MKM Partners analyst Michael Genovese raised his price target on Ciena to $54 and kept his Buy rating after its "strong" Q2 revenues and margins, with sales in both Networking Platforms and Services segments topping his expectations even though Software sales disappointed. The analyst notes that the gross margin upside was driven by strong Optical line card and capacity demand, while the book-to-bill ratio in Q2 was "significantly" above 1.0. Genovese contends that Ciena is outperforming the competition because of the strength of its technology, its bigger scale, and more favorable regulatory changes.