Why Is Arista Stock Falling?
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Arista Networks (ANET) stock fell 10.8% on Thursday, November 5, 2026, while the S&P 500 lost 4.4%. The drop occurred during a broad retreat from AI infrastructure stocks, with Arista’s peers falling 7.6% to 15.2% in the same session. The timing is odd. Just two days earlier, Arista reported what management called its largest year-over-year revenue growth as a public company. Why did AI stocks fall that day, and what ties Arista to them?
Why Did Arista And Other AI Stocks Fall?
Several AI stocks, among them Nvidia, fell on November 5 on worries that a Democratic Congress and new state leaders could slow data-center construction. The retreat extended to the networking group, including Arista. This marked a sharp turn for the company. The stock had risen 5.0% on November 4, the day after its third-quarter report and the day it filed its quarterly report with the SEC.
Arista’s link to that selling is its AI business. Management said on the November 3 call that third-quarter revenue growth came from strength with both AI and enterprise customers. The company sells Etherlink switches built for AI training and inference work, and it has passed 100 Etherlink customers in 2026. For 2027, management expects its AI networking sales to double to about $7 billion, the fastest growth of any part of the business, within total revenue of about $18.5 billion.
Arista Fell With Its Group
Arista fell harder than its broader sector. XLK, the SPDR fund for Arista’s information technology sector, lost 8.0% in the same session, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 5.5%. Among companies on Arista’s peer list, Ciena, Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise fell more than Arista, while Cisco Systems and Extreme Networks fell less.
Feels like a turning point? Five years after days like November 5, the S&P 500 was higher 18 times out of 18.
Where Does Arista Stock Stand Now?
Falls this large are rare for Arista. Over the prior 365 days, only one session brought a fall at least this deep: a 13.6% drop on May 6, 2026.
Over twelve months, Arista stock returned 3.7%, against 9.9% for the S&P 500. Its closing prices in that year ranged from $116.13 on March 30, 2026, to $216.74 on October 9, 2026. The drop from that high all came in the past month. By November 5, the stock was 27% below it. From October 7 to November 5, it lost 26.3%, against 5.7% for the S&P 500.
Even after the fall, you pay a lot for each dollar of Arista’s sales. The stock trades at 16.9 times its revenue over the past twelve months, against 3.2 times for the S&P 500.
When Arista reports its fourth-quarter 2026 results, expected in February 2027, the figure to watch is revenue against the company’s forecast of $3.9 billion to $4 billion.
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