain controller solution, and OneControl unified management system, as well as planning tools. The company’s Global Services segment provides maintenance support and training, installation and deployment, and consulting and network design services. Ciena Corporation was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in Hanover, Maryland.