Cisco quarterly revenue seen up but outlook cloudy
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Cisco Systems Inc.  is  expected to post higher quarterly sales as companies upgraded  their communications networks, but analysts say the outlook is  clouded by an economic slowdown and mergers among rivals.
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Technology stocks jumped on Wednesday after a strong profit and outlook from Cisco Systems Inc.  boosted optimism about corporate profits.
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Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO.O, the  biggest maker of gear to direct traffic over the Internet, on  Tuesday said it was on track to meet Wall Street's fiscal 2005  revenue growth estimates, but signaled that profit margins were  under pressure.
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Shares on Wall Street are expected to  open higher on Tuesday, as stronger oil prices are likely to  underpin energy stocks and investors bet on strong earnings  from network equipment maker Cisco Systems .
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Cisco Systems Inc. , the largest maker of communications gear to direct traffic over the Internet, on Tuesday said quarterly earnings rose, but shares fell in after market trading amid concerns about weak revenue and rising inventory.
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(InfoWorld) - Global IT expansion this year is expected to be modest, but vendors that demonstrate nimbleness and creativity are being rewarded. Market indices have declined as traders brace for a slowdown after corporate share prices rose steadily over the past seven months. But IT investors are still jumping on the bandwagon for companies that are seen making wise investments and restructuring decisions. Traders applauded EMC's decision, announced Wednesday,Â to offer 10 percent of its VMware virtualization software subsidiary in an IPO. Despite a general market downturn Thursday due to concerns over the U.S. housing market, EMC shares were trading at $14.58 Thursday afternoon, up by $0.99. The spin-off lets the public inject cash into a part of the company offering trendy virtualization technology while allowing users and investors to more easily analyze the core traditional storage business, which many analysts feel is undervalued. Hewlett-Packard shares also remained high this week in the wake of its Monday announcement thatÂ it will buy business transactions monitoring software supplier Bristol TechnologyÂ for an undisclosed amount. HP said Bristol will help strengthen its business technology optimization product offerings. Cisco Systems shares jumped Wednesday,Â after it issued its earnings report Tuesday, and stayed high. Cisco is doing well in several key areas. Beating analyst forecasts for sales last quarter, Cisco reported that revenue increased more than 27 percent to $8.4 billion and profit grew 39.7 percent to $1.9 billion, compared to the year-earlier quarter. Key to company growth were storage products and developing markets -- precisely what market observers are looking for. Brokerage Robert W. Baird & Co. upgraded Cisco to "outperform" from "neutral." User demand for security, storage, wireless devices, and server optimization technology remains high, analysts say. Small businesses and developing economies are forecast to be the main drivers of growth. "The opportunity to provide SMBs with advanced technology will continue to grow significantly throughout the world in 2007," according to the report, from Ray Boggs, vice president for Small/Medium Business and Home Office research at IDC. Companies positioning to capitalize on trends are even, sometimes, forgiven losses. Even though ISP EarthLink Tuesday reported a fourth-quarter loss of $24.8 million, compared with a year-earlier profit of $29.2 million, it got kudos for making efforts to target growth opportunities. "The industry is shifting, and it is focusing on new opportunities like broadband, wireless Internet and Internet telephony in a variety of marketplaces around the USA, " said telecom analyst Jeff Kagan. EarthLink's loss was mainly attributed to its investment in Helio, the company's wireless joint venture with South Korea's SK Telecom. Despite the loss, Goldman Sachs analyst Anthony Noto upgraded the stock to "neutral" from "sell." "We believe the flexibility of the company to cut these investments or restructure via a leveraged buyout, management buyout or recapitalization limits the downside," Noto wrote in a research note. Â
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InfoWorld - Mixed economic news and forecasts of weak IT spending for at least the beginning of next year caused IT investor confidence to waver this week, though upbeat analyst presentations from Cisco and AT&T and online e-commerce figures brought some cheer to the holiday season.
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Plus: Cisco posts higher quarterly profit...RealNetworks reports leap in quarterly earnings...Time Warner earnings perk up. Check back for latest.
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Cisco posted net income of $1.9 billion, or $0.31 per share, on revenue of $8.4 billion in its fiscal second quarter financial results reported Tuesday, exceeding revenue but matching earnings per share estimates of analysts.
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Investor's Business Daily - Networking giant Cisco Systems may be in short-term pain. But it's looking past that to long-term gain.
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When Cisco meets analysts Wednesday at an annual conference about its business outlook, the dominant networking player will bring a good financial record and an even more impressive forecast.
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Cisco Systems' fiscal first-quarter profits jumped 29% as the network equipment giant saw growth in its traditional routing markets as well as its emerging technologies like Internet telephone and home networking gear.
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(InfoWorld) - The first week of September, the unofficial start of the new season, has been hectic for IT investors. Analysts are scrambling to parse through news from networking giants Cisco Systems Inc., Alcatel SA and Lucent Technologies Inc., and a board fracas at Hewlett-Packard Co. caused the company to come under the scrutiny of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the California State Attorney General. The big question for Wall Street analysts and institutional investors attending the Cisco Systems Inc. analyst day in New York Wednesday was whether the vendor could sustain its revenue and profit momentum. Executives lead by Chief Executive Officer John Chambers said that by incorporating data, voice, video and mobile capabilities -- its so-called "quadruple play" -- across all its product lines, Cisco can take advantage of converging networks in the service provider, enterprise, commercial and consumer markets. The company reiterated its forecast of 10 percent to 15 percent growth for the next three to five years. But more importantly, in wide-ranging give-and-take with the Wall Street community, company executives appeared very confident about specific details that backed up the forecast. "They were very bullish," noted Mark Sue, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. Sue said that two good signs were the company's confidence that it could keep its tax rate down to current levels (hovering around 25 percent) and Chief Financial Officer Dennis Powell's statement that the company would pay out a dividend at some point. The company did not get an uptick after the meeting, even though some analysts said they thought shares have a lot of potential to move upward. Part of the problem may be that Cisco was caught in the general market depression this week, as a result of reports of slowing housing sales. Cisco (CSCO) closed at US$21.54 Thursday, down $0.15. Meanwhile Alcatel SA and Lucent Technologies Inc. shareholders approved the merger of the two networking vendors Thursday. The merger is seen as part of a trend toward consolidation in the networking and telecom markets. There is intense competition in the growth areas of the mature enterprise market -- such as VOIP -- while Chinese manufacturers are putting pressure on the Western networking giants on the low end. IT investors are taking a wait-and-see approach to Alcatel-Lucent. On Thursday, Lucent (LU) shares closed at $2.25, down by $0.02, while Alcatel shares (ALA) closed at $11.77, down by $0.24. On his part, Cisco's Chambers sees his greatest competition coming from Asia, not Paris or New Jersey. A board disagreement at HP, meanwhile, is a sign of the times. An internal investigation by HP to see which members of its board of directors leaked information to the press resulted in several board members leaving earlier this year. One departed board member, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Thomas Perkins, has accused HP of using possibly illegal means to conduct its investigation, sparking newly revealed government inquiries. However it ends, the squabble is seen to signify the end of an era when board members were all good friends of the chief executive. The leaks stemmed back to the time when the board started having critical discussions of ex-CEO Carly Fiorina. Though current CEO Mark Hurd appears to be well on the way to a healthy reorganization of the company, the board infighting could be a distraction. HP (HPQ) shares closed at $35.42 Thursday, down by $0.42.
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Executives at networking giant Cisco Systems say the company&#39;s new CRS-1 core Internet router is ahead of revenue targets, just as the company announced on Sunday a smaller version of the product.
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A weak forecast from Cisco marked another roller-coaster week for technology companies on the stock market.The Nasdaq, home to many tech companies, suffered a gut-wrenching 3.1 percent drop Tuesday after a U.S. service sector report showed a decline in the nonmanufacturing index from December to January. Though the index recovered somewhat during the rest of the week, the Tuesday drop was yet another demonstration that IT investors are worried that a broad economic slowdown will affect technology. The decline in the nonmanufacturing sector was the first such drop since the beginning of 2003.Cisco&#39;s earnings report&#160;on Wednesday reinforced concerns that the broader economy will have an impact on IT. Cisco forecast revenue for its current fiscal quarter to increase 10 percent, compared to analyst consensus expectations of 15 percent, according to Thomson Financial. On a conference call with analysts, CEO John Chambers said the upcoming quarters will be &quot;extremely challenging.&quot;Confirming fears of market watchers, he also noted that &quot;we are seeing our U.S. and European customers becoming increasingly cautious.&quot;However, sales for the fiscal quarter ending Jan. 26 were up by 16.5 percent to $9.8 billion. The company has been saying for some time that it will sustain double-digit growth through the rest of the decade by incorporating data, voice, video, and mobile capabilities -- its &quot;quadruple play&quot; -- across product lines.Despite the muted forecast, market watchers still have faith in the company. Company shares rose slightly the day after the report, closing at $23.38, up by $0.30.The &quot;quadruple play&quot; pitch still resonates with analysts, and several company watchers noted that Cisco shares have declined along with the wider market over the last few months, giving it a good valuation for long-term investors. Pacific Crest analyst Tim Daubenspeck upgraded the stock to &quot;Outperform&quot; from &quot;Sector Perform.&quot;&quot;Ultimately, we believe that many of the drivers are firmly in place for Cisco to achieve its long-term growth forecast of 12 percent to 17 percent,&quot; he said in a research note.Chambers&#39; cautious forecast, however, could have a bad effect on its suppliers and customers, including electronics manufacturing services and telecom companies. On Thursday, Qwest Communications dropped $0.29 to close at $5.27, Sprint Nextel declined by $0.6 to close at $9.56, and Nortel Networks dropped $0.55 to $10.99.In other telecom-sector news,&#160;Alcatel-Lucent&#160;on Friday said revenue for its fourth quarter increased 18 percent to $7.61 billion. The company, however, suffered a net loss of $3.76 billion, mainly because of a writedown related to the shrinking value of assets from Lucent. Company shares declined by $0.29 to $5.96 in midafternoon trading.Citigroup Global Equity Research said that the Cisco forecast does not bode well for electronics manufacturing suppliers. &quot;Simply put, this is not good news for EMS [electronics manufacturing services] companies,&quot; wrote Citigroup&#39;s Jim Suva in a research note.Such companies include Jabil Circuit, Celestica, and Smart Modular Technologies, he noted.In other technology sectors, Time Warner&#39;s plans to&#160;split up the Internet access and audience businesses of its AOL unit, reiterated by CEO Jeff Bewkes Wednesday, gave a temporary boost to Time Warner shares. Time Warner wants to grow AOL&#39;s ad-supported audience business, including online services and content.The company had said before that it would at some point run the two businesses as separate entities, to better focus on the advertising business. Nevertheless, company shares rose $0.31 Wednesday to close at $15.71.But the company has an uphill battle. In the fourth quarter, AOL&#39;s ad revenue increased 18 percent, less than the 25 percent industry average. And it faces not only Google, but a potentially strengthened Microsoft, if its&#160;bid to buy Yahoo&#160;succeeds.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. - Cisco Systems Inc.&#39;s fiscal first-quarter profits jumped 29 percent as the network equipment giant reported continued strength in its traditional markets as well as emerging technologies
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Cisco Systems Inc. Chief Executive Officer John Chambers said sales growth will slow this quarter and it&#39;s ``too early to say&#39;&#39; whether customers are becoming more optimistic about the economy.