Cisco Systems (CSCO) reports their fiscal Q4 ’25 after the closing bell on Wednesday night, August 13, 2025.<\/p>\n
Analyst consensus is expecting $0.98 in earnings per share on $14.6 billion in revenue as well as 4.97 billion in operating income, for expected year-over-year (y-o-y) growth of 13%, 7% and 14% respectively.<\/p>\n
With fiscal Q3 ’25 results (reported in May ’25), Cisco raised EPS and revenue guidance for the fiscal 4th quarter. Cisco’s non-GAAP operating margin also came in about 150 bp’s better than expected, all three factors leading to a nice bump in forward EPS and revenue estimates.<\/p>\n
Fiscal Q1 ’26, which presumably Cisco will guide for on Wednesday night, is expecting $14.6 billion in revenue, $4.9 billion in operating income, and $0.97 in earnings per share, for expected y-o-y growth of 6%, 4% and 7% respectively, so – at least in terms of the numbers and y-o-y growth – Q1 ’26 or the quarter ended October ’25, is expected right now to be a little slower than the last fiscal quarter of ’25.<\/p>\n
Cisco’s last big acquisition, Splunk, will now be in Cisco’s organic numbers with fiscal Q4 ’25, as opposed to Cisco reporting metrics ex-Splunk, which they did in fiscal Q3 ’25, when product orders rose 9% y-o-y ex-Splunk.<\/p>\n
In terms of AI, Cisco appears to have a relatively small AI offering for now, just $1 billion versus the $56 – $59 billion in annual revenue, but the AI revenue did look to have beaten expectations in fiscal Q3 ’25.<\/p>\n
Valuation:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Up 21% YTD as of Monday night’s close, Cisco is trading at 17x expected fiscal ’26 earnings, with an expected 6% growth rate in EPS next year. Cisco’s valuation remains reasonable, particularly given the 4% – 5% free-cash-flow yield the stock still sports.<\/p>\n It’s been such a slow-growing tech stock it’s almost been forgotten about.<\/p>\n Just averaging the last 5 years EPS growth of 4%, the analyst consensus for ’26 – ’28 is an average 8%, which is double the old rate, and probably incorporates some enthusiasm regarding Splunk and the security \/ cyber-security market.<\/p>\n Cisco revenue growth has averaged 2% the last 5 years, while the forward 3 year estimates are expected to average 5%.<\/p>\n The sell-side community is expecting Cisco’s growth rates to improve.<\/p>\n The first sign will be to see how fiscal ’26 looks like on Wednesday night, August 13th.<\/p>\n Summary \/ conclusion:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n When you’re buying Cisco, you’re buying one of the flagship growth stocks of the 1990’s bull market that has had a very difficult time transitioning to any kind of meaningful revenue growth the last 25 years. In fact Cisco has averaged just 3% revenue growth per year since 2010. Cisco EPS growth has averaged just 3% since 2001, and 7% since 2010.<\/p>\n That being said, each technology evolution brings new opportunities. Cisco’s acquisitions over the last 25 years have not been very effective in adding to revenue growth, although Splunk could be an effective addition to Cisco’s cybersecurity offering within the security segment.<\/p>\n Cisco’s security segment was only 4% of total revenue and was just just growing at 3% – 4% for years, but Splunk might change that for Cisco. (Analysts and investors will get a better look at the security segment’s organic growth now that Splunk will be part of the results for a year.)<\/p>\n Even a return to high-single-digit EPS and revenue growth will be a plus for Cisco, which is only just now traded back within $10 of it’s April, 2000 high of $82 per share.<\/p>\n From a portfolio construction standpoint, Cisco is a classic, “non-correlated” name (i.e. non-correlated to the Mag 7, Mag 10, Nasdaq 100, etc.) so it’s a perfect stock for a longer-term, patient investor. (Previous articles on CSCO: here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>. )<\/p>\n None of this is advice or recommendation but only an opinion. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.<\/p>\n Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cisco Systems (CSCO) reports their fiscal Q4 ’25 after the closing bell on Wednesday night, August 13, 2025. Analyst consensus…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-csco"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18521"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18530,"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18521\/revisions\/18530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundamentalis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}