At the end of regular trading, Cisco reported its fiscal 2015 third-quarter financial performance. The networking company
earned $0.54 per share using adjusted metrics on revenue of $12.14
billion. The street had expected a profit of $0.53 per share on top line
of $12.07 billion.The company’s revenue grew 5 percent compared to the year-ago period. Up a fraction in regular trading, Cisco is down a sliver in after-hours trading. The company went into its earnings cycle worth north of $150 billion.
Using normal accounting techniques (GAAP), Cisco had net income during the fiscal period of $2.4 billion. The company’s profit on a non-GAAP, or adjusted basis, totaled $2.8 billion during the three-month window.
The firm spent $1.1 billion on dividends during the quarter, and $1 billion more to acquire its own shares. This is a fine time to restate the following: Share-based compensation becomes a cash cost to a business once the firm is forced to start repurchasing its own shares. As such, share-based compensation, and the non-GAAP earnings per share that come along with it, essentially discount future negative cash flows. Anyway.
Cisco ended the quarter with just over $54 billion in cash, equivalents and investments.
Recently, Cisco selected its own executive Chuck Robbins to be its new CEO. John Chambers, its long-time leader, had some choice words to go along with his mantle-dropping:
I am extremely honored and proud to have led Cisco for the last 20 years and to get us to this positive inflection point. We have a tremendous opportunity to extend our lead in the industry, and with Chuck Robbins as the CEO for Cisco’s next chapter, we have exactly the right leader to capture that opportunity. I could not be more confident in our future.I try to avoid quoting executives from canned earnings comments, but given the length of Chambers’ tenure, it feels like fair play.
All told, it’s a solid quarter from Big Switch. Investors appear to be a bit flat on the results, but you can’t please everyone.