Arista Networks did not put the shares back on an AI shipment path when they bounced on Tuesday. The stock closed Tuesday, 27 October 2026, at $187.00 on the NYSE. Through 31 December the last 90 daily log-returns put a bull at $277.11, a base at $196.32 and a bear at $156.01. The base is only that drift continued. It sits about a dollar from averages the close is still under.
What the coverage skips is the customer footnote. The June 10-Q says two end customers were 26 percent and 16 percent of 2025 revenue, and it does not name them. The 7 October rack release names Meta and Microsoft as engineering partners on Etherlink SU-144. Partnership is not the revenue line. The bull is a shipment outcome only if those unnamed buyers keep ordering into the $3.3 billion third-quarter guide. Otherwise $277.11 is a multiple.
Key facts
- NYSE close, Tuesday 27 October 2026: $187.00, up $9.76, or 5.51 percent, from Monday’s $177.24. High $189.27, low $180.00, volume 5,656,669. The Nasdaq quote page labels the listing NYSE and, at 7:04 a.m. Eastern on 28 October, showed a premarket sale at $190.79. That print is not the close.
- Same file, downloaded 28 October 2026: 20-day average $195.538, so the close is $8.54, or 4.37 percent, under it. 50-day average $195.691, so the close is $8.69, or 4.44 percent, under it. Prior five sessions: high $188.99, low $168.2451. File high close $216.74 on 9 October. Low since 28 October 2025: $114.52 on 21 November 2025.
- Release, 4 August 2026: revenue $3.036 billion, up 37.7 percent year on year. GAAP diluted EPS $0.95. Non-GAAP diluted EPS $1.02, up 39.7 percent. Third-quarter outlook: about $3.3 billion, non-GAAP operating margin 48 percent to 49 percent, non-GAAP EPS $1.06 to $1.08. Second-quarter release.
- Form 10-Q, quarter ended 30 June 2026, filed 5 August: revenue $3,035.7 million, product $2,605.2 million, service $430.5 million. Gross margin 62.9 percent, from 65.2 percent. Americas $2,337.9 million, 77.0 percent. Two unnamed end customers were 26 percent and 16 percent of 2025 revenue. June 10-Q.
- Balance sheet, 30 June 2026: cash $2,290.2 million, marketable securities $11,053.1 million, deferred revenue $6,865.9 million, equity $14,797.7 million. Shares on 30 July 2026: 1,261,224,648. No long-term debt line appears in that statement.
- Date notice, 6 October 2026: results after the US close on Tuesday 3 November, call at 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Breithaupt at UBS on 1 December. Nightingale and Singh at Barclays on 10 December. November date release.
- Rack release, 7 October 2026: Etherlink SU-144 with AMD, Arm, Broadcom, d-Matrix, Meta, Microsoft and Qualcomm. Up to 144 accelerators in one rack. Scale-up release. Advisory 0199, 22 October: CVE-2026-114625, known to be exploited. Advisory 0199.
- House path, 28 October 2026, from the $187.00 NYSE close: bull $277.11, base $196.32, bear $156.01. N is 45. Mean log-return 0.001080591587. Sample standard deviation 0.034254717904. No English FinanceFeeds Arista pair was found.
What just happened, and why the obvious reading is wrong
Two clocks are being treated as one. Tuesday’s close was $187.00, up $9.76 from Monday. The closes used here are that completed print. Before the cash open on Wednesday the Nasdaq info page still said Pre-Market and showed $190.79 at 7:04 a.m. Eastern, up $3.79, or 2.03 percent. That sale is not the formula spot and it is not on the chart.
The other clock is the October air pocket. The file high is the 9 October close of $216.74, intraday high $217.4099. Tuesday is $29.74 under that close, or 13.72 percent. The close was $176.98 on 16 October. On 22 October it fell from $184.33 to $171.07, down $13.26, or 7.19 percent. Tuesday retraced part of the week. It did not restore 9 October.
The shipment reading stops at the 7 October rack page. Etherlink SU-144 was engineered with AMD, Arm, Broadcom, d-Matrix, Meta, Microsoft and Qualcomm, and the release pointed buyers to Booth E61 at the OCP Global Summit on 12 to 15 October. That week the closes fell from $210.88 to $176.98. A booth is not an order. The page does not update the August guide of about $3.3 billion, a non-GAAP operating margin of 48 percent to 49 percent, and non-GAAP EPS of $1.06 to $1.08. June had just printed a 49.9 percent non-GAAP operating margin and non-GAAP EPS of $1.02. The outlook band sits under the quarter reported. Results are after the close on 3 November.
Who is exposed
The June filing names the concentration and not the buyers. Two customers were above 10 percent of revenue in each of the last three years. One end customer was 16 percent, 15 percent and 21 percent of revenue in 2025, 2024 and 2023. The other was 26 percent, 20 percent and 18 percent. The larger share rose. Treating Meta or Microsoft as that footnote is ahead of the document. Those two lines are the shipment test for $277.11.
Gross margin fell to 62.9 percent from 65.2 percent, primarily driven by a higher proportion of sales to large end customers who generally receive higher discounts. Product was $2,605.2 million of $3,035.7 million, or 85.82 percent. Service was $430.5 million. Americas were $2,337.9 million, 77.0 percent. EMEA was 14.4 percent and Asia-Pacific was 8.6 percent. Six-month revenue was $5,744.7 million, so the March quarter was $2,709.0 million, and the six months were 36.5 percent above $4,209.6 million.
Deferred revenue was $5,100.7 million current and $1,765.2 million non-current, together $6,865.9 million, or 2.26 times June revenue. Cash and marketable securities were $13,343.3 million. Equity was $14,797.7 million. At the 30 July count of 1,261,224,648 shares, $187.00 is a market value of $235,849,009,176. That count is not Tuesday’s. Hardev Singh, general manager for Cloud Titans and AI, is on the 10 December Barclays card with Todd Nightingale. The title is not the revenue footnote.
What the tape and the filings show
The chart uses the NYSE official daily close. Nasdaq’s historical endpoint supplied the rows. The quote page says the exchange is NYSE and that the shares are not Nasdaq-listed. The last bar is Tuesday’s $187.00. Daily lows are on the top panel, so the November 2025 low and the October high both fit. The Wednesday premarket sale is not drawn.
The close is $8.54 under the 20-day average of $195.538 and $8.69 under the 50-day average of $195.691. It is $1.99 under the prior five-session high of $188.99 and $18.75 above the prior five-session low of $168.2451, and $2.67 above the prior five-session high close of $184.33. Both averages are overhead. The $196.32 base is 78 cents above the 20-day average and 63 cents above the 50-day average. Reaching the base is reaching the averages, not a new high.
The 90 log-returns use 91 closes from 18 June 2026 through 27 October. The largest rise is 8 July, from $166.46 to $181.05, up 8.76 percent. The largest decline is 22 October, down 7.19 percent. Sigma is not one session. The $171.07 close that day is still $15.06 above the bear. From the 2 January 2026 close of $133.60, Tuesday is up 39.97 percent. From $114.52 it is up 63.29 percent. That gain is in the tape. The gap to $277.11 is not.
| Reading | Figure | What it is, and what it is not |
|---|---|---|
| Official close | $187.00 on 27 October | NYSE daily close and the formula spot. Not the $190.79 premarket sale. |
| October high | $216.74 on 9 October | Top close in this file. Tuesday is 13.72 percent under it. |
| 22 October | $171.07, down $13.26 | Largest down day in the 90 log-returns. Same date as Advisory 0199. |
| June quarter | $3,035.7 million, margin 62.9 percent | 10-Q figure. The release rounds it to $3.036 billion. Not the 3 November print. |
| Two end customers | 26 percent and 16 percent of 2025 | Unnamed. Not the Meta and Microsoft lines on the rack release. |
| Bull, base, bear | $277.11, $196.32, $156.01 | 45 sessions and the last 90 log-returns. Not a street target. |
What Arista said, and what it has not named
Jayshree Ullal, chairperson and chief executive, in the 4 August release: “As we deliver our first $3 billion quarter in Q2 2026, it is clear that our Arista 2.0 platform strategy is compelling.” She added: “Customers see networking as the central nervous system for infrastructure from the client to campus to data and AI centers.” Chantelle Breithaupt, chief financial officer, said in the same release: “Our second quarter 2026 reflects strong, broad-based growth, with revenue up 37.7% and EPS up 39.7%.”
Tyson Lamoreaux, senior vice president, cloud and AI networking, on 7 October: “The network in the AI era is no longer just an independent pipe between servers. It’s now a tightly integrated rack-scale backplane that is essential to maximizing compute.” The same release says Arista is delivering an open Ethernet framework for scale-up and scale-out. SU-144 is up to 144 accelerators in one hop and 1,024 across racks, with liquid-cooled 7060XE7 switches at 102.4 Tbps. August said the family delivers up to 100 Tbps and about 60 percent less interconnect power than traditional pluggable optics. Neither page turns the ports into the $3.3 billion guide.
The company account at 00:00 UTC on 28 October, 8:00 p.m. Eastern on the 27th: “Meet us at Booth: 046, to discover how Arista is supporting resilient public sector infrastructure with secure, zero-trust cloud networking, high-performance local government networks, and AI-driven automated operations.” The status is the Tokyo local-government fair on 27 and 28 October. @TheValueist wrote that evening that custom scale-up designs “do not establish Arista displacement” and that “no high-conviction near-term earnings reduction follows from this call.” The post cites Celestica. The related tape is the Celestica bull and bear from 26 October. A 58 percent share figure in that post is not in the Arista documents saved here. Management has not named the 26 percent customer.
The advisory, the discount, and the cash
Advisory 0199 is dated 22 October, the $171.07 session. CVE-2026-114625 is a SQL injection in on-premises VeloCloud Orchestrator, CVSS 3.1 score 9.9 and CVSS 4.0 score 9.4. Affected builds are VCO 5.2.x before 5.2.3.18, 6.1.x before 6.1.3.10, and 6.4.x before 6.4.2.12. Arista says it found the bug, that it is being exploited, that an authenticated user can gain operator privileges, and that hosted copies were patched. The notice does not mention the share price. It does not explain the $13.26 drop. Orchestrator customers are not the two switching end customers.
Gross profit was $1,910.3 million. A bull that needs those large buyers also needs the discount not to outrun the revenue. The next non-GAAP operating-margin band, 48 percent to 49 percent, already sits under the 49.9 percent just printed. Six-month cash flow shows no 2026 repurchase, against $983.0 million in the 2025 column. The May 2025 authorization is $1.5 billion. Unused capacity is not a bid under $187.00. Total liabilities were $8,922.4 million. The 10-Q says tighter US trade rules on China and other countries may hurt the business, with no September dollar attached. October pages call Arista a recent S&P 100 member. That reshuffle is the note on the four names that joined. Membership does not name the customer. The same network tape is the Broadcom session from 6 October.
Bull, base, and bear
The title is this distribution, not a broker target. No street target was in the pages saved here. No English FinanceFeeds title carried an Arista or ANET bull and bear, so the horizon stays through 31 December. Ten sessions from the same inputs would be a bull of $222.38, a base of $189.03 and a bear of $169.63 through 10 November. Ciena and Lumentum pages that mention the trade are other companies.
Spot is the $187.00 NYSE close. Mu is 0.001080591587. Sigma is 0.034254717904. N is 45: the 28, 29 and 30 October sessions, 20 November weekdays after dropping Thanksgiving on 26 November, and 22 December weekdays after dropping Christmas on 25 December. The 27 November and 24 December early closes count. The square root of 45 is 6.7082039325.
Base equals spot times e to the power of N times mu. Forty-five times 0.001080591587 is 0.0486266214. e to that power is 1.049828294. Times $187.00 is $196.31789, which rounds half up to $196.32, up $9.32, or 4.98 percent. Bull adds 1.5 times sigma times the square root of N. Sigma times 6.7082039325 is 0.2297876333, and 1.5 times that is 0.3446814500. The exponent is 0.3933080714. e to that power is 1.481874842. Times $187.00 is $277.11060, which rounds to $277.11, up $90.11, or 48.19 percent. Bear subtracts 0.2297876333, so the exponent is negative 0.1811610119. e to that power is 0.8343010154. Times $187.00 is $156.01429, which rounds to $156.01, down $30.99, or 16.57 percent. The bull is above the spot. This is not financial advice.
| Case | Price | Versus the $187.00 spot | What has to be true |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bull | $277.11 | Up $90.11, or 48.19 percent | The drift holds and 31 December finishes 1.5 standard deviations above it, with the unnamed end customers still ordering. |
| Base | $196.32 | Up $9.32, or 4.98 percent | Only the mean runs for 45 sessions. About a dollar above both moving averages. |
| Bear | $156.01 | Down $30.99, or 16.57 percent | The same drift minus one standard deviation, across the 3 November print and the December conferences. |
The three prices are that arithmetic. They are not the first $3 billion quarter and not a tag on SU-144. The bull is $60.37 above the 9 October close, so clearing the old high does not print $277.11. The bear is under $171.07 and $41.49 above the $114.52 low. A full-year figure near $12.6 billion, and a claim that Etherlink customers had passed 100, showed up in an X post and not in the August outlook. They are not inputs.
What happens next
The 3 November release is after the US close, and the call starts at 4:30 p.m. Eastern, so Tuesday’s official close is still a pre-release bar. The first cash close that can price September is Wednesday 4 November. Revenue near $3.3 billion, with the two end customers still large, would make the drift toward $196.32 a shipment path. A guide cut, or gross margin under 62.9 percent, would put the bear ahead of the multiple. Neither print changes $277.11 until a completed close replaces Tuesday.
The tape test before that is the 20-day average at $195.538, $8.54 above the close, then the 50-day average at $195.691. Closes through both would land on the base without the bull. A close under $171.07, then under the $168.2451 low of 23 October, would say the air pocket is still the path. On 1 December Breithaupt is at the UBS Global AI and Tech Conference. On 10 December Nightingale and Singh are at the Barclays Global Technology Conference. If no name appears, the 26 percent and 16 percent lines stay the exposure. On 31 December the $277.11 bull is $60.37 above the file high. That gap is a multiple unless the unnamed customers keep ordering.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the sessions through 31 December 2026 put an Arista bull and bear, and which customer has to keep ordering?
The bull is $277.11 and the bear is $156.01, from the $187.00 NYSE close on 27 October, with a base of $196.32 over 45 sessions. The June 10-Q does not name the end customers that were 26 percent and 16 percent of 2025 revenue. The bull is a shipment outcome only if those buyers keep ordering. Meta and Microsoft are partners on the 7 October rack, not that footnote.
Did Tuesday’s bounce clear the moving averages?
No. The $187.00 close is $8.54 under the 20-day average of $195.538 and $8.69 under the 50-day average of $195.691. It is $29.74 under the 9 October close of $216.74. The rise from $177.24 retraced part of the October drop and did not clear either average. The $190.79 print at 7:04 a.m. Eastern on 28 October is a premarket sale, not the spot.
Are Meta and Microsoft the customers in the 10-Q?
The filing does not say so. One end customer was 16 percent, 15 percent and 21 percent of revenue in 2025, 2024 and 2023. The other was 26 percent, 20 percent and 18 percent. No name is printed. The 7 October release lists Meta and Microsoft with AMD, Arm, Broadcom, d-Matrix and Qualcomm as SU-144 partners. That is a design list, not the revenue footnote.
Are the bull and the bear Street targets?
No. $277.11, $196.32 and $156.01 are the distribution above. No English FinanceFeeds Arista pair collided with them, and no street target was in the pages saved here. A figure near $12.6 billion in an X post is not in the August outlook. The ten-session bull of $222.38 was computed and set aside.
Did Advisory 0199 set the close, and what is 3 November?
The advisory is dated 22 October, when the close was $171.07, and it says CVE-2026-114625 is being exploited. It does not mention the share price, so it does not set $187.00 or $156.01. Arista set September results for after the US close on Tuesday 3 November. The first cash close that can reflect that print is Wednesday 4 November.
What would make the $196.32 base the wrong year-end price?
A break in the drift. The base only compounds the recent mean for 45 sessions, and it sits within about a dollar of both moving averages. Closes back above $195.538, then revenue near $3.3 billion with both end customers still in the book, would mean the mean had held. A guide cut on 3 November would put $156.01 in front of the multiple. It would not turn $277.11 into a promise.
