Full Transcript of Juniper’s 3Q05 Conference Call — Q&A (JNPR)

Here’s the entire text of the Q&A from Amgen’s (ticker: AMGN) Q3 2005 conference call. The prepared remarks are in a separate article. We recognize that this transcript may contain inaccuracies - if you find any, please post a comment below and we’ll incorporate your corrections. And please note: this conference call transcript is a Seeking Alpha product, so feel free to link to it but reproduction is not permitted without the explicit permission of Seeking Alpha.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Nikos Theodosopoulos from UBS. Please go ahead.

[Q]: Thank you. My question is on the security business. You had a strong rebound this quarter. I also note that overall, Europe was very strong this quarter for the company. Can you elaborate where you saw the strength and security by region? Thank you.

[A]: Hi, Nikos. The security business and the strength was actually pretty balanced across the theaters, across geographies, across customer types. We continue to see success of the security products in the service provider customer base. We continue to see growth and acceptance in both the number and type of enterprise or private network customers. I wouldn't say because we didn't really see this attachment.

I do not know if you were meaning to ask these two questions linked to one another, but the growth of the security business was not a disproportionate contributor to the strength in Europe. We have several large relationships or large account relationships in Europe, probably with the service providers, but also with a number of key enterprise customers as well and we've been focused there also, but I wouldn't attach the strength in Europe to the growth and security. The security business delivered pretty balanced results across the company and across the theaters and markets.

[Q]: All right. Thank you.

[Operator]:

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Henderson with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

[Q]: Thanks. Can you hear me?

[A]: Yes, go ahead, Alex.

[Q]: Great. Thanks. I was wondering if you could give us a little more of an update on what is going on with the distribution channel. You'd set out a goal at a conference back last year to bring your distribution channel up by almost double what it was at the time. I believe you were around 500 and we were talking about bringing it up into the 1200 vicinity in terms of ad bar distribution. Can you give us an update on where you are on that? Where that change in structure is going and how the integration of the new acquisitions fit into that structure.

[A]: I sure can. And there is actually a goal to bring the number of partners up and down. Let me explain what I mean. In terms of the elite partners or those or select partners, labels we give them, but essentially the top tier partner who's are deeply skilled and trained on the products and have demo and support and service and sophisticated capabilities to offer to their customers, our goal is to actually not necessarily drive that number up, but down so that it is truly a valued status. And those partners will take a significant percentage of the business and will be rewarded for the value that they can add a to the network.

Now, the balance of the partner base is one, which we are intending and have seen growth and increase in. Some of it is flipping from one status to another, but growing the partner base in absolute numbers is a good measure of the brand strength of the company because partners may not be as deeply invested, can still be drawn into our partner fold because of the demand generated at the end user customer, who says to, perhaps a trusted partner that isn't in our fold, “I've heard about Juniper and the magic quadrant or I have seen from someone I met or someone I know in the industry, they have had success with Juniper and I want to bring that product into the company.