3 Forgotten Tech Stocks That Aren’t Dead Yet

Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN)

Why Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) Was Forgotten: Fiber optics was all the rage once upon a time, when the internet was in its early days and the sky was the limit in terms of how fast it could grow, how big it could become, and how all that traffic would get routed around. That was clearly evidenced by Ciena’s monolithic valuation at the height of the dot-com bubble in 2000, when shares traded at over $850 when adjusted for today’s share price (which is a meager $26). However, yesterday’s hot industry eventually becomes today’s old news, and that’s the case with network stocks, which have little of the cachet they once did, despite the fact that the internet DID grow to become as big as anyone could’ve imagined.

Why You Shouldn’t Forget About Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) Just Yet: Ciena shares haven’t done much of anything over the past decade, but that could change this year. Shares have already jumped by 21% in 2018 and further gains could be in store. Ciena’s WaveLogic Ai is making global waves and could propel the company to as much as $2 in EPS by 2019 according to Morgan Stanley. And while Ciena’s U.S revenue has fallen recently, international revenue has been much stronger, being driven by key markets like China and India. Quant billionaires also love Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN), with several of them buying the stock during the fourth-quarter of 2017.

Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA)

Why Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) Was Forgotten: Zynga briefly traded at nearly $15 shortly after its IPO in late-2011, when the Farmville-maker was all the rage and social gaming seemed poised to sweep over the world. If you were on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) around at that time, you surely remember being inundated with posts to water friends’ crops or help them take down some two-bit gangster in Mafia Wars.

Before the end of 2012 shares had declined to barely above $2, and that was BEFORE the company’s monthly active users took a massive hit in 2013, falling from over 250 million at the start of the year to half of that within just eight months. As it turned out, social gaming wasn’t all the rage for long, partly due to Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) cracking down on all those game requests, which pushed the free-to-play gaming scene to mobile devices, where Zynga’s old formula didn’t work nearly as well.

Why You Shouldn’t Forget About Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) Just Yet: Zynga shares have jumped by 17% since April 23 thanks to surprisingly solid first-quarter results that showed an increase in mobile users and revenue. Then at the end of May, Zynga acquired Gram Games for $250 million, a deal that was praised by investors and should help Zynga meaningfully grow EBITDA in coming quarters.

Zynga’s adjusted EBITDA had already surged to 17.2% from just 6% a couple years earlier, so the company is clearly on the right track. Zynga is now fully invested in mobile gaming, which remains a very strong segment of the industry, and the company is in a better position financially than it’s been in years. Zynga was a favorite penny stock among billionaires at the end of 2017.

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