Cisco jumps after crushing Wall Street sales, earnings forecasts

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

Cisco Systems CEO Chuck Robbins responds to questions at 2015 WSJD Live on October 20, 2015 in Laguna Beach, California. WSJ D Live brings together top CEOs, founders, pioneers, investors and luminaries to explore the most exciting tech opportunities emerging around the world. AFP PHOTO / FREDERIC J. BROWN

• Cisco Systems on Wednesday reported second-quarter profits that beat Wall Street estimates.
• The company's quarterly sales were in line with forecasts.
• Cisco also provided relatively bullish outlooks for profit and revenue in the third quarter.
• Watch Cisco Systems trade live.

Networking hardware company Cisco Systems jumped 3.9% to $49.36 a share on Thursday after announcing quarterly results that beat Wall Street estimates.

The company on Wednesday posted $0.73 adjusted earnings per share in the second quarter, while analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting $0.724 a share. It generated $12 billion in revenue, which was also in line with the Wall Street consensus.

Looking ahead, the company sees its third-quarter adjusted profits in the range of $0.76 to $0.78, while analysts were expecting $0.76 a share. Meanwhile, Cisco expects its revenue to grow as much as 6% on yearly basis in the third quarter, indicating $12.97 billion sales, versus an expected $12.83 billion.

"Our teams are executing incredibly well, aggressively transitioning to a software model and accelerating our pace of innovation," CEO Chuck Robbins said in a press release.

He continued: "We are redefining and connecting every domain of the networking infrastructure to deliver the agility, operational efficiency and security our customers require to embrace multicloud, edge computing and digital transformation."

Unlike many other US hardware makers, Cisco only has a tiny percentage of sales coming from China, where it's been largely locked out of the market. The US government's recent actions to discourage purchases of equipment from one of its biggest rivals, Huawei, could add tailwinds for Cisco, some analysts have said.

Cisco is up 13% so far this year.

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