NEW YORK, Feb 12, 2026, 16:59 EST
- Arista reported adjusted earnings of $0.82 per share for the fourth quarter, with revenue coming in at $2.488 billion.
- The company is looking for roughly $2.6 billion in revenue for the first quarter.
- After closing down close to 4% during the day, shares jumped roughly 9% in after-hours trading.
Arista Networks jumped roughly 9% in after-hours trading Thursday. The data-center networking equipment firm topped Wall Street’s profit and revenue targets for the quarter and now expects first-quarter revenue to land near $2.6 billion.
These results carry weight for investors looking to judge if the surge in artificial-intelligence data center spending is losing momentum. Arista’s core business—high-speed Ethernet switches and software linking servers inside those facilities—makes its numbers something of a proxy for cloud capital expenditure.
Hardware names have felt the sting from gross margin warnings as costs for memory and key parts climb. Cisco flagged pricier memory chips as a headwind for margins this week, a signal that rattled networking stocks during the session.
Arista reported a 28.9% jump in fourth-quarter revenue from last year, reaching $2.488 billion. Adjusted earnings landed at $0.82 per diluted share, stripping out stock-based compensation and other items. CFO Chantelle Breithaupt described it as a “historic milestone,” noting the company topped $1 billion in net income for the quarter. CEO Jayshree Ullal highlighted 2025 as a “year of validation” for the “Arista 2.0” plan, and said shipments had hit 150 million ports. BusinessWire
Arista is looking for first-quarter revenue to land near $2.60 billion. That’s ahead of the analyst consensus tracked by Investing.com, which pegged the figure closer to $2.46 billion. Shares finished the day at $135.09 before the company reported.
During its September analyst day, Arista outlined a 2026 revenue target of roughly $10.5 billion, with an “AI Center” goal pegged at $2.75 billion. The plan counts on growth from campus and branch networking segments as well. Arista analyst day deck
Heading into the release, sentiment among analysts skewed positive. Rosenblatt on Tuesday bumped its price target up to $165 from $140, while maintaining a neutral stance, Investing.com reported.
TheStreet Pro’s Bob Lang noted Thursday that Arista shares were stuck in a sideways pattern, momentum signals cooling despite a slightly upbeat overall trend. “Upside potential to $150 is certainly an achievable target,” Lang said, though he cautioned the stock could pause until the market absorbs earnings and guidance. TheStreet Pro
Arista faces off against Cisco Systems and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Juniper business in the campus and data-center networking space. Nvidia, meanwhile, has been making moves into Ethernet networking, ramping up pressure on switch vendors as customers scale up their AI clusters.
The road’s bumpy, though. A few major cloud players might ramp up spending all at once, then pull back. Margins also get pinched as rivals and “white-box” equipment—those generic switches from contract manufacturers—keep pressing on prices.
Arista shares jumped over 9% after hours, landing near $148, according to Investors.com. Earlier, the stock had finished the day almost 4% lower. Before Thursday’s numbers, it was sitting roughly 4% higher for the year, the outlet noted.
Arista’s management jumped on a conference call to go over the results once U.S. markets shut for the day.
