Extreme Networks explores potential sale

Network equipment manufacturing facility.

Extreme Networks is reportedly working with an investment banking firm toward a potential sale, with larger rival Cisco and cybersecurity giant Fortinet named as potential acquirers. Reuters is reporting that the company is exploring a potential sale after garnering “inbound acquisition interest,” according to people familiar with the matter.

Extreme Networks declined to comment on the report, stating it doesn’t “comment on market rumors or speculation.” The company’s stock was trading up around 14% late Friday, pushing its market cap to $3.1 billion.

The report comes after Extreme Networks posted robust earnings for the first quarter of its fiscal 2027, with a 10% year-over-year increase in revenues to $341 million and a near-tripling of net income to $16 million. CEO Ed Meyercord told investors during the latest earnings call that the vendor was benefitting from a handful of “market conditions … working in our favor,” including “competitor refresh cycles, Wi-Fi upgrades, and the disruption from the HPE and Juniper integration,” a trio that are “creating a multi-year opportunity.”

Meyercord also noted that the company was seeing traction from disenchanted Cisco customers. “Cisco is focused on a lot of other things besides networking, and they’re the most aggressive in raising price, and so, if you’re looking for the most complicated bundle of solutions and the most expensive, it’s Cisco,” Meyercord said. “And a lot of customers don’t want to have everything together. They’ll look and say, ‘I’d like the best in breed. Cisco, compared to, let’s say, Extreme and Palo Alto, there’s much better value and capability going with the Extreme-Palo solution and having best of breed, as opposed to paying a lot more and having a lesser solution from this larger entity.'”

The enterprise networking space is continuing to re-adjust following Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion purchase of Juniper Networks, which combined the market’s No. 2 and No. 3 players into a more powerful rival to Cisco. Extreme Networks was recently ranked in the “visionaries” box of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for enterprise wired and wireless local area network providers.