Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jayshree Ullal: So, Ben, I’m going to let my two CFOs speak to the conservatism, and then I’ll add more color, how about that? Who wants to go first?

Ben Reitzes: Okay, great.

Chantelle Breithaupt: Hey, Ben. Nice to meet you. It’s Chantelle. I think that change from November to January, February time frame, I don’t think would change our guidance on the year. Kind of similar to the question before. I think that our guide right now resembles where we think we’re at in the sense of what will materialize in ’24, we’ll take it one quarter at a time. The reflections of the changes you’re mentioning, the timing of that, we have to wait and see. There’s no guarantee that’s within our 12-month guidance time frame, and we’ll watch and wait and see, but Jayshree?

Ita Brennan: Yeah. I think that says it all. I mean, all the drivers that you mentioned are great drivers, the timing of everything that’s always complex, right? So we’ll take it a quarter at time and see how things play out.

Jayshree Ullal: And look, if our conservatism changes to more optimism in the second half or more likely in 2025, we’ll keep you posted.

Ben Reitzes: All right. Thanks a lot. Take care.

Liz Stine: Operator, we have time for one last question.

Operator: Thank you. Your final question comes from the line of Karl Ackerman from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Karl Ackerman: Yes, thank you for squeezing me in. Good evening from Paris. So there have been several companies with the optimal supply chain that indicate the market for 800 gig and early deployments of 1.6T ports will begin to inflect later this year for actually front-end networks. And so I guess why would I be wrong to conclude that your hardware sales would be a leading indicator of that? And I guess, as a result, shouldn’t cloud titan revenue grow at least in line with your outlook for 2024 of double-digit growth? Thank you.

Jayshree Ullal: Yeah. Thank you, Karl. Again, I’ll step — history is a good indicator of future. And if you look at our 400-gig, everybody asked me the same question. They said, how come 400 gig isn’t taking off in 2019 or ’20? And it turned out it took our ecosystem several years and of course, the pandemic didn’t help when it was optics or NICs for the whole entire thing to come together. And I don’t doubt we will have trials for 800 gig this year, but I think real production, 800 gig will happen in 2025. I’d like to be proven wrong and maybe it’ll come in sooner in which case, like I said, we’ll let you know. But at the moment, this is our best case prediction.

Liz Stine: Thanks, Karl. This concludes the Arista Networks Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. We have posted a presentation, which provides additional information on our results, which you can access on the Investors section of our website. Thank you for joining us today, and thank you for your interest in Arista.

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