New York, Jan 8, 2026, 13:42 EST — Regular session
- Ciena is down about 14% after giving up an early run to $260
- Optical and networking peers also slide as tech weakens
- Focus turns to Friday’s U.S. jobs report and Ciena’s Jan. 13 Needham webcast
Ciena Corp (CIEN) shares were down about 14% at $222.73 on Thursday, after ending Wednesday at $259.27 and touching $260 earlier in the session. Roughly 2.8 million shares had changed hands by early afternoon. Optical peer Lumentum Holdings fell about 11% and Coherent slid roughly 9%, while Arista Networks was down about 5%.
The networking-equipment maker has become a proxy for rising data traffic in cloud and AI data centers, and that can make the stock whip around when the wider market mood shifts. The group has been running hot, and it does not take much to trigger fast profit-taking.
Treasury yields rose as investors braced for Friday’s U.S. employment report, which can reset expectations for interest rates. That tends to weigh on richly valued growth stocks, even when company fundamentals look solid.
On Wall Street, technology was among the few S&P 500 sectors in the red. “Investors might be repositioning their holdings, so tech stocks are underperforming,” Joe Saluzzi, partner and co-founder at Themis Trading, said. 1
Ciena had jumped earlier in the week as investors tested the AI trade again, Investors.com reported. In December, the company projected fiscal 2026 revenue of $5.7 billion to $6.1 billion, and CEO Gary Smith said he was “confident in our growth trajectory” as Ciena expands its role in the AI ecosystem. 2
The company said on Jan. 6 it will speak at the 28th Annual Needham Growth Conference on Jan. 13, with Chief Strategy Officer David Rothenstein scheduled to present at 3:45 p.m. Eastern. The presentation will be webcast and replayed, Ciena said. 3
A filing showed Smith sold 83,552 shares on Jan. 5 at a weighted average price of $229.44 under a Rule 10b5-1 plan, which lets insiders set up pre-arranged trades. He reported 307,885 shares after the transaction.
But the AI-data-center theme is still a crowded trade, and a sustained rise in yields or a hint that cloud spending is slowing could deepen the pullback. Ciena’s results can also swing with the timing of large customer orders, so traders tend to lean hard on guidance and tone when management speaks.
