Shares of Juniper Networks ($JNPR) have been bleeding badly since hitting a high of $45.01 on March 8. As of Tuesday's close, the stock was 31% off its 52-week high.

Clearly, investors have been worried about the company's growth prospects and, apparently, those concerns are justified as the company posted disappointing second-quarter earnings and issued a soft outlook for the third quarter.

The management of this Internet networking equipment company said that second-quarter profit rose 3% from a year ago to $0.31 a share. Sales rose 15% to $1.12 billion. The consensus estimates called for profit of $0.34 a share on sales of $1.15 billion. Juniper blamed the sales miss on delayed purchases.

Commenting on the results, CEO Kevin Johnson said: "Juniper's results reflect momentum in our routing business and a return to solid performance in switching. A number of factors, however, including mixed signals in the macro economy, impacted our performance this quarter."

Of the company's sales, 52% came from the Americas, 29% from Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and 19% from Asia-Pacific. Sales in the Americas rose 17% from a year ago; EMEA sales gained 14% from a year ago and Asia Pacific revenue rose 9%.

Service provider revenue totaled $729 million, up 18% from a year ago. Enterprise sales came in at $391 million, up 9% from a year ago.

The second-quarter, non-GAAP operating margin fell to 21.6% from 22.3% in the first quarter. The operating margin in the year-ago quarter was 23.9%.

For the third quarter, Juniper forecast earnings per share (EPS) of $0.26 to $0.30 a share on sales of $1.07 billion to $1.12 billion. This is below the consensus current third-quarter EPS estimate of $0.38 a share on sales of $1.22 billion.

The company expects the third-quarter, non-GAAP operating margin to be in a range of 19% to 21%.

Management said that it is cautious on the second-half 2011, but optimistic about 2012. It also mentioned that recent design wins will begin translating into revenue in late 2011.

On Monday, Juniper reorganized its software business. Microsoft ($MSFT) veteran Bob Muglia was named executive vice president for Juniper's Software Solutions division. Most recently, Muglia served as president of Microsoft's $15 billion Server and Tools business where he was responsible for infrastructure software, developer tools and cloud platforms.

Shares of Juniper were trading around $26.70, down 14% in after-hours trading. - K.Shreve