

More bad news today for Cisco (ticker CSCO) as the hits keep on coming. The company has released their financial results for their most recent third fiscal quarter and, while results met or exceeded analyst expectations, they were weak across the board. A 5% increase in revenues to $10.9 billion from the $10.4 billion of the year ago quarter met expectations while net earnings of 33 cents per share beat expectations but were down 18% from the 37 cents per share reported last year and gross margins were better than the company had projected. John Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive, indicated the current quarter will continue to show weakness, as the company projected revenues would be flat to up 2% and estimated earnings per share below Wall Street’s estimates for the fourth fiscal period.
Cisco said it plans to cut more jobs as the big networking-equipment company continues to struggle with stiffer competition and management miscues in an effort to reduce operating costs by up to $1 billion for the coming fiscal year.
Many parts of the company’s business are still growing, Mr. Chambers noted in a conference call with analysts. Revenue from the network-routing devices that were Cisco’s original business, for example, grew 7% in the quarter from the year-earlier period. Revenue in switching, however, declined 9%. Another area of weakness is in sales of equipment to the public sector, which saw an 8% decline in revenue.
The stock price, under pressure for quite some time, gapped down when the market opened today from its close yesterday and currently trades at $ 16.90, down approximately 5% from yesterday’s close of $17.78.
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