{"id":468775,"date":"2026-05-31T06:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T06:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/468775\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T06:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T06:08:10","slug":"is-this-under-the-radar-ai-stock-a-buy-before-its-next-earnings-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/468775\/","title":{"rendered":"Is This Under-the-Radar AI Stock a Buy Before Its Next Earnings Report?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When investors think of artificial intelligence (AI) stocks, Arista Networks (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/quote\/nyse\/anet\/\" class=\"font-bold hover:underline\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ANET<\/a> +2.45%) isn&#8217;t a top-of-mind name. But understandably so. With a much smaller business compared to Nividia&#8217;s and Alphabet&#8217;s, it just doesn&#8217;t garner much attention. The stock hasn&#8217;t been performing particularly well since October anyway, giving the market even less reason to take notice.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, this under-the-radar AI stock is a buy before its next earnings report, due in early August, because of what happened &#8212; or more specifically, what didn&#8217;t happen &#8212; following the release of its first-quarter results in early May.<\/p>\n<p>Investors decide the glass is half-empty<\/p>\n<p>No, the stock didn&#8217;t experience a post-earnings surge early last month. Quite the opposite, actually. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/2026\/05\/05\/arista-networks-stock-dives-despite-delivering-a-b\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">It fell (sharply)<\/a> despite topping its first-quarter earnings and revenue estimates in addition to raising its Q2 2026 revenue guidance. As it turns out, Arista didn&#8217;t raise its guidance as much as investors and analysts were tacitly expecting it to. Those lofty expectations were already priced in, it seems.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Arista Networks Stock Quote\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"64\" height=\"64\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"w-full flex-none object-contain\" style=\"color:transparent\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1780207689_880_.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s Change<\/p>\n<p>(2.45%) $3.81<\/p>\n<p>Current Price<\/p>\n<p>$159.08<\/p>\n<p>Key Data Points<\/p>\n<p>Market Cap<\/p>\n<p>$201B<\/p>\n<p>Day&#8217;s Range<\/p>\n<p>$155.83 &#8211; $161.48<\/p>\n<p>52wk Range<\/p>\n<p>$85.58 &#8211; $179.80<\/p>\n<p>Volume<\/p>\n<p>335.8K<\/p>\n<p>Avg Vol<\/p>\n<p>8.9M<\/p>\n<p>Gross Margin<\/p>\n<p>63.54%<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a mistake that isn&#8217;t apt to happen again.<\/p>\n<p>But first things first. What&#8217;s Arista Networks, and what makes it an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/stock-market\/market-sectors\/information-technology\/ai-stocks\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">artificial intelligence stock<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s mostly a networking outfit. Routers, cables, and the specialty <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/2026\/05\/25\/3-saas-stocks-id-buy-right-now-even-with-the-ai-th\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">software<\/a> meant to get the maximum performance out of its hardware are all in its wheelhouse. As it turns out, this is artificial intelligence&#8217;s biggest data bottleneck right now. Offering real solutions to this problem is why Arista&#8217;s first-quarter revenue grew to the tune of 35% year over year, extending and accelerating last year&#8217;s growth trend.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"An investor is reading a financial newspaper.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"880\" height=\"587\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"h-auto max-w-full rounded object-contain\" style=\"color:transparent\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1780207690_719_.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Image source: Getty Images.<\/p>\n<p>The company&#8217;s management team committed the cardinal sin no technology name can afford to commit at this time, but they candidly acknowledged that demand for Arista&#8217;s technology is outpacing the supply of the components and materials it needs to manufacture its solutions, so much so that it&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/earnings\/call-transcripts\/2026\/05\/05\/arista-anet-q1-2026-earnings-transcript\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ultimately crimping profit margins<\/a> as a result. Specifically, Arista is now looking for full-year operating margins of only 46%, down slightly from last year&#8217;s average of just above 48%.<\/p>\n<p>Investors simply panicked in response to the unexpected news.<\/p>\n<p>All the bad news is already priced in<\/p>\n<p>In retrospect, though, the market arguably overreacted.<\/p>\n<p>Although this year&#8217;s profit margins are likely to come in slightly lower than last year&#8217;s and the stock was richly priced for perfection, the top-line growth of 29% that analysts expect this year is still very impressive, as is the 22% earnings growth the analyst community is modeling for 2026. Next year&#8217;s projected sales and profit growth are solid as well, in line with this year&#8217;s anticipated improvements.<\/p>\n<p>More importantly to interested investors, the shock stemming from the company&#8217;s disappointing guidance delivered with its Q1 results has seemingly run its course. It&#8217;s unlikely to take the same toll again the next time around in early August, when we&#8217;ll be getting Q2&#8217;s numbers; the bad news is already built in, and then some.<\/p>\n<p>At least analysts seem to think so. Despite all the recent (mostly bearish) drama, the vast majority of analysts still rate ANET stock as a strong buy, with a 12-month price target of $188.42 that&#8217;s nearly 20% above the stock&#8217;s present price (at the time of this writing). That&#8217;s not a bad way to start a new trade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When investors think of artificial intelligence (AI) stocks, Arista Networks (ANET +2.45%) isn&#8217;t a top-of-mind name. But understandably&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-468775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}