Arik Hesseldahl

Recent Posts by Arik Hesseldahl

Cisco Hangs Tough as Q4 Results Beat Consensus

Quarterly earnings from Cisco Systems just crossed the wires, and they’re slightly better than what some analysts had been expecting.

Cisco’s sales were $11.7 billion and earnings on a per-share basis were 47 cents. The results beat slightly the consensus of Wall Street analysts who expected earnings of 46 cents per share on sales of $11.6 billion, up from 40 cents on $11.2 billion a year ago.

Cisco also boosted its dividend to 14 cents a share, up from 8 cents a share previously. That’s probably accounting for a good bit of the upward move in the share right there.

Cisco shares rose during regular trading by more than 1 percent to close at $17.35. The shares rose by more than 3 percent in after-hours trading to $17.88 as news of the results came in.

Last month, Cisco said it would cut 1,300 jobs or about 2 percent of its workforce as part of its ongoing efforts to restructure.

CEO John Chambers was just on CNBC talking about the results. “It was an unusually strong quarter, especially in Asia-Pacific,” he said. “The U.S. saw some positive trends. Europe was a bit challenged.”

Here’s the announcement. More as I go through the numbers.

Cisco Reports Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2012 Earnings

SAN JOSE, CA–(Marketwire -08/15/12)- Cisco (CSCO)

Q4 Net Sales: $11.7 billion (increase of 4% year over year)

Q4 Net Income: $1.9 billion GAAP (increase of 56% year over year); $2.5 billion non-GAAP (increase of 15% year over year)

Q4 Earnings per Share: $0.36 GAAP (increase of 64% year over year); $0.47 non-GAAP (increase of 18% year over year)

FY 2012 Net Sales $46.1 billion (increase of 7% year over year)

FY 2012 Net Income: $8.0 billion GAAP (increase of 24% year over year); $10.0 billion non-GAAP (increase of 11% year over year)

FY 2012 Earnings per Share: $1.49 GAAP (increase of 27% year over year); $1.85 non-GAAP (increase of 14% year over year)

Cisco, the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate, today reported its fourth quarter and fiscal year results for the period ended July 28, 2012. Cisco reported fourth quarter net sales of $11.7 billion, net income on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis of $1.9 billion or $0.36 per share, and non-GAAP net income of $2.5 billion or $0.47 per share.

“As a result of our strong performance, continued execution on our plan to deliver profitable growth, and commitment to shareholders, for the full fiscal year, we delivered revenue growth of 7% as well as a record year in revenue and earnings per share,” stated Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers.

“Our strategy — delivering intelligent networks and technology architectures, built on integrated products, services and software platforms, to fuel our customers’ businesses — is proving the right long-term strategy for our success. There is no question that our industry and our world are evolving quickly and Cisco is squarely at the center of major technology market transitions — cloud, mobile, visual, virtual and social.”

Q4 GAAP Results

Q4 2012 Q4 2011 Vs. Q4 2011
————– ————– ————-
Net Sales $ 11.7 billion $ 11.2 billion 4.4%
Net Income $ 1.9 billion $ 1.2 billion 55.6%
Earnings per Share $ 0.36 $ 0.22 63.6%

Q4 Non-GAAP Results

Q4 2012 Q4 2011 Vs. Q4 2011
————– ————– ————-
Net Income $ 2.5 billion $ 2.2 billion 15.1%
Earnings per Share $ 0.47 $ 0.40 17.5%

Fiscal Year GAAP Results

FY 2012 FY 2011 Vs. FY 2011
————– ————– ————-
Net Sales $ 46.1 billion $ 43.2 billion 6.6%
Net Income $ 8.0 billion $ 6.5 billion 23.9%
Earnings per Share $ 1.49 $ 1.17 27.4%

Fiscal Year Non-GAAP Results

FY 2012 FY 2011 Vs. FY 2011
————– ————– ————-
Net Income $ 10.0 billion $ 9.0 billion 10.9%
Earnings per Share $ 1.85 $ 1.62 14.2%

A reconciliation between net income on a GAAP basis and non-GAAP net income is provided in the table on page 6.

Cisco will discuss fourth quarter and fiscal year 2012 results and business outlook on a conference call and webcast at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time today. Call information and related charts are available at http://investor.cisco.com.

Cash and Cash Equivalents and Investments

Cash flows from operations were $3.1 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012, compared with $3.0 billion for the third quarter of fiscal 2012, and compared with $2.8 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011. Cash flows from operations were $11.5 billion for fiscal 2012, compared with $10.1 billion for fiscal 2011.

Cash and cash equivalents and investments were $48.7 billion at the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012, compared with $48.4 billion at the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2012, and compared with $44.6 billion at the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011.

Stock Repurchase Program and Dividends

During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012, Cisco repurchased 108 million shares of common stock under the stock repurchase program at an average price of $16.62 per share for an aggregate purchase price of $1.8 billion. During fiscal 2012, Cisco repurchased 262 million shares of common stock at an average price of $16.64 per share for an aggregate purchase price of $4.4 billion. As of July 28, 2012, Cisco had repurchased and retired 3.7 billion shares of Cisco common stock at an average price of $20.36 per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $76.1 billion since the inception of the stock repurchase program. The remaining authorized amount for stock repurchases under this program is approximately $5.9 billion with no termination date.

During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012, Cisco paid a cash dividend of $0.08 per common share, or $425 million. For fiscal 2012, Cisco paid cash dividends of $0.28 per common share, or $1.5 billion.

Select Global Business Highlights

Cisco completed the acquisition of privately held ClearAccess. ClearAccess provides TR-069 standards-based software to service providers for the provisioning and management of residential and mobile devices. Cisco’s acquisition of ClearAccess will help service providers to better deliver, manage and monetize their services, while helping to improve operational efficiencies and customer experiences.
Cisco completed the acquisition of privately held Truviso. The acquisition of Truviso reinforces Cisco’s commitment to intelligent networking by providing differentiated solutions with streaming real-time analytics for the core, data center, virtualization, collaboration, and video.
Cisco and Citrix launched a new partner accelerator initiative that enables the two companies to simplify go-to-market activities, build channel partner competencies, elevate partner differentiation, and drive partner profitability.

Cisco Innovation

Cisco delivered the foundation for a next-generation mobile internet: the Cisco® Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 5500 — a platform capable of improving performance over the previous Cisco ASR 5000 Series systems by up to 10 times and providing the industry’s first elastic solution for mobile networks.
Cisco announced the Cisco Cloud Connected Solution, a new product solution that delivers cloud-enabled routing and wide area network (WAN) optimization platforms, along with Cloud Connector software and services, enabling users to connect to cloud services with industry leading security.
Cisco introduced a versatile and broad approach to network programmability — Cisco Open Network Environment — aimed at helping customers drive the next wave of business innovation through trends such as cloud, mobility, social networking, and video.
Cisco introduced Cisco WebEx® Social, bringing social collaboration to mobile devices, email and business productivity applications, and extending WebEx beyond web conferencing to include social and telepresence.
Cisco announced Cisco Unified Communications (UC) Release 9.0 which will give users access to premium collaboration tools from a variety of places and more devices. The update to the platform, which is at the core of Cisco’s collaboration portfolio, enables third-party endpoints to join the Cisco UC environment.
Cisco announced the first Linksys® Smart Wi-Fi Router and Universal Media Connector powered by the industry’s next-generation wireless technology (802.11ac) — designed to deliver approximately three times faster wireless speeds that can now be extended to Smart TVs and game consoles.
Cisco launched its carrier-grade IPv6 solution, an advanced solution designed to help accelerate migration to IPv6, manage the proliferation of IP devices, and prepare networks for service expansion.

Select Customer Announcements

Cisco and Nilesat, the leading satellite operator in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, announced that Nilesat has successfully installed Cisco Digital Media solutions for its contribution network.
Essar Group deployed the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (UCS) to support the implementation of SAP HANA (High Performance Analytic Appliance) across the organization in phases over the next 12-to-18 months.
Bright House Networks announced a collaboration with Cisco to offer world class managed security services, a partnership that has achieved early success by supporting the nation’s tenth largest school district.
Oriental Cable Network, one of China’s largest cable operators, chose Cisco Videoscape™ for new multiscreen video experiences in Shanghai, China.
Frontier Communications Corporation deployed the Cisco ASR 9000 Series as part of its next-generation network to deliver enhanced high-speed mobile backhaul services to wireless carriers in up to 20 markets in the United States.
Nexica has chosen the Cisco UCS® platform and Cisco Nexus® switches to power one of the first cloud services in Spain, offering businesses a complete range of infrastructure services — such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) — designed to provide benefits such as decreased operational costs, lower risk, increased reliability and improved management of resources.
Russia’s largest car manufacturer, AvtoVAZ, chose Cisco to enhance effective collaboration. As many as 500 AvtoVAZ employees use Cisco TelePresence® on a weekly basis.
Pac-12 Enterprises collaborated with Cisco to power the Pac-12 Networks from start to finish using Cisco Videoscape technology. Cisco’s video distribution technology will be able to deliver live events from each campus to fans at home by providing the servers that support the delivery networks at all 12 universities, the data routing and switching capabilities in the Pac-12 Studios in San Francisco, California, and the encoding and transcoding equipment.

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