Juniper Networks continued its recovery in Q4 picking up steam and beating investor expectations by a narrow margin. The networking vendor’s fourth-quarter 2020 revenues reached $1.22 billion during the quarter, up 1.7% year over year.

“We are exiting 2020 following two consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth and entering the new year with good momentum,” Juniper CEO Rami Rahim said on the earnings call.

Rahim credited the company’s rebound in Q4 on the strategic diversification of Juniper’s business, citing the acquisition of Mist Systems in 2019 and the more recent acquisitions of Apstra, 128 Technology, and NetRounds in late 2020.

Juniper plans to build on these acquisitions in a similar vein to Mist, which has steady become a larger part of the company’s subscription revenues. On that subject, Rahim highlighted several areas of focus for the company going into the 2021 fiscal year. These include artificial intelligence (AI) for the enterprise, cloud data center, an automated WAN. “These use cases each represent a large opportunity that spans across verticals we serve,” he said, adding that the company expects these use cases to drive tailwinds in the coming years.

On the subject of 128 Technology, which Juniper acquired for $450 million in October 2020, Rahim expressed optimism that the company would be able to realize similar successes with the SD-WAN vendor as it had with Mist.

“The acquisition of 128 Technology represents the next evolution of our AI-driven enterprise vision,” said Rahim. “128 Technology will not only enable Juniper to provide a superior application and user-aware SD-WAN experience as compared to all other SD-WAN offerings in the market, but also to extend the value of Mist secure AI engine and cloud management capabilities from client to cloud.”

Meanwhile, touching on Apstra, Rahim said the intent-based networking vendor had the potential to “accelerate our success in the data center switching market, both within cloud majors and large enterprise accounts.”

He also hinted that the company would continue to make investments in software — particularly software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings — moving forward.

“While high-value SaaS and subscription software are a smaller percentage of our overall software revenue stream today, they are growing rapidly, which is a trend we expect to continue over the next several years,” Rahim said. “This growth is primarily being driven by a strong adoption of our Mist cloud, as well as other software based subscription offerings.”

Juniper’s Q4 revenues continued the company’s rebound in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which the company blamed for depressed earnings during the previous quarters. Q3 marked Juniper’s return to year-over-year growth, albeit just barely, and the company managed to carry that momentum into Q4 with revenues up $14 million year over year to $1.22 billion.

Juniper’s Q4 rally helped helped to stave off what could have been a larger decline, and keeping full-year revenues relatively flat in 2020. The company posted 2020 revenues of $4.4 billion down $300,000 from 2019.

Routing continued to be a bright spot for the company in Q4 with revenues up approximately 9% year over year. Juniper’s switching and security businesses, however, didn’t fair nearly as well with revenues declining 2.3% and 14% respectively. Service revenues also took a small hit during the quarter, declining 1% year over year to $412.4 million.

“We've been encouraged to see this business begin to stabilize in 2020, following several difficult years,” Rahim said of the company’s service provider business.

Turning to the company’s Q1 2021 outlook, CFO Ken Miller said he expected revenues to crest $1 billion. “Beyond the first quarter, we expect revenue to grow sequentially each quarter in 2021,” he said.