Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Cisco announces solid results for their latest quarter

Cisco announced solid results for their latest quarter. Cisco's sales grew 9.3%, to $6.6 billion, which was roughly in line with Wall Street estimates. Orders in the router business increased nearly 10% in the quarter over the previous year, while orders for Cisco's switch business rose more than 15%.

And it looks like investments that Cisco and others have made in fast growing new teshnologies may be spurring this spending. VOIP phone systems, network-security products, and consumer-networking equipment, plus a digital video-networking effort which will go into high gear once Cisco's completed its acquisition of Scientific-Atlanta, are all spurring upgrade cycles in big ticket switches and routers.

So, even though Cisco is a long way from their glory days at the beginning of the decade, they are making a lot of solid bets at the moment. Their stock may even start rising more aggressively again soon. Plus, connecting consumer electronics devices to the Internet will be huge going forwards and Cisco could sit at the centre of it.

And the overall news from this tech bellwether was the sort that builds confidence. With so many corporations and consumers looking to use the Internet to do so many new things - from VoIP at big companies to IPTV rollouts by telecoms like AT&T and Verizon - there's little doubt that Cisco holds an enviable hand.

No comments: