Shares of Cisco Systems (CSCO) are up more than 7%, printing an intraday high of $24.69, and continuing last night’s gains after the company’s 3Q results topped the Street’s consensus estimates.
For its third quarter, the Silicon Valley network-equipment giant reported a net income of $2.2 billion, or $0.42 a share, compared to $2.5 billion, or $0.46 a share, in the year-ago period. Excluding certain items, Cisco’s adjusted per-share profit was flat at $0.51 vs $0.48 consensus. Revenue came in at $11.5 billion, topping expectations of $11.38 billion.
“Our financial results exceeded the guidance we provided last quarter as we demonstrated clear progress on returning to growth,” Cisco CEO John Chambers said in a prepared statement. “The entire team is focused on moving Cisco forward aggressively and we remain confident in our long-term goal to be the #1 IT company.”
Following the company’s solid Q3 results, Piper Jaffray analyst Troy Jensen reiterated an “Overweight” rating on the shares and boosted his price target to $26.00 from $24.00 after raising this year’s revenue estimate to $47.02 billion from $46.13 billion, writing [via Barron’s Tiernan Ray] “While guidance still implies continued Y/Y declines, shares remain relatively inexpensive in our opinion and we see little downside risk, supported by an attractive dividend yield and share buybacks.”
The firm lifted fiscal 2014 earnings-per-share 7 cents to $2.04 and fiscal 2015 earnings-per-share 14 cents to to $2.25.
Cisco shares closed at $22.81 on Wednesday, and was last up 6.88 percent to $24.38 at 12:06 p.m. in New York today. Shares of Cisco have leaped nearly 37 percent year-to-date.
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