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Trade ban case grinds on, but Arista-cats got the cream in Q3

Cisco still hasn't managed to drown this kitten

Trying to duck patent sueballs slung by Cisco didn't stop Arista from claiming record revenue and profit for its most recent quarter.

The company on Friday announced its Q3 2017 results, including 50.8 per cent revenue growth over Q3 2016 to US$437.6 million (beating its own forecast between $405 and $420 million). That delivered what president and CEO Jayshree Ullal noted is a record profit of $133.7 million.

While the Americas remains the company's dominant revenue source, at 71 per cent, Ullal also said the 29 per cent from “international theatres” is higher than normal. She added that the non-US growth was driven by new customers.

And that's in spite of its ongoing battle over the now-infamous Cisco '945 ITC investigation, which pushed back some major customer revenue to Q4.

Ullal told the earnings call: “we introduced our 945 workaround features in mid-September. Consequently, this lengthened our customer testing cycle and qualification time, extending the completion for three of our cloud titan customers into Q4 2017.”

She said it boiled down to getting deployments certified, and predicted that it won't “affect our cloud business trajectory.”

A full update of the legal proceedings was published on October 30 [PDF].

In early September, Cisco asked a Federal Circuit appeals court to return to a position that all Arista products should be stopped at the border.

Arista asked for a stay on any such order, denied in late October, but its redesigned products are still allowed into the United States of America.

“At Cisco’s request, on October 27, 2017, the International Trade Commission instituted a modification proceeding to determine whether its remedial orders for the 945 Investigation should be modified to cover our redesigned products”, the update notes, with a recommended determination due in five months.

No date is yet set down for a final determination of the new application.

The company's guidance for Q4 is between $450 and $464 million, with CFO Ita Brennan saying the legal row is still likely to have some impact in the quarter. ®

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