CSCO

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE), an enterprise server, networking, storage, and AI infrastructure provider, closed at $54.44, up 5.03%. Investors focused on supply bottlenecks after a strong earnings beat and raised guidance, while watching AI server demand and the next earnings call. Trading volume reached 68.4M shares, coming in about 208% above its three-month average of 22.2M shares. Hewlett Packard Enterprise IPO'd in 2015 and has grown 466% since going public. The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) rose 1.07% to 7,748, and the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX:^IXIC) gained 1.40% to 26,584. Among enterprise hardware, networking, storage, and hybrid cloud infrastructure peers, Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) closed at $515.94, up 4.82%, while Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) closed at $108.61, down 0.78%, showing mixed trading in AI infrastructure names. If investors are worried that the AI boom might be short-lived, HPE's Q2 results show it may not stall anytime soon. HPE soared past analysts' expectations, with sales and adjusted earnings per share rising 34% and 66%. The company also raised 2026 and 2027 sales growth guidance to between 34% and 37%, and 13% and 17%, respectively. HPE's networking unit stole the show, growing revenue by 75%, headlined by its data center networking unit up 112%, routing business soaring 270%, and security segment spiking 76%. Meanwhile, in the company's Cloud and AI unit, its server business rose 35% -- impressive growth for the company's largest business segment. Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE, explained, "AI is becoming a multi-year growth driver for HPE, and our differentiated portfolio positions us to capture that opportunity at scale." Trading at 14 times forward adjusted earnings, HPE could be a reasonably priced growth stock for investors who believe this growth reacceleration is here to stay for a few years or more. Before you buy stock in Hewlett Packard Enterprise, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Hewlett Packard Enterprise wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $446,157!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,377,357!* Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 983% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 212% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of September 3, 2026. Josh Kohn-Lindquist has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Cisco Systems and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Stock Market Today, Sept. 3: HPE Jumps 5%, Raises Fiscal Outlook on Record AI Server Demand was originally published by The Motley Fool

Ciena dropped 10% on in-line Q4 guidance despite a record quarter beat, while Arista gained 3% on continued AI networking momentum. Cisco held nearly flat and IYW traded higher, confirming Ciena's slide is a company-specific valuation reset, not a sector-wide unwind. Two customers drove 42% of Ciena's quarterly revenue, and its elevated valuation means the December Q4 report is the next real inflection point. Just released. Our analysts combed the entire stock market and named the ten best stocks to buy right now. The report is free. Enter your email and see if any of your stocks made the cut. Ciena Corporation's (NYSE:CIEN) fiscal third-quarter beat wasn't enough to save its stock this morning. An in-line fourth-quarter revenue outlook overshadowed record results and sparked a sharp de-rating in a name that had rallied hard on the AI networking build. Interestingly, Ciena's peer-group stocks are holding firm, which makes the divergence the story of the session. Ciena stock is down 10% to $320.38, cutting into a year that had shares up 51% through the prior close. The pullback extends a rough stretch, with Ciena now down 18% over the past month. Today's move deepens a de-rating already in progress. Meanwhile, Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) stock is up 3% to $191.65, isolating Ciena's specific guidance issue from the broader networking demand story. Meanwhile, Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) stock is down 0.1% to $109.31. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY), which tracks the S&P 500 index, is up 1% to $773.17, and the iShares U.S. Technology ETF (NYSEARCA:IYW) is trading higher, so Ciena's slide isn't a broad-tape problem. Free Report, Just Released Did Any of Your Stocks Make the Top 10 List? It is an uncomfortable question, and there is now an answer to it. 24/7 Wall St has helped investors make money for over two decades, and our top analysts just finished ranking the definitive Top 10 Stocks To Buy Now. Not the ten biggest companies. Not the ten everyone is arguing about. The ten best stocks to buy right now. Open your account and look at what you own. Some of it you bought for a reason you could still defend today. Some of it you bought years ago for a reason you can no longer remember. The report is free. Put the ten next to what you own and find out which is which. Enter Your Email and See the Ten → Free from 24/7 Wall St. It lands in your inbox. Ciena reported adjusted earnings per share of $2.11 for the quarter ended August 1, 2026, against a $1.72 analyst consensus, with revenue of $1.67 billion versus a $1.63 billion estimate, up 37% from $1.22 billion a year earlier. Ciena's adjusted gross margin expanded to 46.4% from 41.9% in the prior-year period, a clean quality print behind the top-line acceleration. Ciena CEO Gary Smith stated, "Today's outstanding financial performance demonstrates Ciena's leadership in providing industry-leading, high-speed connectivity solutions as AI continues to drive compounding waves of network investment." The problem sits in the forward number. Ciena guided its fiscal fourth-quarter revenue to $1.75 billion plus or minus $50 million, a midpoint that only aligns with the $1.7 billion analyst consensus rather than clearing it. Ciena also raised its full fiscal year 2026 revenue guidance to $6.42 billion, up 35% year over year at the midpoint, but for a stock priced for acceleration, matching isn't beating, according to Ciena Corporation. Two Ciena customers together accounted for 41.7% of quarterly revenue, meaning the AI-driven demand is real but narrow, according to Ciena Corporation. Ciena CFO Marc Graff called the period a record quarter, yet that concentration weighs heavier on the Ciena multiple when the forward guide only matches expectations. That mix is what powered today's de-rating. Arista Networks stock was up 42% year to date (YTD) through the prior close and is extending gains today on continued AI fabric momentum. Arista posted Q2 FY2026 non-GAAP EPS of $1.02 on $3.04 billion in revenue in its August report, its first three-billion-dollar quarter. Management pointed to Ethernet-based AI networking as a durable share opportunity, with a full-year revenue outlook of approximately $12.6 billion. Cisco stock was up 44% year to date through the prior close after booking $4 billion in AI infrastructure orders in Q4 FY2026 and guiding fiscal 2027 AI infrastructure revenue to $7.5 billion. Cisco characterized the environment as a networking supercycle. Arista Networks and Cisco holding firm while Ciena resets is the cleanest evidence that this is a company-level issue, not a sector verdict. The table sets today's session move against the YTD anchor through the prior close for each covered name. Ciena's reset stands out against modest peer gains. Ciena's preliminary fiscal 2027 outlook calls for at least 30% revenue growth on a backlog of $8.5 billion exiting Q3 FY2026, so the December fourth-quarter report becomes the next real inflection point for the stock. Management framed the environment as a multi-year, supply-constrained investment cycle. That keeps the debate about pace and share rather than direction. Position sizing in Ciena shares should account for both the customer concentration and the tendency of supply-constrained networking names to trade on incremental order signals rather than trailing beats. A moderate approach makes sense while the guide-versus-consensus gap sorts out. Ciena's elevated valuation raises the bar for any forward number, and today's tape shows what happens when it isn't cleared. The broader read is that AI networking demand remains intact, with Arista Networks and Cisco both carrying rich YTD gains. Follow-through in those two names during the afternoon session may indicate whether today's Ciena move stays contained or spreads to peers. Ultimately, the IYW ETF trading higher today reinforces the containment case rather than a sector-wide unwind. If you have cash sitting in your account right now, give this two minutes. After more than two decades of helping investors beat the market, our top analysts at 24/7 Wall St. put together a definitive report on the Top 10 Stocks To Buy Today. They combed the entire market. It's not 10 ideas, not 10 stocks everyone is talking about, it's what their research point to as the 10 best stocks to buy right now, and it's free. Read more here and >;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas" data-yga="{"yLinkElement":"context_link","yModuleName":"content-canvas","yLinkText":"see which stocks made the cut -->"}" class="link ">see which stocks made the cut -->> Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Okta OKTA shares jumped 28.63% after the company reported second-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Wednesday, reflecting better-than-expected results, accelerating bookings indicators, strong large-enterprise execution and rising investor enthusiasm around AI-agent security. In the second quarter of fiscal 2027, revenues increased 11% year over year to $805 million, while subscription revenues rose 12% to $793 million. Adjusted earnings of $1.05 per share exceeded the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 9.38%, while revenues topped the consensus mark by 1.62%.More importantly, forward-looking demand metrics strengthened. Remaining Performance Obligation (RPO) increased 17% to $4.86 billion and current RPO (cRPO) rose 14% to $2.59 billion. The cRPO growth accelerated while workforce identity and customer identity ACV increased 11% and 13%, respectively. Free cash flow margin also expanded 580 basis points to 28.1%. However, is this enough for the investors to jump into the stock? Let’s find out. Okta is benefiting from strong enterprise demand. In the second quarter of fiscal 2027, the number of customers generating more than $1 million in Annual Contract Value (ACV) increased more than 20%, taking the total above 600. Upsell, cross-sell and pipeline generation also remained healthy. Anthropic selected Okta as the first identity provider supporting Enterprise Managed Auth for MCP connectors, while Okta has expanded relationships with AWS, Cisco, OpenAI, Databricks and Snowflake and added more than 25 Cross-App Access integrations. The company’s installed base of more than 20,000 customers gives Okta an established distribution channel through which to introduce AI-security products.New products accounted for roughly 30% of the quarterly bookings, while adding a new product to a transaction generates about a 40% average ACV uplift. Okta for AI Agents secured dozens of deals during the quarter, including several million-dollar-plus transactions. Okta Identity Governance, Privileged Access, Identity Threat Protection and other newer offerings are increasing the amount customers spend on the platform. Okta’s investments in cloud marketplaces, global system integrators and channel partners are also improving deal economics.The rapid deployment of enterprise AI agents is expanding Okta’s addressable identity-security opportunity beyond human users to machine and agent identities. Okta for AI Agents provides agent discovery, governance, access control and runtime protection, while Auth0 for AI Agents addresses developers building agentic applications. Okta noted that AI security conversations are increasingly expanding into broader identity-modernization projects, potentially creating cross-selling opportunities across Okta's platform.These factors are expected to help OKTA shares appreciate. The company is facing stiff competition from the likes of Microsoft MSFT, CrowdStrike CRWD and Cisco Systems CSCO. YTD, CrowdStrike, Cisco and Microsoft have returned 94.5%, 45.6% and 4.5%, respectively. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research For fiscal 2027, OKTA expects revenues between $3.216 billion and $3.226 billion, indicating 10-11% growth from the figure reported in fiscal 2026. Okta expects fiscal 2027 non-GAAP earnings between $3.90 and $3.94 per share. For the third quarter of fiscal 2027, OKTA expects revenues between $813 million and $817 million, indicating 10% growth from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter. Okta expects fiscal 2027 non-GAAP earnings between 92 cents and 94 cents per share. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Okta’s fiscal 2027 earnings has increased by a penny to $3.84 per share over the past 30 days. The earnings estimate suggests 9.71% growth over the figure reported in fiscal 2026. The consensus estimate for revenues is currently pegged at $3.21 billion, suggesting 9.96% growth from the figure reported in fiscal 2026. Okta, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Okta, Inc. Quote The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Okta’s third-quarter fiscal 2027 earnings has been steady at 93 cents per share over the past 30 days. The earnings estimate suggests 13.41% growth over the figure reported in the year-ago quarter. The consensus estimate for revenues is currently pegged at $813.2 million, suggesting 9.6% growth from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter. OKTA shares are trading at a premium as suggested by the Value Score of F.In terms of forward 12-month price/sales (P/S), Okta is trading at 8.91X, higher than the median of 5.06X and Cisco’s 6.16X. However, OKTA is cheaper than Microsoft and CrowdStrike, shares of which are trading at 9.36X and 34.77X, respectively. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Despite its premium valuation, Okta’s improving growth indicators, expanding large-enterprise footprint and increasing contribution from newer products strengthen its investment case. Rising adoption of Okta for AI Agents could provide an additional growth avenue as enterprises increasingly seek to secure AI agents and machine identities. Accelerating cRPO growth, healthy cross-selling opportunities, expanding free cash flow margins and an encouraging fiscal 2027 outlook further support prospects. Okta currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), which implies that investors should start accumulating the stock right now. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Okta, Inc. (OKTA) : Free Stock Analysis Report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) : Free Stock Analysis Report Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) : Free Stock Analysis Report CrowdStrike (CRWD) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Sandeep Mehra appointed Neat’s Senior Vice President & General Manager of International OSLO, Norway, August 25, 2026--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Neat, the pioneering video technologies company, today announced the deepening of its leadership bench following its first $100 million quarter and a double-digit profitability margin. Neat has appointed Sandeep Mehra as Senior Vice President & General Manager of International. In this key executive role, Mehra will drive market expansion, commercial execution, and strategic partner ecosystems across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific regions. Mehra’s appointment is effective immediately; he will be initially based out of London. A 20-year industry veteran across SaaS, video collaboration, and enterprise technology, Mehra has scaled businesses from early-stage startups to multi-billion-dollar global operations. He spent over a decade at Cisco in senior leadership roles spanning sales, engineering, and go-to-market. His tenure included serving as Managing Director for APAC Collaboration Sales, Vice President of Customer Experience across ASEAN & Korea, and Global GM for Video Devices out of Oslo, where he launched a suite of innovative products covering Work from Home solutions and Intelligent Spaces. Early in his career, Mehra co-founded India’s pioneer conferencing company, which was acquired by Webex; he later served as an executive leader at Moxtra. "Sandeep is an absolute powerhouse in the collaboration space who brings an exceptional blend of entrepreneurial drive and large-scale enterprise execution," said Javed Khan, CEO of Neat. "Having worked closely with Sandeep in the past, I know firsthand that he is an incredibly impactful, hands-on leader. He knows what it takes to scale disruptors and global enterprise alike. I am thrilled to welcome him to Neat to lead our international revenue strategy during this crucial phase of growth." "Neat’s relentless focus on simple, open, and intelligent video technology has fundamentally shifted how world-class organizations collaborate," said Sandeep Mehra, SVP & GM of International at Neat. "Having spent my career at the intersection of hardware, software, and workplace experience, it’s clear that Neat is building the future of the market. I am thrilled to join at a moment of such incredible momentum and look forward to accelerating our footprint across international markets." Mehra’s appointment comes on the heels of record-breaking financial performance for Neat. To support this tremendous momentum, Martijn Blokland has transitioned from his successful, six-year stint leading international revenue to serve as Senior Vice President of Global Operations & Strategy. In this role he will oversee functions including customer experience, global sales operations, order fulfillment, product evaluation, logistics, and new product introduction. Mehra will partner closely with both Blokland and Rick Hill, Neat’s recently promoted Senior Vice President & General Manager of Americas. Additionally, Sherri Pipala, Vice President of Alliances and Business Development, has been elevated to the executive leadership team to spearhead strategic technology partnerships and ecosystem growth. About Neat Neat transforms passive rooms into thinking environments with smarter, simpler video devices powered by distributed intelligence. Open by design and built for every space, Neat devices sense, respond, and coordinate seamlessly to support more natural collaboration through meeting experiences shaped around human behavior. Compatible with Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and flexible BYOD workflows, Neat devices deliver fast deployment, intuitive management, and exceptional audio and video quality. Founded in Oslo, Neat has a passionate global team redefining how people meet and collaborate. Learn more at neat.no. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260825541930/en/ Contacts Priscilla BaroloVP of [email protected]

Networking equipment provider Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)'s shares are up by more than 60% over the past year and by more than 40% year-to-date. With the AI buildout in full swing, the firm has benefited from the demand for its products from data centers. This was evident through Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)'s fiscal Q4 revenue growing by 18% annually to $17.3 billion. However, the shares closed 8.4% lower on August 13th after it reported its earnings on August 12th. Cramer discussed the earnings and dismissed the market's reaction: As is the case with any firm associated with the AI buildout, Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)'s narrative also concerns the sustainability of its revenue growth. Apart from the revenue, the firm's corporate orders grew by more than 30% to $13 billion. Additionally, Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) also reported performance obligations of $46.7 billion along with $32 billion in recurring revenue. These metrics have led firms such as Bank of America and Morningstar to comment that Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is capitalizing well on hyperscaler demand. Yet, without a detailed breakdown of the recurring revenuen and performance obligations, it is tricky to determine the extent to which the firm is benefiting from high-margin enterprise AI fabric deployments, rather than low-margin lower-tier hardware upgrades. Additionally, the key concern remains about the cost of catering to this demand. During its latest fiscal quarter, Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) reported gross margins of 66.3%, which marked a drop over year ago figure of 68.4%. Additionally, the firm's AI revenue during fiscal 2026 was $4 billion, which was less than 10% of the overall revenue. The concerns about the margins were reflected in HSBC's post-earnings coverage as it downgraded the stock to Hold. At this time of margin pressure, Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)'s margin friendly software business is also exhibiting slow growth as services growth was flat during fiscal Q4. On the hedge fund front, while 77 out of 1,041 funds in Q4 2025 had held a stake in Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), in Q1, this figure jumped to 97 out of 1,021 funds in Insider Monkey's database. Compared to peer ANET's forward P/E of 45.45, CSCO's forward P/E of 20.58 is more balanced. While Insider Monkey acknowledges the risk and potential of CSCO as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than CSCO that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock. READ NEXT: Jim Cramer Draws the Line on NVIDIA in China: Why National Security Comes First and Jim Cramer Defends His Dell Stance as Investors Complain About Missing Out. Disclosure: None.

Image source: The Motley Fool. Wed, Aug. 12, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. ET Head of Investor Relations - Ahmed Sami Badri Chair and CEO - Charles H. Robbins CFO - Mark Patterson Operator: Welcome to Cisco's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 26 Financial Results Conference Call. At the request of Cisco, today's conference is being recorded If you have any objections, you may disconnect. Now I would like to introduce Sami Badri, head of investor relations Sir, you may begin. Ahmed Sami Badri: Good afternoon, everyone. This is Sami Badri, Cisco's Head of Investor Relations. I am joined by Chuck Robbins, our chair and CEO, and Mark Patterson, our CFO. Cisco's earnings press release and supplemental information, including GAAP to non GAAP reconciliations, are available on our Investor Relations website. Today's call is also being live streamed on YouTube, LinkedIn, and X. Following this call, also make the recorded webcast and slides available on our website. Throughout today's call, we will be referencing both GAAP and non GAAP financial results. We will discuss product results in terms of revenue, geographic and customer results in terms of product orders, and all comparisons are made on a year over year basis unless stated otherwise. Please note that our discussion today will include forward looking statements, including our guidance for the first quarter and fiscal year 27. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties detailed in our SEC filings particularly our most recent 10 ks and 10 Q reports which identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Those contained in our forward looking statements. Respect to guidance, please also see the slides and press release that accompany this call for further details. Cisco will not comment on its financial guidance during the quarter unless it is done through an explicit public disclosure. Now I will turn it over to Chuck. Charles H. Robbins: Thanks, Sami, and thank you all for joining us today. We delivered a very strong close to fiscal 26 making it a record year for Cisco. With revenue exceeding 63 billion and growing 12% year over year. In fact, in FY 2026, we delivered the highest revenue operating margin, and earnings per employee in 30 years. Demonstrating excellent execution from our teams and the increasingly critical role our technology has in the AI era. In FY 27, we expect all these metrics to continue to improve as indicated in our guidance, demonstrating outstanding productivity and earnings power. Believe the accelerating adoption of Agentic AI is fueling a networking super cycle. As customers look to manage increasing traffic and costs, they are investing in Cisco's networking stack for inferencing across cloud, on premise, and edge environments. At the same time, the rise of Agentic AI is expanding the threat landscape driving demand for our security, and observability solutions to help monitor agent behavior and mitigate evolving threats. This presents a unique opportunity for Cisco, and we believe we are only at the beginning of this super cycle. Turning to Q4. We delivered record revenue of $17.3 billion in the quarter, up an impressive 18% year over year, with product revenue up 24% year-over-year. Our record top line performance combined with operating efficiency resulted in non GAAP EPS growth of 23% in Q4 and 14% for the full year. This demonstrates strong operating leverage with the bottom line growing faster than the top line for both the quarter and the full year. The profitable growth of our business continues to produce strong cash flows supporting our commitment to deliver consistent capital returns. In Q4, we returned $3.2 billion in capital to our shareholders, through share repurchases and dividends, bringing the total return in fiscal 26 to $12.7 billion in value or 99% of free cash flow. Our results are a testament to the trust we built with our customers and our commitment to deliver the outcomes needed as they navigate this period of accelerating technological change. Now some color on demand. We saw strong momentum and broad based demand for our technology globally. With total product orders up 35% year-over-year in Q4 and hyperscale orders up triple-digits. Excluding hyperscale, product orders were up 25%. Enterprise product order growth accelerated to 21% year-over-year in Q4, with double digit growth in every product category, and geography. Public sector order growth also accelerated to 30% year-over-year, with continued momentum in EMEA and APJC, and accelerated growth in The Americas, driven by US Federal. Product orders from service provider and cloud customers grew 95% year-over-year, with 4 of the top hyperscalers each growing AI infrastructure orders in the triple digits. Also saw increasing strength in telco in Q4 with orders growing over 30% year-over-year. Now turning to product demand. Networking product orders grew 40% in Q4, driven by triple-digit growth in service provider routing, and Acacia optics. And double digit growth in data center switching, compute, campus switching, wireless, enterprise routing, and industrial IoT products. Q4 marked the eighth consecutive quarter of double digit growth for our networking portfolio overall, supporting our view that we are in a multiyear multibillion dollar networking super cycle. It is also worth noting that more than half of our customers purchase both campus and data center networking solutions. Demonstrating our differentiated platform approach where new technology investments compound the value of existing investments. Moving to AI infrastructure for hyperscalers. We took $4 billion in orders in Q4, bringing the total for FY 26 to $9.3 billion, approximately 4.5x our fiscal year 25 total. The mix of these orders in both Q4 and FY 26 was approximately 60% Silicon One based systems and 40% optics. Our Acacia business had another very strong quarter with over $1 billion in orders in Q4, And to date, we have shipped over 850 thousand 400-gig over 75 thousand 800-gig coherent pluggable optics. As AI workloads become increasingly distributed across clusters and facilities, we believe demand for this technology will remain strong I am incredibly proud of our market leadership in this space. We won 3 new design wins with hyperscalers in Q4, 1 of these was for our Silicon One p 200 powered system for scale across bringing our total to 3 scale across design wins for the p 200 since launch. Each with a separate hyperscaler, and we have already received orders For these in Q4. We believe this is only the beginning of the scale across motion. As AI models grow in complexity and size, hyperscalers need to connect or scale across multiple data centers due to physical and power limitations in a single data center. Power efficiency, reliability, and scale are critical in ensuring distributed GPUs function as if they were in the same location. Given these requirements, Cisco is well positioned. With our p 200 powered systems market leading optics, open line systems, and coming soon multi rail optical systems to provide hyperscalers the technology needed for these complex use cases. The additional hyperscale design wins in Q4 were for a scale-out use case with our G200-powered system and 1 for a managed optical fiber network leverages our line system technology enables the use of our digital coherent optics directly in third party equipment. The optical win is strategic as it positions Cisco as an alternative supplier to an incumbent competitor and has the potential to disrupt traditional delivery of managed optical fiber networks. Additionally, we have line of sight to multiple AI design wins expected over the next 6 months across our g 300, g 200, and p 200 Silicon One chip designs as well as for optics. As I have said before, our success with hyperscalers can be attributed to Silicon One, the industry's most scalable and programmable architecture for a wide range of use cases, and infrastructure designs. Notably, we plan to roll out Silicon One comprehensively across our high performance networking systems by fiscal year 29 which gives us greater control over our supply chain and innovation pipeline. Importantly, our control of the silicon systems and software will enable us to develop more performance secure networking. Reinforcing our competitive differentiation, positioning us for market share gains. Overall, our hyperscale business continues to show great momentum with AI infrastructure revenue projected to grow to $7.5 billion in fiscal year 27 supported by demand growth and market share gains. For perspective, in FY 26, approximately 6% of our total revenue was from AI infrastructure for hyperscalers. Up from less than 2% in FY 25. Addition to the hyperscaler demand, we took over $400 million in AI infrastructure orders from neocloud, sovereign, and enterprise customers in Q4, bringing the total for the year to over $1 billion We had a new design win in Q4 with a major neocloud provider for our g 100 powered system, for a scale-out use case. In enterprise, Nexus switch orders tagged for AI deployments were up more than 85% sequentially. As these customers look to scale AI economically, there is increasing focus on managing token consumption. Selecting the right model in the right location for each workload. We believe on premise AI infrastructure will become an important option for enterprise customers as they look to optimize both the business value and cost of AI. Enterprises need GPU clusters on premise and at the edge with low latency, high bandwidth networking, and built in security, observability, and automation. All of which Cisco can provide in a codesign vertically integrated stack. Regardless of how or where customers choose to deploy AI, whether in the public cloud, through Neo or sovereign clouds, on premise, or at the edge, We believe Cisco will benefit because of the unmatched depth and breadth of our portfolio, and our expertise in each scenario. As we look at overall enterprise demand, we see customers investing in infrastructure across their environments. In Q4, overall data center networking orders grew more than 35% year-over-year. Notably, a leading US global bank, placed an order for 1 thousand Cisco data center smart switches replacing a major networking competitor and a major firewall competitor, transitioning to a secure networking architecture, which only Cisco can provide. Customers are also focused on modernizing the workplace and we continue to see strong demand for campus networking solutions, with 20% year-over-year growth in product orders in Q4. Our next generation switching, routing, and wireless products continue to ramp faster than prior products launches with Wi-Fi 7 orders representing more than 50% of total wireless orders in Q4. We see the momentum in campus networking being driven by modernization to both scale AI initiatives and to strengthen defenses against the rapidly evolving cyber landscape. A leading frontier AI company has chosen Cisco's campus networking solution, including Wi-Fi 7 access points, smart switches, and end to end segmentation to enable innovation at speed and provide the security for that innovation as they rapidly scale to new locations. Orders for our industrial IoT portfolio have also now grown in double digits for 9 consecutive quarters, and continued to accelerate in Q4, driven by deployments in manufacturing and utilities as well as in data center facilities where ruggedized networking equipment is needed to withstand extreme operating conditions. Now shifting to security. Our entire security portfolio, including Splunk, saw double digit order growth in Q4. In our core security portfolio, over 1.5 thousand customers purchased our new products, including secure access, XDR, HyperShield, and AI defense in Q4. This brings the total number of net new customers to over 6.4 thousand since launch. Orders for firewalls grew over 30% in Q4. When it comes to securing AI, customers increasingly want a unified approach across users, applications, and agents. And we are seeing greater adoption of our AI security capabilities of AI defense, and guardrails and secure access. As quantum computing creates risk both today and in the future, customers will need to assess the exposure of their infrastructure to these risks. We believe Cisco is uniquely positioned to help customers assess potential exposure and implement quantum safe protection across devices, networks, and data, using post quantum cryptography or PQC. Some of our newest systems, including Cisco Secure Routers, smart switches, wireless controllers, and secure firewall platforms are PQC compliant. Making them very compelling, especially for the most highly regulated industries. Turning to Splunk. We see good momentum as solutions are integrated into our Security offerings and contributing to several whole portfolio agreements in Q4. We also added more than 280 new logos to Splunk's customer base and secured the highest number of competitive wins in any quarter in fiscal year 26. As a result, we exceeded our target of 1 thousand new logos for the year. In our collaboration business, we saw the best quarterly performance in 7 years, with double digit order growth in Q4, and video devices growing 40% year-over-year. Now I would like to comment on our innovation pipeline. At Cisco LiveUS in June, we introduced Cisco Cloud Control, a single management plane and unified data layer for all Cisco products built for humans and agents. Cisco Cloud Control incorporates key innovations such as AI Canvas and Cisco IQ. Since launch, nearly 4.5 thousand enterprises have signed up for Cisco Cloud Control, and are highlighting the value they are getting from AI Canvas and other insights. For example, a network engineer at a major US enterprise software company spent more than 8 hours trying to troubleshoot dropped video calls before prompting AI Canvas. Which pinpointed within minutes the specific access point identified the root cause, and laid out next steps. Customers are now prompting AI Canvas daily to surface previously unavailable insights help deliver huge productivity gains. We continue to innovate in security and recently launched Antares, a family of open weight, language models designed to help cyber professionals pinpoint known vulnerabilities within a code base. Antares is part of a broader Cisco effort to define practical, and trustworthy AI tools for cybersecurity professionals and help develop standards to support AI security adoption. Last month, we also introduced resilient infrastructure services, powered by Cisco IQ, which now has over 8.6 thousand customers. Resilient infrastructure services help customers identify vulnerabilities, prioritize actions, and implement continuous protection autonomously and at machine speed. We also continue to accelerate AI advancements across our entire portfolio, both internally for our teams and to better serve our customers. We are using generative AI and agentic systems across our customer experience organization, which is dramatically expediting quote turnaround, and case resolution times as well as driving higher renewal rates. In FY 2026, 145 thousand support cases were resolved entirely by AI with zero human intervention. Circuit, our on prem proprietary AI assistant, is fully embedded in how Cisco operates. Supporting over 75 million prompts in Q4. Circuit runs on our secure AI factory infrastructure, which improves GPU utilization and automatically routes each task to the appropriate large language model allowing us to manage token consumption. To summarize, I am incredibly proud of our teams and how they show up every day to ensure our customers get the very best from Cisco. We believe we are in the early stages of a networking super cycle presenting a massive opportunity for our business. And we are committed to helping our customers modernize secure their infrastructure to unlock the full potential and value of their AI investments. Now I will turn it over to Mark for more detail on the quarter and our outlook. Mark Patterson: Thanks, Chuck. We delivered a very strong quarter. Exceeding the high end of our guidance across revenue, operating margin and EPS. With solid operating cash flow. For the quarter, total revenue was a record $17.3 billion, up 18% year over year. Non GAAP net income was $4.9 billion, and non-GAAP earnings per share was $1.22. Each a record and up 23%. Demonstrating excellent operating leverage with net income and EPS growth outpacing revenue growth. Total product revenue was $13.5 billion, up 24%. And services revenue was $3.8 billion, flat year-over-year. Product revenue growth was led by networking, with growth accelerating to 28% year-over-year. Driven by triple-digit growth in AI infrastructure, double digit growth in data center switching, and continued growth in campus networking. Security delivered a strong quarter. up 14% reflecting strength in Splunk, network security, and 12% with solid growth in Webex, devices, and contact center. Turning to our recurring metrics. Total RPO was $46.7 billion, up 7% with product RPO up 9%. Total ARR ended the quarter at $32.1 billion, an increase of 3%. With product ARR growth of 5%. Total subscription revenue represented 48% of Cisco's total revenue. Total software revenue was $6.2 billion, up 11%. Q4 product orders were up 35% year-over-year. With broad based strength across geographies, technologies, and customer markets. All geographies saw double digit growth with The Americas up 44%, EMEA up 25%, and APJC up 19%. In terms of customer markets, the growth was led by Service Provider and Cloud, with 95% growth. We also saw strength in Public Sector and Enterprise, up 30% and 21% respectively. Total non GAAP gross margin came in at 66.3%, down 210 basis points year over year, but up 30 basis points quarter over quarter. Non GAAP product gross margin was 64.8%, down 270 basis points. Primarily driven by higher hardware mix and memory costs, partially offset by productivity improvements and price increases. Non GAAP services gross margin was 71.6%, up 80 basis points. We continue our focus on providing consistent profitability through financial discipline with non GAAP operating margin at 35.9%. Reflecting strong execution and operational efficiency. Our non GAAP tax rate was 18.8% for the quarter. Shifting to the balance sheet. We ended Q4 with total cash, cash equivalents and investments, of $15.9 billion. Operating cash flow was $5.4 billion, up 27%. Driven by strong revenue growth and operating leverage. From a capital allocation perspective, we returned $3.2 billion to our shareholders during the quarter. Comprised of $1.7 billion for our quarterly cash dividend and $1.5 billion of share repurchases. There is $8.1 billion remaining under our share repurchase program. Turning to the full fiscal year. Revenue was a record $63.3 billion, up 12%. We achieved this while also increasing our non GAAP operating margin by 40 basis points to 34.8%. Demonstrating continuing operating leverage. On the bottom line, non GAAP net income was $17.2 billion, up 13%. And non GAAP earnings per share was $4.33, up 14%, both a record and growing faster than our double digit top line revenue growth rate. We returned $12.7 billion in capital to our shareholders through cash dividends and share repurchases. This was comprised of $6.6 billion in quarterly cash dividends, and $6.1 billion of share repurchases. We increased our dividend for the 15th consecutive year in FY 2026. Reinforcing our confidence in the strength and stability of our ongoing cash flows. In summary, we achieved record breaking performance. For both the quarter and the fiscal year. With top and bottom line results that exceeded our expectations. This success is a direct result of our accelerated pace of innovation across our portfolio, our strong order momentum, and disciplined expense management. We remain focused on making strategic investments in organic innovation to capitalize on the significant growth opportunities we see ahead, as well as complementary M&A opportunities. In Q4, we closed the acquisitions of Galileo Technologies Inc, and Astrix Security Limited. To further expand our observability and security offerings. All these investments continue to be underpinned our commitment to disciplined spend management. Is this powerful combination that continues to fuel strong cash flow and our ability to return significant value to our shareholders. Looking ahead, you can expect us to continue our focus on driving durable growth. Financial discipline driving operating leverage, and continued capital returns. Turning to guidance. For fiscal Q1, our guidance is as follows: We expect revenue to be in the range of $18 billion to $18.2 billion We anticipate non GAAP gross margin to be in the range of 65% to 66%. Non GAAP operating margin is expected to be in the range of 35.5% to 36.5%. Non GAAP earnings per share is expected to range from $1.32 to $1.34. We are assuming a non GAAP effective tax rate of approximately 18.5%. Our guidance for fiscal year 27 is as follows: We expect revenue to be in the range of $72.2 billion to $73.4 billion Non GAAP earnings per share is expected to range from $5.05 to $5.11. Sami, let's now move into the Q&A. Ahmed Sami Badri: Thank you, Mark. I want to remind analysts to ask a single question and a single follow-up. Operator, can we move to the first analyst in the queue? Operator: Thank you, sir. Our first caller is Amit Daryanani with Evercore ISI. Your line is open, sir. Amit Daryanani: Thanks a lot and congrats on some really impressive numbers here. I guess maybe my question to start with would be, Chuck, your fiscal 27 guide at the midpoint is in 15% revenue growth. Even if I take the AI revenues out of the equation, it is implying double-digit, 10% growth x AI. Versus your long term model that is at 4% to 6%. Can you just touch on what is driving the XAI growth? And how do you think about the durability of this growth, given your comments around the start of a networking super cycle? That would be really helpful to understand because I think everyone will worry that, is this the peak of the cycle? And then as my you are guiding for the $7.5 billion AI revenues in fiscal 2027. I am hoping you can double click on how are you thinking about the scale across opportunity across, you know, Silicon One, and optics, especially as you get ready to launch your own multi rail, hyper rail solution next year? Thank you very much. Charles H. Robbins: Thanks, Amit. Let me just write this down real quick. So first of all, I am incredibly proud of the team and what we have accomplished, it is been several years in the making, and we will talk about that throughout the Q&A today. But, I think, you know, this super cycle is really it is enabled because we uniquely have our systems, our silicon, our optics, security, observability, and really being able to integrate that into a stack for our customers. If you look at the overarching that we see, if you just go across what is happening today, I think it is clear what is happening in the in the hyperscalers with AI. You know, we did an excess of $9--we did $9.3 billion in orders last quarter. We have now given you a revenue number of $7.5 billion. We that is that is revenue and not orders, just to be clear, in FY 2027. So we got the hyper scalers moving forward. We have got the telcos that are building out. We had orders in Q4 in excess of 30%, and they are building out their infrastructure to actually be ready for technologies like the scale across opportunities that you discussed, which we think we think the network traffic related to AI based scale across versus traditional data center interconnect is roughly 14x what it might have been before. So the telcos are building to get ready for that. You have the enterprises that we have talked about for over a year now where they are modernized their networks to be ready for AI. Now we have this impending Mythos effect that they are all looking forward to. Downstream, we have quantum that they need to prepare for. And that those are all drivers of what we have been talking about relative to just an overarching campus refresh where, for the first time, ever, we have our campus networking, our well, switching, routing, as well as wireless, and everything all of those are going through a refresh at the same time. And that is all is actually accelerated by when we think about Mythos, think about customers doing analysis right now on their LDOS or their last day of support footprint, products that cannot be patched. I mean, all of these things, we believe, are going to actually drive this super cycle for a while to come. So we feel very good about that. On your second question relative to scale across, I think if you look at it, I mentioned a few minutes ago that we think the traffic that is generated from AI-based scale across, which is effectively what used to be data center interconnect is 14x what it was historically. And we are uniquely positioned because in that space, we have got our P200, which we talked about having 3 wins already in that space across 3 different hyperscalers. By the way, we started taking orders from all 3 of them in Q4, so that is positive. We also have our optics which has, Acacia had another billion-dollar quarter as we discussed. And we actually announced our first design win, in multi-in optical networking, and we have the multi rail systems that we are actually beginning to deploy in these platforms as well. So we think that if you look at the opportunity for scale across, it is massive. And we believe that we are very well positioned to take advantage of that as we go forward. Ahmed Sami Badri: Okay. Thank you, Amit. Operator, can we move to the next analyst? Operator: Thank you. Ben Reitzes with Melius Research. Your line is open, sir. Ben Reitzes: Hey, guys. Thanks so much for the question. Nice results. Chuck and Mark. I wanted to ask about gross margins? What is your approach here in the first quarter and for the year them to contract a little bit? Like just what are you seeing Are you being conservative? And how did you just come up with 65% to 66 given some of the constraints? And what is the color there? And then I wanted to also ask just kind of another approach here. To the revenue guidance for the year. What is your networking orders are 20%, and plus 50, plus 40 the last couple of quarters. Obviously, that would mean revenue in networking is going to grow slower than what we have seen in orders. In your guidance. Is this a conservative approach that you have Why networking revenue kind of meet the order patterns in the middle? As we go throughout the year. Thanks so much, guys. Charles H. Robbins: Thanks, Benjamin. Mark, you want to take the first 1 on your-- Mark Patterson: Yes, happy to. I will take them both, actually. Yeah. So, Benjamin, maybe just to kind of step back and give a little bit of color and unpack the key assumptions that underpin the guide, and I will hit on the gross margin piece. And the second part of your question as well. So I think as you look at the full year, you know, we ended FY 2026 with double digit top line and bottom line growth, 12%, 14%. We see acceleration in both of those. So accelerating to 15% on the top line, 17% on the bottom line. Again, you know, driving that, operating leverage with bottom line growth faster than the top line. With the $7.5 billion in hyperscale revenue, if you kind of back that out, you get to the core business growing at about 10%, which is obviously significantly faster than that investor day that we have done awfully long ago at this point. And then underneath revenue, maybe a couple other data points, and I will get to the gross margins. If you look at security and observability, I would think about those going from kind of low single digit growth in full year FY 2026 to high single digit growth in full year FY 2027, and we can talk more about the shape of that maybe later in the call. but services, I also think you are going to see improvement there as well. And turning positive in FY 2027 and for the full year seeing gradual improvement as we move through the year and then for the full year kind of being in that low single digit growth range. When you think about operating margins and gross margins, You know, first off, as Chuck said, we are in this networking super cycle, which, we are very early in the cycle, and we are shipping high volumes of hardware, which is increasing the revenue mix to hardware considerably. So you should expect a slight gross margin headwind as we move through FY 2027 as we address these very high growth opportunities. And operating margin is really a better indicator of our profitability as our guide implies operating margin of about 35% for the full year FY 27, which would be a high watermark for us as a company. And, in terms of I think the second part of your question was, could networking grow, you know, even faster? And is there conservatism in there? Certainly been really happy with, with the networking growth and a lot of the underlying demand trends that Chuck outlined. I think though, as you get into sort of Q2 through Q4, the implied growth is more like 13%. And it is really the comps. As you as you look at last year, the first half, being in, you know, top line growth of kind of single digit growth and as you got into the second half being sort of mid to high teens growth, the comps are gonna get much tougher there. Also, the linearity, if you just look at Q1 revenue guide versus the full year, is it about 25% of the year, and our 3 year average is Q1 to be about 25%. Charles H. Robbins: Yeah, Mark. I want to make 1 comment on the operating margins. When you think about the 35% I think it the thing to really understand is that it indicates the profitable scale of the strategic opportunities that we are pursuing, particularly with the hyperscalers. If you think about the triple digit growth that we talked about in the hyperscalers, our expenses to actually capture that growth are minimal in addition to what we spend today. So if you think about our traditional business, you could largely say our growth rate and our expenses, they are not 1 to 1, but they are much closer. This business, because of the magnitude of it and the and the growth rates, it allows us to take even in some cases, lower margin business from a gross margin perspective that actually turns out to be highly profitable because we do not have to add incremental expenses to go gather that business. So these are strategic decisions we are making about business to pursue, and we feel really good about the profitability impact of those businesses. Mark Patterson: Yeah. Maybe just a quick data point on that, Chuck. So I think Q4 is a great example of that. Gross margins on a year over year basis were down 2.1%. But OpEx was also down 3.7% as a percentage of revenue which then, allowed us to move from operating margins or op inc as a percentage of revenue from 34.3% to 35.9%. So really showing, incredible scale and productivity. Ahmed Sami Badri: Thanks, Benjamin. Operator, can we move to the next analyst in the queue? Operator: Thank you. Meta Marshall with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Meta Marshall: Nice to see the pickup in the security business, 14% year-over-year, a pretty meaningful improvement in growth. Just wanted to get a sense there. Is that anniversarying some of the headwinds from a business model perspective on Splunk? Is that a lot of technical debt being replaced? And then maybe a second question for you, Chuck. You spoke to enterprises are changing kind of how they are thinking about on premise to cloud, given the amount of conversations you are having, is this cost argument that they are making as a security, data sovereignty? Just how are you seeing that conversation with customers evolve? Thanks. Mark Patterson: Yeah. I will take the Go ahead. I will I will take the first part, Meta. So on security, you know, obviously, really pleased with the 14% revenue growth that we saw in Q4. What I think we have done is we are we have really turned the corner on security, I think. And Splunk both, meaning that the trend line will be good. Now, you know, we will exit FY 2026 with full year growth in overall security in low single digits. It will be high single digits is what we expect for f y 2027. But that 14% did have, and you kind of alluded to this, a bit of the fact, Did have a little bit of anomaly in there. You know, we saw Splunk during the quarter, and it always just depends on customer preference. And during the quarter, we had some sizable on prem deals. That also had a little bit longer duration. So, that significantly helped the, the overall security number, in terms of revenue. We see that longer term really being, you know, likely going back to more of a 2-thirds in the cloud, 1-third on prem. So I think overall, though, you know, security is probably mid to high single digits in Q1 and improving as we go through the year. Charles H. Robbins: Yeah, Meta. I think 1 of the comments I make on security, and I will answer your enterprise question. I think we talked a lot about our belief that the organic Cisco solutions would begin to improve as we got through last year and then into this year. And what I would say is I think our comment was that they would be approaching double digit growth as we exited the year, and they were high single digits, so they did exactly that. We had 1.6 thousand new customers for the new products bringing our year to over 6.4 thousand. New customers on the new technology that our teams have built, and we saw second quarter in a row of 30% growth in firewalls. And Cisco firewalls. So we think that will just continue to get better next year as we said on our last call. On the question relative to the enterprise, and this whole discussion of on prem cloud, is it a cost issue, a sovereignty issue? The answer is yes. I think you are seeing right now, it all started with this whole discussion around tokenomics. And then it is expanded quickly into opens open models, open weight models, foundational model or frontier models, and what is--how are enterprises going to navigate this in the future? there is agent security that is coming into it, there is security of my data. there is sovereignty of my data comes into it. So what we believe is going to happen is you are gonna have customers that are going to make intelligent decisions about which models they use based on use cases. And which ones are most appropriate for whatever agentic applications they are running. So for us, in particular, if they continue to use cloud based models, that is good for us. Like it has been for the last 2 years. If they move to open weight models or models that they are running on prem, that is great for us. Because it means they will invest in more enterprise private data center networking, which we have seen the last 02/2003, it was in excess of 40%, I believe. And in Q4, it was in excess of 35%. So we have seen continued growth and investment in that space. So that is good for us. And as you see them deploy agents in this whole focus on agentic security and the network implications of running thousands and thousands of agents in your infrastructure and the performance and the latency issues, the edge deployments that are going to occur, we think that regardless of the architecture that enterprise customers choose to take and how they deploy, whether it is on prem or cloud, we think it is going to be a positive for us. Ahmed Sami Badri: Thank you, Meta. Operator, can we move to the next analyst in queue? Operator: Thank you. Aaron Rakers with Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Aaron Rakers: Yes. Thanks for taking the question. Also congrats on the results. I wanted to try and unpack a little bit more, I guess, the implied guide in this current quarter would suggest over 20% year-over-year growth. It looks like it would imply maybe a deceleration, you know, into the subsequent quarters to hit the midpoint of your guidance. So I was wondering if you could help us bridge the $7.5 billion of revenue that you expect from AI, the linearity of what you are assuming through the course of fiscal 27 And then as a as a quick follow-up, just curious on the supply side. I see the inventory continues to grow. I guess, given the given the dynamics we are seeing in the component availability environment, what has Cisco done in terms of just continually incrementally adding purchase obligations or expanding the supply chain ecosystem to support the demand? Thank you. Mark Patterson: Yeah. Hey, Aaron. So I think, you know, there is a few things in there. I think in terms of just sort of the Q1 versus, you know, rest of year and the implied slowdown. I think, you know, couple things. I think we are being prudent on the remainder of the year. I also think that, the 2 data points that I threw out earlier in terms of the comps getting much tougher, that is certainly, you know, something as well as the overall linearity for the year. Being right in line with Q1 being right about 25% of the year. It makes us feel good in total. On the $7.5 billion revenue for AI hyperscale, you should sort of expect a good, you know, trend line in terms of gradual, increases as we move from Q1 through Q4. And then the last piece on the components, I think the, you know, the big thing is we are really leaning into our financial strength. We feel like we have got a world class supply chain team, and they have been voted as such actually for a number of years. And we really do not have any significant lead time issues. That we are seeing, unlike we have heard a number of different peers talk about. We are consistently entering into strategic agreements. You have seen us make Nanya on the memory side. We do not have any middleman between us and TSMC. So when we are securing silicon, we are looking at the whole supply chain, whether it is wafer substrates, assembly and test. And really dealing directly with TSMC. We feel we have got adequate supply to meet not only the guide for f y 27, but if demand actually strengthens and goes above that, we feel like we are in really good shape to meet that as well. Ahmed Sami Badri: Thank you, Aaron. Operator, can we move to the next analyst in queue? Operator: Thank you. David Vogt, with UBS. Your line is open. David Vogt: Great. Thanks guys for taking my questions. Chuck, it is Scott. I thought I was going to beat a dead horse here. I think about where your AI orders were a year ago on an LTM basis. I think you guys have done, like, $2 billion of AI orders. And if I just assume that half of that got recognized into the revenue mix this year, it feels like you did about $3 billion of rec rev rec from, you know, over $9.3 billion of orders. I know you do not give backlog numbers, but I guess what I am trying to understand is understand you took the numbers from $6 billion to $7.5 billion for AI revenue. But, again, that just strikes me as very, very conservative. Is there something about the timing of the order deliveries? Are orders being shipped out north of 12 months? Or is it supply chain related? And I will give you my second question. On campus, obviously, you have implemented a series of price increases going back a ways now. Can you talk to what was the impact of price increases on the non AI part of the business within networking And what are the conversations sound like from receptivity perspective from customers where they sit in the, I guess, market today? Are they accepting the price increases? Are they just ordering ahead? Just any qualitative commentary that you could share there would be helpful. Thanks. Mark Patterson: Thanks, David. So couple of things there. So, I think on the AI orders, just for clarity, we did about $4 billion in revenue and $9 billion in orders for FY ‘26. So, obviously, you are entering with some good backlog as we go into 2027, but these are, you know, these are nonlinear orders that are mass in scale and are usually placed well ahead of time. So I think the $7.5 billion is a good prudent guide for the year. In terms of the price increases, you know, as you look at the impact on the financials, it was about 5 points in terms of top-line revenue growth that we saw in Q4. As we look to FY 2027, we are going to begin to lap those price increases, that we really started to put in place in the second half there. So you have more of an impact in the first half than the second half. And, overall, we are we are sort of planning for that kind of 4 to 5 points of impact this year as well. Yet, I would just tell you that price increases are certainly a last resort for us. I mean, we are doing everything we can to secure the right supply at the right prices and build up inventory where needed and advance purchase commitments and we are also, you know, doing a lot internally. G2 and the teams have got over 30 different programs that are all around the most efficient utilization of memory in our products. So that certainly helps us as well. Wi-Fi 7 is a big example there. Where the improvements that the team have done within about a 90-day period, actually reduced the memory utilization in Wi-Fi 7 by 50%. So really strong, I think, there as well. So, you know, overall, the other thing, I guess, maybe just to keep in mind for you is the price increases that we have done have been single digit. Unlike you know, other companies that may have a majority of their products that are servers, 95% of what we sell are not servers, roughly. And so rather than, you know, 2-thirds of the bill of materials value being in memory, you are in kind of the 15% to 20% of the bill of materials might be memory related for our products. The price increases that we do are specific to hardware, Not specific to software, for instance, and they are really driven towards those products that have a higher level of memory utilization so that we really try to zero in on where the pain is being felt and make sure that we are only passing on what we need to But we are doing a good job of passing that price on. I think the customers while they do not like it, they understand that it is an industry issue, not a Cisco issue. Ahmed Sami Badri: Thanks, David. Operator, can we move to the next analyst in queue? Operator: Thank you. Joseph Cardoso with JPMorgan. Your line is open sir. Joseph Cardoso: Hi. For the question. And maybe just 1 for me and somewhat of a follow-up, I guess, from some of the other ones that maybe pulling at the thread at a different angle. I just wanted to better understand the conversations you are having with enterprise customers. And the sustainability of spend here. Specifically, it seems like the spending is really broad based across the IT stack. We are seeing it with the server vendors. We are seeing it with you on the networking side. Which is also in this backdrop of this inflationary environment. So as we take a step back and we think about kind of this enterprise customer's budget, you know, what are they communicating with you? Are they increasing in tandem with this demand? Or at some point, are you expecting them to get stretched Just trying to understand how that is playing out and what you are hearing from your customer Thank you. Charles H. Robbins: Thanks, Joseph. I think most of our enterprise customers today they recognize that we are in the midst of probably the fastest moving technology transition that we have ever seen. And for my peers, the CEOs in these companies, there is a combination of ensuring that they are moving with enough caution that they actually get this right. But not moving too slow to where they actually create a competitive differentiation that puts them at a disadvantage. And so I think that, you know, they are they are continuing to move and they all have a real recognition that if they if they were to pause, that they put the companies that they run at risk. And so that is the backdrop. Now as it relates to budgets, what I think is going on, we are hearing from our customers, is they are they are currently reprioritizing within their existing budgets. But I would also say that you are beginning to see a trend where they are looking at AI readiness, Mythos readiness, quantum readiness, in a similar vein to how they have looked at cybersecurity spend over the last 3 to 4 to 5 years. it is just not optional. And we have to make sure we are ready We have to make sure that we are secure. We are prepared. We are doing the best we can not to have vulnerabilities exposed. And I think from that perspective, that is creating a shift of dollars from other areas in the organizations to IT to actually do that work. And so as an example, we have not seen a massive amount of impact from Mythos yet. But we are having a ton of conversations. We have got customers that are running Cisco IQ that are assessing their infrastructure, understanding what is last day of support, what can be patched, what cannot be patched, we have seen the pipeline increase meaningfully as a result of Mythos, which is really showing up as a network refresh, but is probably underneath viewed as a cybersecurity spend. So that is kind of what we are seeing in that space. Ahmed Sami Badri: Thanks, Joseph. Operator, can we move to the next analyst in queue? Operator: Thank you. Karl Ackerman with BNP Paribas. Line is open, sir. Karl Ackerman: Yes, thank you. I have 2. So my first 1, You indicated that campus networking product orders grew 20% year-over-year in Q4. Can you quantify how Cisco Cloud Control contributed to this product growth, or is that synergy a driver going forward? And as you address that, can you comment on the durability of enterprise IT demand budgets going into fiscal 27 given your stronger than expected results so far in the second half of 26? Charles H. Robbins: I will talk--I think they are very connected. The second question is a lot of what I just went through. But I think the Cisco Cloud Control, first of all, is getting a ton of positive feedback from our customers. I think we have 4.5 thousand or so customers that signed up and want to actually be part of a white glove program that we are running right now. We are working through those. I think it goes GA in the next month or so in The US, and then in the next 3 to 6 months or this month, it goes GA in The US. And I think well, I would not say Cisco Cloud Control unto itself, as good as it is, I would not say that is what driving it. But I will say that Cisco Cloud Control is emblematic of the platform approach that our teams have taken in our in our product organization, which customers have absolutely seen. So if you think about, like, consolidated AI Canvas, which is part of Cisco Cloud Control, you think about the ability to manage cloud based and on prem networking devices from the same platform. All those things have, have contributed to that demand. And I think, as Mark said earlier in the call, I think what you are gonna see is when the Q2 market share numbers come out, you are gonna you are gonna see that because of the product innovation as well as this platform approach, our sales teams are telling us very consistently that is what is resonating with our customers, and that is leading to this durable you know, demand that we see in addition to what I just described relative to how the how the customers are thinking about their budgets. Ahmed Sami Badri: Thank you, Karl. Operator, can we move to the next analyst in queue? Operator: Thank you. Tal Liani with BofA Securities. Your line is open, sir. Thomas Zilberman: Hey, guys. it is actually Thomas Zilberman on for Tal tonight. I wanted to ask about the hyperscaler order trajectory that you are seeing. I think you said earlier in the call that telco orders were up 30% this quarter, and I think that compares to 9% growth last quarter. But if I look at the combined segment growth last quarter, telcos and server sorry, telcos and cloud was up 105%. And this quarter was up 95%, which means that there was some slowdown of the hyper scaler orders this quarter The question is, is there anything notable that you are seeing in terms of the demand environment Or is it just about nonlinearity of orders? And I guess the follow-up would be if there is any color you can give us into how you are thinking about AI orders next year. Charles H. Robbins: Let me take the first part, and then, Mark, you may wanna talk about AI orders and how we are gonna talk about it this year. I think going from 105 to 95, I think that is probably some sort of comparison issue from a year ago would be my guess because we had we had 4, I think, the 4 big hyperscalers all grew triple digits for us, I think, during the quarter. So we did not see and, again, at the beginning of the quarter, we said we would do over 4 billion and we saw we did over 4 billion which was obviously the largest quarter of the year for us. I think I think the good news is the telco business accelerated, and I do not know what the comparisons are off the top of my head. But that might have had something to do with it. But the difference in size of these businesses is quite meaningful now. So you are just not going to see a 9% to 30% move in telco have that massive of an impact on the total number. But I actually view it very positively because I think they are both big elements of the supercycle we are talking about. When the telcos recognizes the fact that the cloud providers and their network requirements for these AI workloads and particularly the scale across technology, they are getting the inbounds from these customers talking about their need for bandwidth, and that is what is leading them to spend. And so, I do not think there is been any change at all. in the material demand from our hyperscaler customers. Mark, you wanna talk about how we are thinking about revenue versus orders? Mark Patterson: Sure. Thanks, Thomas. Yes. So if you if you look back at FY 2025 and 2026, we gave you, you know, an order target, if you will, for the year and then continue to update that as we move through the year. The big reason why we did that is really to just demonstrate the size of the opportunity itself as well as the criticality of our role in this space as we as we were really beginning to communicate this and really making our move into this space. As we get into FY 2027, we will move to a more traditional revenue target, which we gave you a $7.5 billion. You are gonna get regular updates from us. On forward looking metrics, be it design wins, orders taken, etcetera, as we move through the year. So we will continue to update you on that front as well. Just will not put out a, you know, an annual target. But instead, we will have an annual revenue target. You should, though, expect orders to be meaningfully higher, I would say, in FY 2027 than they were in FY 2026. Thanks. Ahmed Sami Badri: Thanks, Thomas. Operator, can we move to the final question in the analyst queue? Operator: Thank you. And our final question comes from Ben Bohlen with Cleveland Research. Your line is open, sir. Ben Bohlen: Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. Chuck, I am interested in your thoughts on you know, this incremental demand that you are seeing urgency around some of the newer variables such as Mythos, now where do you see the customer budget coming from? What are they doing to fund this stuff? You know, how are you capturing more of that opportunity? And then I have a follow-up for Mark. Charles H. Robbins: Do you want to go ahead and ask the follow-up, then we will get it over to him? Ben Bohlen: Yeah. The other question would be, if I look at you said really no issues on lead times. Could you discuss where lead times are for your non Silicon One product or versus Silicon One product, and then just spend a little bit more talking about that direct line of comp communication with TSMC and how that influences lead times. Charles H. Robbins: Okay. Let me, so let me talk about the increased demand and where the budget's coming from. So I will I will just give you an example. I had 1 of my CEO friends who runs a major manufacturer in The United States who their team called early on in the Mythos wave and just said, hey. Listen. We gotta go we gotta get some of this stuff this past, you know, LDOS, which is last day of support. We gotta get it out. And that was their team calling, so I, in turn, texted the CEO and said, tell me what you are thinking. And they said, well, I just I want to make sure that we are getting this equipment in here. We gotta get this done, and you know, I think the whole discussion of where the budget comes from is it is not even an issue. I am sure they will figure it out behind the scenes, but I think they start from the premise of we do not have a choice. Then they figure out how to fund it. And I think that is just a much different place than we have been. Now right now, the customers have been doing a lot of analysis with our teams. We have got 8 thousand or 9 thousand customers running Cisco IQ today that are actually assessing their infrastructure to understand exactly what they have, what is patchable, what is not. And but, again, we have not seen material Mythos or last day of support in our numbers to date, but the pipeline is building, as we think about our teams. The other the other thing to just contemplate is that we have the act we have the ability to go after the equipment our equipment sitting in our customer's base this past last day of support. but our competitors' last day of support is also a market opportunity for us. And this particular customer talked about their manufacturing floors and some of their competitive gear that was all past last day of support. Some from 1 of our competitors they wanted us to replace as well. So I think they are just figuring it out. And it is going to create a movement of dollars internally from other budgets to IT. I just think that is fundamentally what is happening. Mark, you wanna talk about lead times, and I will help if you need it. Mark Patterson: Yeah. So thanks, Benjamin. Yeah. Again, just to reiterate, you know, not seeing any significant lead time issues at all. I think we have got some tightness, obviously, in some parts of the supply chain. I am not sure I would even say constraints. I would say that I am not hearing any escalations from customers on lead time issues, if you will. And so we feel like we are we are in really good shape. There. On the TSMC, specific question, I think that, you know, the biggest thing is we are we are not waiting on any sort of allocation. And commits and decommits, if you will, from any merchant silicon providers. We are we are dealing directly with TSMC know, G2 and Chuck have been directly engaged and I know our spending time with them. We have a trip planned soon. Yeah. And, and so I just think that it is important from the standpoint of sort of managing our own destiny and controlling that supply, but also, our own innovation, pipeline and being able to have that much more control over that. I think those are those are the 2 really big things early on. I think in out-years, you are going to see, obviously, I think some avoidance of stacking margins with merchant silicon as well, but that is kind of down the road just a little bit. Ahmed Sami Badri: Thank you. Thanks, Benjamin. I am going to hand it over to Chuck for some final remarks. Charles H. Robbins: Yeah. First of all, I want to thank you all for being on the call with us today. I am gonna make a few comments here because I think it is important I think it is an important thing for us to step back and look at how we got to where we are and not just--I want to make sure we are not thinking that we are accidental recipients of what is going on in this AI transition. Particularly as it relates to the hyperscalers. For those of you who have been on these calls since I have been CEO, there were the first several years I talked about our situation with hyperscalers, our lack of relationships with them, and our lack of business from them. And if you go back just over 6 years, we had virtually no business with them inside their data centers. We had a little bit of enterprise technology that we were selling them. And through a combination of key investments and acquisitions that we made in silicon, optics, and security. We obviously rebuilt our relationships with our hyperscaler customers. We told them we would meet them where they are by selling them silicon software or systems or any combination of those. We worked hard on moving our products to a platform approach. that G2 and the team have done a great job on. And we assembled the right team to execute and help achieve this breakthrough scale that we are seeing right now. So I just wanna congratulate the teams on all the things that have been done over honestly, over a decade. To prepare us for what is going on today. it is clear that our the demand for our tech is stronger than ever. I think our results are evidence of that. We certainly feel the continued AI momentum with hyperscalers, enterprise, the neocloud, sovereign, telco, everywhere. The refresh opportunity is in its early, early stages. We do believe that this super cycle is underway. And we think that the network remains an absolute critical factor as to whether AI deployment succeed or fail. So we view that role as critical. We view our responsibility to deliver secure networking for every AI deployment that our customers choose to deploy. And I wanna just reiterate how proud I am of our teams and how optimistic I am for what is ahead in FY 2027 and beyond. Thank you. Ahmed Sami Badri: Cisco's next quarterly call, which will reflect our first quarter FY 2027 results, will be on Thursday, 11/12/2026 at 01:30PM Pacific Time, 04:30PM Eastern Time. This concludes today's call. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact the Cisco Investor Relations department, and we thank you very much for joining the call today. Operator: Thank you for participating on today's conference call. If you would like to listen to the call in its entirety, you may call 1-800-839-2232. For participants dialing from outside The US, please dial 203-369-3662. This concludes today's call. You may disconnect at this time. Thank you. Before you buy stock in Cisco Systems, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Cisco Systems wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. 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As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Cisco Systems. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Cisco (CSCO) Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

Cisco Systems CSCO shares dropped 10% after reporting fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 results on Aug. 12. The decline can be attributed to investor concerns around margin pressure and the quality of forward growth despite very strong top-line results. Revenues increased 18% year over year to $17.3 billion, with product orders jumping 35%. Non-GAAP earnings increased 23% year over year to $1.22 per share. However, non-GAAP gross margin fell 210 basis points (bps) year over year to 66.3%, and product gross margin declined 270 bps to 64.8%, reflecting a higher hardware mix and rising memory costs. Cisco expects first-quarter fiscal 2027 gross margin in the 65-66% range and acknowledged that the rapid growth of hardware-heavy AI and networking businesses is likely to remain a gross-margin headwind through fiscal 2027. Management also implied growth of roughly 13% between fiscal second and fourth quarters. Recurring indicators were comparatively softer, with Annual Recurring Revenues (ARR) growing only 3%, while services revenue was essentially flat.So, what should investors do with CSCO stock? Let’s find out. Cisco shares have jumped 44.9% year to date (YTD), outperforming the broader Zacks Computer & Technology sector’s return of 18.8%. The company has been benefiting from a strong AI push, a networking supercycle, improving its enterprise networking business and recovering its security business. These factors have helped in improving Cisco’s competitive prowess compared with the likes of Hewlett Packard Enterprise HPE, Broadcom AVGO and Arista Networks ANET, shares of which have appreciated 131.9%, 9.9% and 47.5%, YTD, respectively. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders reached $9.3 billion in fiscal 2026, roughly 4.5 times fiscal 2025, while Cisco expects hyperscaler AI revenue to rise from about $4 billion in fiscal 2026 to $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027. Cisco is well-positioned across AI networking through Silicon One systems, Acacia optics and optical networking, with multiple new hyperscaler design wins and additional opportunities in the pipeline. The scale-across opportunity is noteworthy because Cisco estimates AI-based inter-data-center traffic may require roughly 14 times the bandwidth of traditional data-center interconnects. Beyond hyperscalers, Cisco sees a more than $100 billion networking refresh opportunity, supported by enterprise data-center modernization and a multi-year campus refresh cycle. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, campus orders increased 20% and only about 7% of the campus switching installed base had been refreshed by the end of fiscal 2026. Security and observability should provide another growth leg as AI expands the threat surface. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, firewall orders grew more than 30%, with 6,400 customers adopting Cisco’s newer security products, and Splunk is increasingly being integrated into broader security offerings. In the core security portfolio, over 1,500 customers purchased Cisco’s new products, including Secure Access, XDR, Hypershield and AI Defense in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. Cisco suffers from the shift in the business mix toward lower-gross-margin AI infrastructure hardware. The company expects higher hardware volumes to create continued gross-margin pressure, even though operating leverage and expense discipline is expected to help preserve operating margins. AI orders also tend to be very large, nonlinear and placed well in advance, which makes the timing of revenue conversion less predictable and can increase quarterly volatility. Security remains a headwind. Cisco noted that fiscal fourth-quarter’s 14% growth in security revenues benefited from several sizable, longer-duration on-prem Splunk transactions and expects fiscal 2027 security growth to normalize toward the high-single digits. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CSCO’s fiscal 2027 earnings is currently pegged at $4.89 per share, up 2.3% over the past 30 days, indicating year-over-year growth of 12.93%. Cisco Systems, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Cisco Systems, Inc. Quote The consensus mark for CSCO’s first-quarter fiscal 2027 earnings is currently pegged at $1.18 per share, up 2.6% over the past 30 days, indicating year-over-year growth of 18%. Cisco shares are trading at a premium, as suggested by the Value Score of F. In terms of the forward 12-month price/sales, CSCO is trading at a premium of 6.31X, higher than the Zacks Computer Networking industry’s 5.76X and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 1.49X. However, Cisco shares are trading at a discount compared with Arista Networks and Broadcom. In terms of the forward 12-month P/S, Arista Networks and Broadcom shares are trading at 16.93X and 11.2X, respectively. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Cisco’s strong AI momentum, expanding hyperscaler opportunity, ongoing networking refresh cycle and improving security portfolio provide a solid foundation for long-term growth. However, persistent gross-margin pressure from the growing mix of hardware-heavy AI infrastructure, uneven revenue conversion from large AI orders and relatively soft recurring revenue growth remains a concern. Moreover, CSCO’s premium valuation limits the margin of safety following the stock’s strong year-to-date performance.Given these competing factors, holding CSCO shares appears appropriate at current levels. Existing investors may benefit from the company’s expanding AI and networking opportunities, while prospective investors may prefer to wait for a more attractive entry point or clearer evidence that accelerating revenue growth can translate into stable gross margins and sustained earnings expansion.CSCO currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) : Free Stock Analysis Report Broadcom Inc. (AVGO) : Free Stock Analysis Report Arista Networks, Inc. (ANET) : Free Stock Analysis Report Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Cisco Systems gave investors plenty to like in its fiscal fourth-quarter report, but the market’s reaction showed how high expectations have become for one of 2026’s strongest AI infrastructure trades. Cisco Systems (CSCO) reported record quarterly revenue and stronger-than-expected earnings, while management laid out another year of double-digit growth. The stock still fell sharply after the report and closed Aug. 18 at $112.90, leaving shares well below the $123.88 price used in Bank of America’s latest research note. BofA analyst Tal Liani sees an opportunity in that disconnect. Liani reiterated a Buy rating and $150 price target on Cisco in a note given to TheStreet, arguing that broad networking demand and growing AI revenue could leave room for further upside. The target now implies roughly 33% upside from Cisco’s Aug. 18 closing price. Cisco reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $17.3 billion, up 18% from a year ago, while adjusted earnings reached $1.22 per share. Networking revenue jumped 28% to $9.8 billion as customers continued spending on data center and AI infrastructure. Orders were even stronger. Total product orders rose 35%, while networking orders climbed 40%. Cisco said product orders still increased 25% when hyperscaler customers were excluded, giving investors another sign that demand is spreading beyond the largest cloud companies. Trump FCC gives Tesla a leg up in critical technology race Apple’s $249 AirPods may be about to learn how to see Bank of America doubles down on Nvidia stock despite big risk Management expects that strength to carry into the new fiscal year. Cisco guided for first-quarter revenue of $18 billion to $18.2 billion and adjusted earnings of $1.32 to $1.34 per share, while full-year revenue is expected to rise to as much as $73.4 billion. That broader strength sits at the center of BofA’s bullish view. Liani noted that ex-hyperscaler order growth accelerated from 19% in the fiscal third quarter to 25% in the fourth quarter. Orders from Cisco’s four largest hyperscalers grew more than 100%, according to the note. BofA believes those trends support Cisco’s decision to double its core growth outlook for fiscal 2027 to 10% from an earlier 5% estimate. Cisco booked $4 billion of AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers during the fourth quarter, lifting full-year orders to $9.3 billion. The company generated about $4 billion in AI infrastructure revenue during fiscal 2026 and expects that figure to reach $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027. BofA thinks that target could leave room for upside. Related: Elon Musk’s $900 billion SpaceX stake is built on more than rockets The bank expects stronger networking revenue as recent orders convert into sales and sees fiscal 2027 AI orders materially exceeding the $9 billion level reached this year. Improving momentum in Cisco’s security business could provide another boost as the company moves beyond pricing changes associated with Splunk. BofA raised its fiscal 2027 adjusted earnings estimate to $5.08 from $4.77 and lifted its fiscal 2028 estimate to $5.47 from $5.21. Cisco itself expects fiscal 2027 revenue of $72.2 billion to $73.4 billion, with adjusted earnings between $5.05 and $5.11 per share. The bullish demand outlook comes with a trade-off. Cisco’s adjusted gross margin slipped to 66.3% in the fourth quarter from 68.4% a year earlier as faster hardware growth changed the company’s sales mix. BofA expects gross margin to fall to roughly 64.5% in fiscal 2027, about 150 basis points below the Street’s outlook. Strong hardware sales and a greater cloud mix could keep pressure on profitability, even as revenue accelerates. Valuation also leaves less room for mistakes. Liani estimates Cisco trades near 25 times calendar 2027 enterprise value to free cash flow, well above its five-year average of roughly 16 times. BofA still believes the demand cycle can outweigh those concerns. With orders accelerating inside and outside the hyperscaler market, Cisco may have more growth ahead than its fiscal 2027 targets currently suggest. Related: Cisco stock flashes rare technical signal This story was originally published by TheStreet on Aug 19, 2026, where it first appeared in the Investing section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Shares of Cisco Systems CSCO fell as much as 8.4% in the immediate trading session following the release of its fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2026 financial results. Despite reporting record quarterly revenues of $17.3 billion and solid earnings that topped Wall Street estimates, investors remained skeptical of the company’s compressed gross margin guidance. For long-term investors, this post-earnings sell-off may present a compelling buying opportunity, considering Cisco’s dominant position in the expanding artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem. The company is capitalizing on rapid, AI-driven demand from hyperscalers, which enabled it to generate a solid $4 billion in AI infrastructure orders in the fiscal fourth quarter, bringing its total fiscal 2026 AI order pipeline to $9.3 billion. However, direct investment in CSCO shares carries clear single-stock risks. As Cisco expands its footprint in AI data center networking, it faces stiff competition from established players in the industry. If Cisco's Ethernet-based architectures face adoption delays against proprietary alternatives like InfiniBand, or if lower-margin AI hardware shipments continue to pressure profitability, the stock could face continued valuation adjustments. For investors seeking to capture Cisco's AI-driven growth trajectory without taking on individual stock risk, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with heavy allocations to CSCO offer a prudent alternative. This basket approach allows investors to gain exposure to Cisco and the broader networking hardware sector while cushioning against single-stock volatility, margin pressures, and macroeconomic shifts. Before evaluating these ETFs, let us take a closer look at Cisco's fiscal fourth-quarter performance across key operating metrics. Cisco's earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 4.3%, while revenues topped the mark by 2.4%. On a year-over-year basis, the company registered double-digit growth in its top and bottom-line numbers. The reported quarter marked the eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for Cisco’s networking portfolio overall, in line with the company’s view that it is in the midst of a multiyear, multibillion-dollar networking supercycle. Cisco’s industrial IoT portfolio achieved its ninth consecutive quarter of double-digit order growth, driven by accelerating demand across manufacturing, utilities, and data center facilities in the fiscal fourth quarter. This sustained momentum is fueled by strong demand for ruggedized networking hardware built to operate in harsh environmental conditions. Circuit, Cisco’s proprietary on-premises AI assistant, is now fully integrated into the company’s operations and supported more than 75 million prompts during the reported quarter. Looking ahead, CSCO’s management projects AI infrastructure revenues alone to scale to $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027 as cloud titans build out their next-generation data centers. The company expects multiple AI design wins across its Silicon One chip families and Optics over the next six months, driven by strong hyperscaler demand for its scalable, programmable architecture. By fully integrating Silicon One across its networking systems by fiscal 2029, Cisco aims to gain control over its supply chain, silicon, systems, and software to deliver superior performance, security, and market share growth. iShares U.S. Telecommunications ETF IYZ This fund, with net assets worth $1.27 billion, offers exposure to 24 U.S. companies that provide telephone and internet products, services, and technologies. Of these, Cisco carries the first spot, holding 20.86% of the fund. IYZ has gained 29.3% year to date and charges 37 basis points (bps) as fees. It traded at a volume of 0.66 million shares in the last trading session. First Trust Dow Jones Internet ETF FDN This fund, with net assets worth $5.41 billion, offers exposure to 41 U.S. companies from the Internet industry. Of these, Cisco carries the third spot, holding 7.38% of the fund. FDN has rallied 8.3% year to date and charges 49 bps as fees. It traded at a volume of 0.26 million shares in the last trading session. First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF CIBR This fund, with net assets worth $15.84 billion, offers exposure to 42 companies engaged in the cybersecurity segment of the technology and industrials sectors. It includes companies primarily engaged in developing, implementing, and managing security protocols for private and public networks, computers, and mobile devices to protect data integrity and network operations. Of these, Cisco carries the fourth spot, holding 6.64% of the fund. CIBR has surged 39.4% year to date and charges 58 bps as fees. It traded at a good volume of 1.29 million shares in the last trading session. Amplify Cybersecurity ETF HACK With net assets of $3.04 billion, this fund provides exposure to 23 companies actively involved in delivering cybersecurity hardware, software, and services. Of these, Cisco carries the seventh spot, holding 4.88% of the fund. HACK has soared 47.1% year to date and charges 60 bps as fees. It traded at a volume of 0.23 million shares in the last trading session. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) : Free Stock Analysis Report Amplify Cybersecurity ETF (HACK): ETF Research Reports First Trust Dow Jones Internet ETF (FDN): ETF Research Reports First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR): ETF Research Reports iShares U.S. Telecommunications ETF (IYZ): ETF Research Reports This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

The gain was set before the results crossed, and its optical peers rose with it. Coherent (COHR) stock gained about 9% on Wednesday, which reads like a market applauding a good quarter. The timing says otherwise. The fourth-quarter results did not cross until after the closing bell, so the entire session's gain was locked in before anyone outside the company had seen a figure, and the coverage that followed the release reported the stock slipping despite the beat. Its Optical Peers Rose That Same Session The tape points away from anything Coherent-specific. LITE gained 13.6% over the same window, MKSI 4.2%, IPGP 1.8%, against 0.3% for the S&P 500. The day was framed in advance as a same-session read on the AI networking build-out, with Cisco Systems also reporting after that close, and buyers who could not yet have seen either set of numbers paid up across the group. That is exposure to a theme, not to a company, and a single session can reprice an entire group. The Trefis High Quality Portfolio does not depend on the handful of largest technology names to produce its returns. Indium Phosphide, Not Orders, Sets The Ceiling Coming into Wednesday, the stock was already up about 205% over the trailing year. On a run like that, a beat and an above-consensus outlook are the price of admission, not a surprise. The fiscal Q4 report (ended June) put record revenue of $2.05 billion on the board, up 34% year over year and 42% excluding two businesses sold during the year, with data center and communications at 79% of the total. What the report did not settle is how fast that demand converts into product. Management names Indium Phosphide capacity as the primary constraint, and Indium Phosphide lasers are what sit inside its 800G and 1.6T transceivers. The company produced about 80% more of those lasers in the June quarter than a year earlier, and yields on its 6-inch lines in Texas and Sweden are running above those on its 3-inch lines. Watch The Ramp, Not The Reaction Management expects internal Indium Phosphide output capacity to double year over year by the end of the September quarter, a quarter ahead of the original plan, with guidance for that period of $2.2 billion to $2.4 billion. Beyond transceivers, first revenue from co-packaged optics is expected in the December quarter, carried by ultra-high-power CW lasers that its Texas plant has begun to ramp. Those two ramps decide whether the order book turns into revenue. The stock itself is the noisier variable: in the six sessions before Wednesday it rose 13.4% on one day and fell 14.2% on another, which is a wide swing for a business whose order book management describes as booked out. If you are sizing a position around the next print, the useful record is how this stock has actually traded through its own earnings, rather than how it traded into this one. A Ramp Is A Schedule, And Schedules Slip Coherent's demand looks booked, but its delivery runs through one material and a small number of plants, and that is timing risk no single position can spread. The Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio is built the other way, as a system rather than a bet on one company's schedule. That portfolio has a track record of outpacing the three major indices - the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap, and Russell 2000.