Juniper Seeks New CEO Amid Strong Q2 Profits
Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) delivered two suprises in recent hours: Strong Q2 earnings and news of CEO Kevin Johnson’s pending retirement. Johnson will exit once Juniper’s board (working with Heidrick and Struggles) finds a successor. Read between the lines and Johnson will leave just as the SDN (software defined networking) wars with Cisco Systems (CSCO) and VMware (VMW) are set to start. So should Juniper partners be worried about Johnson’s exit?
The VAR Guy thinks not. Juniper just delivered strong Q2 results — revenue rose 7 percent to $1.15 billion, and net income rose sharply to $97.9 million from $57.7 million for the corresponding quarter last year. Wall Street is somewhat concerned about Juniper’s longer-term business outlook but there are no alarm bells to be heard.
Juniper hit some major bumps in 2012 while navigating a range of product issues. Plus, key channel executives like Frank Vitagliano exited in March 2013 (he’s now at Dell).
But more recently, the overall Juniper business strategy and execution seems a bit stronger. And Juniper’s software defined networking (SDN) strategy began to come into focus earlier this year. That effort includes a direct attack on rival SDN initiatives at Cisco Systems.
Meanwhile, Juniper is the second major IT company to announce a CEO transition today. While Johnson’s exit seems like a standard changing of the guard, Polycom’s CEO resigned amid questions about his expense reports.