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. 1
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. 2
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. 3
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. 4
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. 5
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. 6
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. 7
Arista’s management jumped on a conference call to go over the results once U.S. markets shut for the day.
