ShoreTel generated record revenues in its second quarter for fiscal 2012, and surprised analysts by reporting earnings that beat analyst estimates by 400 percent.

The IP telephony company also announced it had acquired M5 Networks, a hosted VoIP and UC provider for $160 million (see ShoreTel acquires M5 Networks for $160M as it looks to develop cloud business).

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based ShoreTel said revenue grew 22 percent year-over-year to $58 million, and up 8 percent from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP net income was $1.4 million or 3 cents per share, compared with a non-GAAP net loss of $1 million, or 2 cents per share a year ago. Analysts had expected ShoreTel to report a 1 cent loss for the quarter; the second quarter is typically a seasonally strong one for the company.

During the company's earnings call, chief executive Peter Blackmore said the U.S. Enterprise IP telephony market as well as the U.S. pure IP telephony market grew in the September 2011 quarter after three quarters of modest declines. Synergy Research, he said, estimated the U.S. Enterprise IP telephony market was up 9 percent in the quarter and worldwide Enterprise IP telephony also grew approximately 8 percent.

"ShoreTel's market share within both worldwide and the United States have grown significantly year-over-year," Blackmore said. "We expect to build these market share gains and continue to close the gap between our current number three position and the number two player in the U.S."

ShoreTel said highlights for the quarter included an expansion of its channel. The company added some 60 new partners globally, 38 via its relationship with ScanSource. Blackmore pointed to the addition of Howard Industries, which has revenues in excess of $1 billion and is the largest employer in Mississippi; it selected ShoreTel as its exclusive UC provider.

"We also added a record of nearly 1300 new customers in the quarter, a sequential increase of 24 percent over quarter one," he said, singling out First Republic Bank, which will also use ShoreTel's UC solution including ShoreTel Mobility for 3,000 employees at 65 sites.

ShoreTel forecast revenue of $53 million to $57 million in the current quarter.

For more:
- see this release
- see this SeekingAlpha transcript

Special Report: Enterprise Communications earnings in the fourth quarter 2011

Related articles:
ShoreTel buys M5 Networks for $160M
ShoreTel, Ruckus team on mobile UC 'starter kit' for SMBs
ShoreTel Mobility helps HP customers take UC on the road
M5 Networks debuts new iteration of Connect for Salesforce.com
M5's cloud-based analytics helps businesses measure call-answer rates

Speedlow is ever-evolving. We always set up ambitious plans and milestones for the future. ‘Good’ is not enough for us. We strive to continuously set high standards for ourselves and innovate. We believe this life and business approach is the only way to achieve great results and stay competitive on such fast-changing market as VoIP.

From this video you will find out what our goals for 2012 are and what will empower us to achieve them.

Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) blamed tight service provider budgets for causing fourth quarter earnings to drop by nearly 50 percent and said the first quarter would likely be worse.

The company continues to lose customers to a resurgent Cisco (Nasdaq:CSCO), which is scheduled to release results Feb. 8, and has seen the value of its stock erode some 45 percent in the past year, including a 3 percent drop Friday following its earnings report.

And, those conditions don't look like they're ripe for change. A new report from Ovum today said that telecoms are likely to aggressively control capex and opex expenditures for the next several years as global economic turbulence continues to make for uncertain times. The research firm said 2011 was a bounce-back year for much of the industry, but forecast growth to slow by half through 2017. Juniper gets about 6 percent of its revenue from AT&T (NYSE: T).

Juniper's guidance for the first quarter was less than enthralling, with the company, which now has about 18 percent of the router and switching market compared to Cisco's 50 percent, saying it expects first quarter profit of between 11 and 14 cents a share, and sales of $960 million to $990 million. Analysts expected profits of 27 cents on sales of $1.1 billion.

Juniper reported net income of $96.2 million, or 18 cents a share, for the fourth quarter, about half of its year-ago results when it earned $190.2 million, or 35 cents a share. Sales fell to $1.12 billion. Analysts expected profits of 27 cents per share and sales of $1.12 billion.

Juniper, meanwhile, contends that several new products scheduled for release this year will help it grow its share of the market. Last week, it announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire rights to the service management layer of BitGravity's CDN technology.

For more:
- see this release
- see this Bloomberg report

Related articles:
Juniper buys BitGravity's service management tech from Tata
Cisco takes back share from HP in Ethernet switching market
Cisco takes back IP edge router market share lead in Q3
Juniper offers new portfolio to leverage BYOD trend
Juniper Q4 outlook uncertain

Citing weak demand and an eroding Euro, Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI) today lowered its full-year outlook, saying it would likely earn $60 million on revenue of $2.3 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31.

Reporting financials for the quartet that ended Dec. 31, Logitech said profits were down 15 percent to $55 million in the quarter on sales that eroded 5 percent to $715 million. Analysts had expected the company to report earnings of $61.2 million on sales of $749 million.

One of the lone bright spots for the company was in its videoconferencing business. The company said revenue at LifeSize Communication was up 6 percent for the quarter. Logitech bought LifeSize in 2009 and has steadily been improving its position in the market, rolling out apps for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s iPhone and iPad as it looked to expand its mobile footprint.

But the surge in tablet sales in the fourth quarter hit Logitech hard, cutting into its traditionally strong market for mice and webcams.

"The euro has weakened considerably during the last three months," said chairman and interim chief executive Guerrino DeLuca. "In addition, webcams and remotes continue to be impacted more than expected by product portfolio and market weakness."

The downward revision for the year was the third for the company in recent months, and it prompted its biggest share price tumble in nine months, about 14 percent. Most recently, Logitech in September said it expected earnings of $90 million on sales of $2.4 billion for the year.

"The biggest disappointment is the guidance revision," Michael Foeth, an analyst at Vontobel Holding AG, said in a note today. "With that we fear confidence in management is eroding further."

Last quarter, DeLuca crowed about the company's solid performance, saying: "People are happy to see we're back on track. We're showing that we can do what we said we would do, and we've somewhat re-established confidence in the company." 

Logitech stock has fallen 64 percent in the past 12 months.

For more:
- see this Bloomberg article

Special Report: Enterprise Communications earnings in the fourth quarter 2011

Related articles:
Videoconferencing firm LifeSize names Buechler CEO
Logitech rolls out webcam for 1080p video calling
Logitech shares surge on Q2 earnings
Logitech announces LifeSize ClearSea video conferencing will support iOS 5, iPhone 4S
LifeSize brings its videoconferencing technology to the cloud

Dear Partners,
Speedflow Communications, a developer of high quality VoIP Softswitch solutions, is pleased to announce a new release of the CallMax, proprietary Linux-based Class 5 Softswitch. Our team of developers worked hard to extend Softswitch functionality and optimize its work.

A strong fourth quarter by Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM) has resulted in Citygroup increasing its earnings forecast for the company, and several other companies bumping the stock's target price. Citygroup upped its target to $24. FBN Securities earlier this week moved to $25, and analysts at Stifel Nicolaus raised their price target from $25 to $29.

The company this week reported a 50 percent increase in its fourth quarter profit to $49.6 million, or 28 cents a share, up from $33.1 million, or 19 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts had expected earnings of 29 cents a share. Revenue was $407 million, up 20 percent from $340 million a year ago.

The company saw sales in the Americas, its biggest market, grow by a modest 7 percent; in Europe, Middle East, and Africa, sales were up 28 percent year-over-year; and the company saw a big bump, 42 percent, in APAC.

CEO Andrew Miller cited the company's software-based RealPresence Platform and "broad geographic growth" as drivers for the quarter.

"We experienced unprecedented demand for our secure, interoperable, unified collaboration solutions by both enterprise and service provider customers," he said. "Polycom's cloud, mobility, and software-driven infrastructure strategy is beginning to yield and we look forward to another year of solid growth in 2012."

Polycom has been gearing up for battle with its top competitor, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), expanding its push into the mobile video conferencing space, campaigning for better interoperability, and hiring Cisco executives. It also bought Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ)'s videoconferencing business last year, adding more depth to its pricier telepresence offerings.

For more:
- see this release
- see this article

Special Report: Enterprise Communications earnings in the fourth quarter 2011

Related articles:
Polycom teams with Lenovo to extend RealPresence video collaboration
Polycom rolls out wholesale, carrier-ready video-as-a-service
Polycom integrates RealPresence into IBM's Sametime, Connections
Polycom takes another step to drive video-conferencing interoperability
Polycom acquires ViVu, looks to expand into broader video-conferencing market

How did the IP Communications industry perform in the fourth quarter of 2011? Check here throughout the fourth-quarter earnings report season for full earnings reports from the key players in VoIP business, IP technology, Unified Communications, Voice 2.0 applications, Contact Center technology, IP service providers, enterprise and more. 

Don't forget to check out sister publications for fourth quarter 2011 telecom earnings and fourth quarter 2011 IPTV earnings.

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January 18

8x8 (Nasdaq:EGHT)  
8x8 reported revenue of $23.3 million in the quarter , a 31 percent increase from a year ago. It also topped analyst earnings estimates with a 73 percent Y-o-Y increase to $2.6 million, or 4 cents per share.
- read this article
- read this release
- more 8x8 news

F5 (Nasdaq: FFIV)
F5 Networks announced revenue of $322.4 million, up 2.5 percent from $314.6 million in the prior quarter and 19.9 percent from the year-ago quarter. It benefited from sales of its virtual clustered Multiprocessing module, which enables customers to run multiple virtual BIG-IPs on a single Viprion.
- read this article
- read this release
- more F5 news

January 23

Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM)
Fourth quarter 2011 consolidated net revenues were a record $407 million, up from $340 million for the fourth quarter of 2010. GAAP net income for the fourth quarter of 2011 was $50 million, or 28 cents per diluted share, compared to $33 million, or 19 cents per diluted share, for the same period last year. Polycom's RealPresence Platform generated revenue growth of 45 percent year-over-year.The company expanded Microsoft Lync integration with its new Polycom CX7000 unified group video collaboration system.
- read this earnings transcript
- read this release
- more Polycom news

January 26
Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI)
- more Logitech news

February 2
Acme Packet (Nasdaq: AKPT)
- more Acme Packet news

February 8 
Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO)
- more Cisco news

Radvision (Nasdaq: RVSN)
- more Radvision news

February 13
Vonage (NYSE: VG)    
- more Vonage news

March 1
Mitel (Nasdaq: MITL)
- more Mitel news

Holiday’s period is the real challenge for VoIP carriers and their softswitches. During the New Year and Christmas holidays people make lots of calls with their greetings and wishes.

However, our customers celebrated with no worry. We are justified in telling you that the MediaCore Softswitch showed 100% positive result during the holidays. The MediaCore users had thousands of active calls. Some of them had about 10 thousand active calls with almost 500 calls attempts per second. All the calls were correctly processed by the system.

2012 is really eventful and ITExpo East is our must-attend exhibition for this year. It is held in Miami, Florida, January 31 - February 3, 2012 in Miami Beach Convention Center.

We present our corporate video overview. From this video you will find out what kind of company Speedflow is, what makes us different and what stands in front every business decision we make.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Greetings from Speedflow team!

Dear Partners,

Due to New Year holiday Speedflow Communications Limited will work as follows:

From 18:00 (GMT+2) on 23-d of December 2011 to 4-th of January 2012 our office will be closed.

Dear suppliers, please don't send rates during this period and discuss payment schedule with our financial department before hand

Speedflow Communications is pleased to inform you about new release of the carrier-grade Class 4 MediaCore Softswitch (v. 2.24)

I’ve started a separate blog to inspire people to learn more about IPv6 and start their own labs. It’s called IPv6friday.org and publishes a short article about IPv6 every Friday. I don’t know how the idea got started – I think it was just this Tweet that got a lot of responses. The main problem [...]

As is known, Christmas & New Year holidays are the rush period for VoIP providers. The average number of calls is being increased tremendously, hence, VoIP operators have a golden opportunity to raise their incomes.

But are you sure that your softswitch can process large volumes of traffic?

Speedflow Communications is in the USA now. We’ve started business cooperation with Telx. Our new POPs are located in New York, 60 Hudson str. dedicated to North America and over the Atlantic connections, and in Miami, 36 North East 2nd Street dedicated to Central and South America.

PoPs in the American region open up new opportunities for our business. The US market is highly developed that’s why the strong market presence in the North America is an important condition of company’s success.

Speedflow Communications is pleased to introduce the new MediaCore Softswitch customer from Australia. Innovative IT Pty Ltd is the rapidly growing Australian telecom provider. We are happy that they chose the MediaCore Softswitch as their platform for VoIP wholesale services. Our presence in Australia is very important as VoIP industry is highly developed in this region.

Speedflow has attended Ahciet conferences for a few years already. This year it is held during 15th-17th November, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Buenos Aires is determined to become a Latin American telecommunication's capital. The perfect proof of that is Ahciet which has become one of the major telco events in the region.

VoIP operator Vonage (NYSE: VG) reported third quarter income tripled to $24 million, or 11 cents per share, on sales of $217 million, up $3 million from a year ago.

But an increase in churn, from 2.4 percent to 2.7 percent year-over-year, threw up some red flags. The company said it added 170,000 gross lines, up from 163,000 a year earlier, but saw gross line losses almost double from a year ago to 9,000.

The company ended the quarter with 2.39 million subscriber lines, down from 2.40 million in the third quarter last year.

In an earnings call, CEO Marc Lefar said Vonage "took another step forward in transforming our business beyond traditional home phone service."

Vonage added two mobile products during the quarter that Lefar said were "striking a chord with consumers." Some 400,000 customers have either registered their mobile phone as an extension to their Vonage World plan or downloaded its "time to call" app since they launched.

Lefar said net income was in large part driven by Vonage's two debt refinancings that dropped interest rates from a high of 20 percent a year ago to less than 4 percent, resulting in a savings of $22 million year-to-date, and an anticipated $30 million by year end.

Vonage also capitalized on a 9 percent reduction in subscriber line acquisition costs from a quarter ago to $300 and on expanded distribution. The company has doubled its distribution outlets with the recent addition of Best Buy, Kmart and Sears.

For more:
- see this release
- see this earnings call transcript from Seeking Apha

Earnings summary: Wireline in the third quarter 2011

Related articles:
Vonage's 'Extensions' plan sees strong uptake from iPhone, Android users
Vonage Holdings beats analysts with Q2 earnings record

We are happy to announce that we have started our win-win relations with another one escrow services provider – Vertecto. Along with neutral escrow services the company provides the telecom industry with payment, currency and other transaction services.

There were a few compelling reasons in favour of Vertecto. First of all, their rates are much lower than their competitors’ ones. Secondly, Vertecto allows to conduct business in different currencies (not only in US Dollars). The last but not the least, funds are secured by the largest banks. All USA dollar accounts (up to $250,000) are protected from bank failure by the USA government's Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

We welcome all our partners to do business with help of Vertecto.

We are happy to announce that we have started our win-win relations with another one escrow services provider – Vertecto. Along with neutral escrow services the company provides the telecom industry with payment, currency and other transaction services.

As we all know, those work hard who don’t forget to have a blast.

Our team has just arrived from HK Connect where we not only did business, but had the night out and enjoyed ourselves in honour of Halloween. We believe that it’s important to stay easy going and cheerful along with serious business approach.

Check out the other side of Speedflow:

As we all know, those work hard who don’t forget to have a blast.

Our team has just arrived from HK Connect where we not only did business, but had the night out and enjoyed ourselves in honour of Helloween.

We believe that it’s important to stay easy going and cheerful along with serious business approach.

Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI), which last month lowered its guidance for the third quarter, today announced results in line with its forecast and was rewarded by investors who drove share prices up 16 percent by midday.

The company has been positioning itself for a move into the enterprise and SMB videoconferencing market with its acquisition and integration of Italian company Mirial into its LifeSize product. Logitech earned $17 million, or 10 cents a share, on revenue of $589 million, down from earnings of $41 million, or 23 cents a share, on $582 million in sales a year ago.

It said it anticipates full fiscal year sales of $2.4 billion, which would be marginally higher than slightly above the $2.38 billion analyst forecasts.

The news drove share its midday price up more than 16 percent to $10.41 in New York.

"People are happy to see we're back on track," interim Chief Executive Officer Guerrino De Luca told Bloomberg. "We're showing that we can do what we said we would do and we've somewhat re-established confidence in the company." 

Operating income fell to $23 million from $51 million a year earlier; Wall Street had expected it to come in at $20.4 million. Net income fell 59 percent to $17 million, while revenue rose 1 percent to $589 million. Net income had been estimated at $16.9 million on sales of $591.8 million, according to analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

"We expect our initiatives will begin to contribute to improved performance as we move through the second half of full-year 2012," De Luca said in the statement. Second-quarter results are "consistent with our expectations and the full-year outlook."

For more:
- see this Bloomberg report

Related articles:
Logitech announces LifeSize ClearSea video conferencing will support iOS 5, iPhone 4S
LifeSize brings its videoconferencing technology to the cloud
Mirial takes ClearSea videoconferencing to the Cloud
Logitech acquires Italian video calling company Mirial

Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype is rolling on towards its final regulatory hoops through which it'll need to jump before being finalized, but there's still not much known about what the company plans to do with the company or how it plans to monetize the (mostly) free service.

During Microsoft's earnings call Thursday, CFO Peter Klein said Skype was in the process of being integrated across Microsoft's portfolio, "including Lync, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Phone and the Xbox platform."

"We closed the deal last week so we're real-time doing a lot of the great work on the product integration planning," he said. "Not only are there great opportunities to integrate across our product portfolio but as they were working on even before we announced the acquisition, new revenue opportunities related to advertising and premium services, so all of that's coming together as we speak. And mostly, we're incredibly excited to get to work together more fully now that the deal has closed."

Despite pressure form analysts, Klein declined to go into much more detail, aside from saying the service would become part of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices unit and that its numbers would be folded into results next quarter.

And, asked whether Skype's acquisition would mean Microsoft would discontinue any other products, Klein said: "Clearly, it's a little premature to talk about the changes and what we're going to do with the products."

For more:
- see this GigaOm article
- see the earnings release
- see the transcript from Seeking Alpha

Related articles:
Report: Microsoft deal for Skype expected to be approved
Microsoft's deal for Skype gets challenged in Europe by Italian VoIP competitor
Skype fires up GroupMe marketing push
Skype goes after landline business