HSBC says its time to move to the sidelines on Cisco Systems . The bank downgraded the network infrastructure stock to hold in a Thursday note and lowered its price target to $69 per share from $73. HSBC’s forecast implies about 0.4% downside from Thursday’s close. Analyst Stephen Bersey said Cisco’s “restocking party seems over” after the company’s lukewarm quarterly results. “We expected Cisco’s networking segment to report improved growth vs a low base as its sector emerged from several quarters of destocking,” Bersey said. “Cisco’s networking revenue growth accelerated from -23.5% y-o-y in 1QFY25 to +12.2% in 4QFY25. Yet the company’s FY26 revenue guidance (+5% y-o-y), along with slowing growth in remaining performance obligations plus backlog (+4.2% y-o-y in 4QFY25), suggest the restocking effect may be coming to an end sooner we had expected.” CSCO YTD mountain Cisco stock in 2025. “Though the company reported more than USD2bn of AI infrastructure orders in FY25, strength seems to be getting offset by weakness elsewhere,” the analyst said. Bersey added that the stock appears to be fairly valued. Indeed, shares have gained more than 17% in 2025 and 42.8% over the past year — outperforming the S & P 500. The stock fell slightly after the downgrade. Most analysts covering Cisco are on the sidelines. Of the 38 who cover it, 24 rate it as a hold, according to LSEG.
The Pakistani Rupee (PKR) appreciated by 16 paisa against the US Dollar (USD) on Friday in the interbank trading and closed at Rs. 282.06 against the previous day’s closing of Rs. 282.22.
The price of the Euro decreased by Rs. 0.87 to close at Rs. 329.58 against the last day’s closing of Rs. 330.45, according to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).
The Japanese yen went up by 01 paisa and closed at Rs. 1.92, while the exchange rate of the British Pound witnessed an increase of 07 paisa to close at Rs. 382.36 against the last day’s closing of Rs. 382.29.
The exchange rates of the Emirates Dirham and the Saudi Riyal decreased by 04 and 03 paisa and closed at Rs. 76.79 and Rs. 75.17, respectively.
Sold-out event will draw 8,000 attendees, 110 partners and 3,000+ leading organizations from 65 countries, cementing Fal.Con as the industry’s most influential cybersecurity conference
AUSTIN, Texas – August 15, 2025 – CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) today announced record-breaking momentum for its flagship conference Fal.Con, which has sold out faster than ever and is poised to deliver unprecedented growth across every key metric. From September 15 – 18, more than 8,000 attendees from over 65 countries and 25 industries will converge at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The event will host a record 110 partner sponsors and more than 3,000 leading organizations, positioning Fal.Con as the global stage for cybersecurity in the Agentic AI era.
“Fal.Con has become the premier industry conference for cybersecurity,” said Jennifer Johnson, chief marketing officer at CrowdStrike. “We’re not hosting a summit, we’re leading a movement. The world’s most influential leaders come to Fal.Con to advance cybersecurity into the AI era, build alliances, and harness the power of the Falcon platform to secure the organizations, economies and technologies shaping our future.”
Now in its ninth year, Fal.Con will unite the world’s top defenders, executives, and innovators to accelerate breakthroughs, forge industry-shaping partnerships, and set the strategic cybersecurity agenda for the year ahead. Under the 2025 theme “Leading Cybersecurity into the Agentic AI Era,” attendees will experience visionary keynotes from CrowdStrike executives. As part of the 300+ session catalog, the program will feature 150+ customer and partner-led sessions from global leaders such as Charter Communications, Land O’Lakes, Mars Inc., Northwestern Mutual, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, University of Michigan, Vail Resorts, and WeightWatchers.
Fal.Con One, the conference’s exclusive CxO program, will also convene 200+ leaders from the world’s most innovative organizations for high-impact, closed-door discussions on the future of cybersecurity, the transformative role of AI, and strategies to outpace adversaries.
Fal.Con 2025 will also showcase the unmatched strength of CrowdStrike’s global partner ecosystem, welcoming more than 110 partner sponsors from across the cybersecurity landscape, the most in the conference’s history. Premier sponsors AWS, Dell, and Intel will be joined by Diamond sponsors ExtraHop, Google Cloud, Okta, Rubrik, and Zscaler.
Attendees can also register for full-day CrowdStrike University training courses to elevate their skills, sharpen their expertise, and advance their impact as defenders.
The event begins on Monday, September 15, with CrowdStrike’s annual Global Partner Summit, where more than 1,000 partner participants will unite to accelerate innovation, expand go-to-market opportunities, and drive joint success with the Falcon platform.
Join the Action at Fal.Con
Register to live stream the keynotes and access 80+ sessions on-demand following the event. Start planning now: Build your digital Fal.Con 2025 agenda here.
About CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD), a global cybersecurity leader, has redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data.
Powered by the CrowdStrike Security Cloud and world-class AI, the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform leverages real-time indicators of attack, threat intelligence, evolving adversary tradecraft and enriched telemetry from across the enterprise to deliver hyper-accurate detections, automated protection and remediation, elite threat hunting and prioritized observability of vulnerabilities.
Purpose-built in the cloud with a single lightweight-agent architecture, the Falcon platform delivers rapid and scalable deployment, superior protection and performance, reduced complexity and immediate time-to-value.
CrowdStrike: We stop breaches.
Learn more: https://www.crowdstrike.com/
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The grocery chain Iceland is offering customers who shop a thief a £1 reward on their loyalty card.
The frozen food specialist said that anyone who spots a suspected shoplifter in its stores should inform the nearest Iceland employee who will verify the incident before adding the reward to the individual’s loyalty card for immediate use.
Richard Walker, the executive chair of the family-owned group, told Channel 5 News that thefts cost the retailer £20m and drained resources that could be spent on staff hours or lower prices. “Some people see it as a victimless crime, it is not,” he said.
He said retail crime was happening right across the UK and not just in tough urban areas: “The scourge of shoplifting on our high streets continues to plague the UK, and the problem is only worsening, with criminal activity spreading across, not just big cities, but our market towns and villages too.
“In order to combat any activity in Iceland stores, we’re encouraging our loyal customers to help sound the alarm, and if they do help to catch a shoplifter, we’ll top up their Bonus Card to spend in store.”
In April official figures showed that the number of shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales has risen to the highest level on record, passing half a million offences in 2024.
Retailers say the figures from the Office for National Statistics “severely underestimate” the scale of the problem, which would amount to only two incidents for each shop a year.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has pointed to a rise in shoplifting by organised gangs stealing to order.
This week the policing minister, Dame Diana Johnson, warned the public against confronting shoplifters and suggested that retailers should not display expensive items such as alcohol at the front of stores.
Her comments followed a claim by the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley, Matthew Barber, that people had a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers.
Retailers say that shops have been seen as a soft target since a 2014 change in the law in England and Wales under which those stealing goods worth less than £200 are usually spared any prison term.
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Big chains have also been accused of contributing to the rise in crime by reducing staff numbers and using more self-service checkouts and handheld “scan and shop” devices in stores to keep costs down.
However, businesses say they have spent millions of pounds on improving security in recent years, including installing facial recognition and AI-aided cameras.
The government has set out legislation to help tackle shoplifting, including removing the £200 threshold for “low-level” theft.
The crime and policing bill, which is working its way through parliament, will also introduce a stand-alone offence of assaulting a retail worker. The government has promised funds to tackle organised gangs involved in shop theft.
U.S. Treasury yields held steady overnight, as bond market investors await key import price and retail sales data.
The 2-year Treasury yield was flat at 3.73%. The benchmark 10-year note yield also remained in place at 4.29%.
Investors will be looking out for key data such as the import price index and retail sales figures, expected at 8.30 a.m. ET.
The import price data is expected to give investors clues about the proportion of tariffs that is absorbed by foreign companies, while retail sales data will reveal how consumers are reacting to tax changes and tariffs.
Data on U.S. industrial production and consumer sentiment is also due to come in at 9.15 a.m. ET and 10 a.m. ET, respectively.
The print deluge is expected after the producer price index, a measure of wholesale U.S. inflation, climbed by a far larger-than-expected 0.9% in July on a month-over-month basis on Thursday. Economists polled by Dow Jones had expected PPI to increase 0.2% month over month.
That report throws cold water on another inflation report that came out earlier in the week indicating some softening in consumer prices. The July consumer price index had eased concerns that tariffs may be causing prices to increase rapidly.
Despite the higher inflation number, Fed funds futures were still pricing in about 93% odds of an interest rate cut in September, according to the CME’s FedWatch Tool, slightly lower than during the previous session. The futures, however, did remove any chance of a half-point cut.
Those inflation readings come ahead of the Fed’s annual gathering of the world’s central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, next week, sponsored by the Kansas City Fed, which will influence future monetary policy decisions.
— CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han and Sawdah Bhaimiya contributed reporting.
Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) and Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google Cloud on Thursday announced that they have deepened their partnership by integrating Google’s most advanced AI models, starting with Gemini 2.5, into the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Generative AI service.
The move lets Oracle customers build AI agents for multimodal understanding, advanced coding, productivity automation, research, and more directly within their Oracle environments.
Oracle will expand access to Google’s full Gemini lineup via Vertex AI, including video, image, speech, music generation models, and industry-specific solutions like MedLM.
Also Read: Oracle Cloud Layoffs Mirror Big Tech’s Cost Controls As AI Bills Climb
Plans include embedding Gemini options into Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, enhancing workflows across finance, HR, supply chain, sales, service, and marketing. Customers can use existing Oracle Universal Credits to deploy Gemini models.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said the integration makes it easier for Oracle clients to deploy powerful AI agents that support developers and streamline data integration.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure president Clay Magouyrk emphasized the partnership’s focus on delivering secure, cost-effective, enterprise-ready AI to drive innovation and meet business goals.
Oracle stock gained 47% year-to-date, backed by the AI frenzy as Big Tech giants remain invested in their AI endeavours.
ORCL Price Action: Oracle stock is trading higher by 0.63% to $246.50 premarket at last check Friday.
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This article Oracle Taps Google’s Gemini AI Models To Supercharge Cloud Services originally appeared on Benzinga.com
