By Christine Ji
Higher-than-expected AI infrastructure orders boost Cisco’s revenues, with the company beating earnings expectations and cheering a ‘massive opportunity ahead’
Cisco released its fourth-quarter earnings results after the closing bell Wednesday.
Cisco Systems Inc. delivered a strong finish to its fiscal 2025 year, surpassing analysts’ expectations for revenue and earnings on the heels of higher-than-expected AI infrastructure orders.
But shares of the networking and infrastructure company initially traded down around 2% in Wednesday’s extended session before recovering – a tepid response to the earnings report. While Cisco (CSCO) topped expectations for the current quarter, the company gave a full-year forecast that, at the midpoint, was roughly consistent with what analysts had been modeling.
For the company’s fiscal fourth quarter just completed, Cisco reported $14.7 billion of revenue, up 8% from a year ago and above the $14.6 billion FactSet analyst consensus. That brought the company’s fiscal 2025 revenue to $56.7 billion, a 5% year-over-year increase.
Adjusted earnings for the quarter came out to 99 cents a share, slightly above the analyst consensus for 98 cents.
“The AI infrastructure orders we received from webscale customers in fiscal 2025 were more than double our original target, indicating a massive opportunity ahead as we lead the required architectural shift and build the critical infrastructure needed for the AI era,” Cisco Chief Executive Chuck Robbins said in a statement.
The company reported more than $800 million in AI infrastructure orders from webscale customers in the fiscal fourth quarter, versus over $600 million in the fiscal third quarter. On the earnings call, Robbins shared that two webscale customers had “each placed total orders of over $1 billion” in fiscal-year 2025, indicating a robust customer pipeline.
Overall product orders rose 7% from a year before – though that growth rate was down from the 9% rate that the company posted for the fiscal third quarter, when excluding orders for Splunk.
Edward Jones analyst David Heger sees this development as a sign that Cisco’s business growth is normalizing. “Order growth has been slowing over the past few quarters,” Heger wrote in a note published after the company’s call. He believes Cisco is “starting to face more difficult year-over-year comparisons.”
For the first quarter of fiscal 2026, Cisco provided revenue guidance of $14.65 billion to $14.85 billion, above analysts’ expectations for $14.6 billion. The company expects full-year revenue of $59 billion to $60 billion, roughly in line with analysts’ predictions for $59.4 billion.
For the new fiscal year, the company is “focused on making strategic investments in innovation, driving durable, profitable growth and delivering shareholder value,” Chief Financial Officer Mark Patterson said in a statement.
Wednesday marked the first earnings call with Patterson leading the finance unit, as former CFO Scott Herren retired in July.
Rising around 20% this year to date, Cisco’s stock has been a quiet beneficiary of the artificial-intelligence boom. The company’s business streams in networking equipment, cybersecurity and services have performed well as organizations invest heavily in building out the advanced data-center and network infrastructure required for AI.
Yet the lackluster market reaction to Wednesday’s earnings report raises questions about whether Cisco’s rally can continue, as investors look for more than a mild beat to justify further gains.
Going into the earnings call, analysts were expecting a solid but slightly conservative outlook from the company. “Cisco’s diverse business can make it difficult to gauge business momentum and predict revisions,” Simon Leopold, an analyst at Raymond James, wrote in a note last week. However, he was optimistic about Cisco’s AI-related product-order growth. Raymond James has a hold-equivalent rating on the stock.
On Tuesday, prior to the earnings release, Heger had downgraded his rating on the company from buy to hold. Although he said he believes the company will continue to be a leading player in the networking market, he sees the stock price as fairly valued after its run-up this year.
-Christine Ji
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08-13-25 1814ET
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