Shares of Applied Optoelectronics (NASDAQ:AAOI) soared more than 8% on Friday after the fiber-optics company pre-announced a quarterly earnings beat and revenue beat.
AAOI management said that the company now expects non-GAAP profit in the range of $1.31 to $1.36 per share, with quarterly revenues coming in at about $117 million. This updated guidance is well above our current consensus estimates of $1.07 per share and 109.7 million, respectively.
Piper Jaffray analyst Troy Jensen, who currently rates AAOI as “overweight,” hiked his price target for the stock to $90 from $85.
“AAOI pre-released another impressive quarter with revenue upside and record margin levels that have never been seen before in the optical component industry (45% gross, roughly 30% operating),” said Jensen in a note.
The analyst’s new price target represents more than a 15% premium from Thursday’s close.
Applied Optoelectronics, which is currently a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), is benefitting from a new batch of customers looking to upgrade their datacenters. Companies like Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) are continuing to shift towards hyper-fast communications for the cloud, and fiber-optics equipment makes like AAOI are right there to satisfy them.
Shares of AAOI have gained a staggering 575% over the past year. The stock is up about 210% year-to-date.
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