Cisco stock dropped 2 percent on Wednesday after the company released earnings for the fourth quarter of its 2017 fiscal year, which ended in July. The company will hold a press conference with financial analysts at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time.
- EPS: Excluding certain items, 61 cents in earnings per share vs. 61 cents in earnings per share as expected by analysts, according to Thomson Reuters.
- Revenue: $12.1 billion vs. $12.06 billion as expected by analysts, according to Thomson Reuters.
Revenue — which was down 4 percent year over year — has now declined on an annualized basis for seven consecutive quarters. Still, Cisco has beaten earnings and sales estimates for every quarter since CEO Chuck Robbins took over for John Chambers two years ago.
As for guidance, Cisco said for the first quarter of the 2018 fiscal year, it expects 59-61 cents in earnings per share on 1 to 3 percent less revenue than it received for the year-ago quarter. Analysts were expecting 60 cents in earnings per share and $12.05 billion in revenue for guidance for the current quarter, according to Thomson Reuters.
The company said it repurchased around 38 million shares of common stock at an average of $31.61 per share for a total of $1.2 billion.
Cisco gets most of its revenue by selling data center switching and routing hardware, and the company’s switching and next-generation routing revenue, totaling $5.3 billion, decreased 9 percent year over year, the company said. Competitors include Arista and Juniper.
Cisco’s service revenue for the quarter, which came out to $3.1 billion, was up 1 percent.
In this quarter Cisco announced it would cut 1,100 people from its workforce. The company also introduced a subscription-based networking security service.
Cisco stock is up 7 percent since the beginning of the year, according to FactSet.
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