Shares of Lumen Technologies (LUMN -3.95%) are down Wednesday. The firm's stock lost 3.4% as of 1 p.m. ET, but was down as much as 5.8% earlier in the day. The loss comes as the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.14%) gained 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC -0.08%) lost 0.1%.

Lumen, a telecom company that provides data center networking technology, reported earnings on Tuesday. While it was a mostly positive quarter, too many unknowns remain, and investors remain cautious.

The numbers

Lumen reported a Q4 net income of $85 million on $3.3 billion in revenue. While that's a slim profit margin, it's up from a net loss of nearly $2 billion for the same period last year. The company beat expectations substantially; the earnings per share (EPS) of $0.09 the company delivered was well above the $0.06 loss expected.

Encouraged by her company's performance, CEO Kate Johnson said Lumen "made material progress strengthening [its] financial position, transforming [its] corporate functions, and building the backbone for the AI economy." Johnson indicated she saw recent developments within AI, namely the release of DeepSeek's latest model, as actually positive, spurring adoption of AI and therefore driving revenues.

It wasn't all rosy

Despite Johnson's enthusiasm and the positive earnings beat, revenue was down year over year, and Lumen's future remains somewhat unclear. Before this quarter, the company has repeatedly missed earnings targets, all while failing to consistently turn a profit or grow revenues. Though Q4 was in the black, Lumen delivered another net loss for 2024 as a whole, and its guidance of adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of $3.2 billion to $3.4 billion for 2025 is well below 2024's $3.9 billion.