New York, Feb 13, 2026, 10:44 EST — Regular session
- Arista shares jumped roughly 6% in morning trading—quarterly results beat estimates and the company raised its outlook.
- Management cited a wave of data center buildouts powered by AI, but flagged a squeeze on component costs, with memory looking particularly tight.
- Investors are turning their attention to management’s post-close call, searching for insight on both demand and margins.
Shares of Arista Networks Inc jumped Friday. The networking gear supplier posted a solid quarter and projected first-quarter revenue that topped Wall Street estimates, holding its ground in the heart of the AI-infrastructure rally.
This shift is important: investors often see data-center plumbing—think switches and routers shuttling traffic within AI clusters—as a more direct bet on spending that can spike or dip sharply from quarter to quarter. Arista stands out as one of the rare large, pure-play players in that space.
Arista’s outlook arrives just as traders are contending with a fresh snag: component costs and supply. No matter how strong demand is, if the parts aren’t delivered when needed, revenue might still take a hit.
Arista posted non-GAAP earnings of 82 cents a share for the fourth quarter on revenue of $2.488 billion, the company said late Thursday. Looking ahead, Arista is projecting first-quarter revenue around $2.6 billion. The non-GAAP numbers — which leave out things like stock-based pay and some acquisition costs — also come with a forecast for gross margin in the 62% to 63% range for the quarter.
CEO Jayshree Ullal, in the prepared remarks, noted that the company has shipped “a cumulative of 150 million ports.” CFO Chantelle Breithaupt called out a “historic milestone”—quarterly net income topping $1 billion. SEC
Still, the same call wasn’t all optimism. Ullal flagged memory prices as “horrendous,” and management warned, “the demand is greater than our ability to supply.” Even so, Arista bumped its 2026 revenue growth outlook to roughly 25% and upped its AI networking revenue target for that year to $3.25 billion. The Motley Fool
Arista climbed 5.9% to $143.10. The stock briefly hit $152.24 earlier in the session.
Arista pulled ahead, leaving Cisco Systems trailing with a drop of roughly 1.4% during the morning session.
After the results landed, analysts wasted no time hiking their price targets. Needham bumped its number up to $185, Piper Sandler went to $175, and several others followed suit before the opening bell.
Right now, the focus is on whether Arista can keep margins up if memory remains both tight and pricey — and if the company can actually turn the AI buildout into shipments when it wants, rather than just when customers decide they’re ready.
The company reports after the bell, with its earnings call scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Pacific. Investors will be tuned in for that.
