John Chambers Almost Taking Cisco Systems Private (CSCO)

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) is seeing a pop in pre-market trading.  The network and data communications equipment giant announced that at its board of directors meeting, the board authorized up to $10 Billion more to be used for additional share repurchases of its common stock with an indefinite time period.  This will have increased the total authorized amount under the program to $62 Billion if this is fully completed.

This is only one part of the reasoning 24/7 Wall St. used in its assessment that Cisco stock shouldn’t have sold off to under $30.00 for a longer-term when you compare the stock at $30.00 in early 2004.
You can also look over the conference call commentary and see the John Chambers Q&A to see additional information.

Cisco shares are up 1.8% in pre-market trading at $29.85.  Cisco’s market cap is $178.5 Billion, so if it will have retired $62 Billion when it’s all said and done it’s almost like taking themselves partly private.  Cisco needs to remain a public company because markets change through time.  But how many companies have spent that much buying back stock that have seen the steady success that this company has?

24/7 Wall St. has not issued its price targets for 2008 for Cisco and other key technology stocks.  We’ll be issuing a summary of these  in the coming weeks to our open distribution list before a more detailed posting of each target individually on the site here.  Early in 2007 we issued a $34 price target for Cisco and that was hit right before the last earnings call.   

Jon C. Ogg
November 16, 2007

Jon Ogg produces the 24/7 Wall St. Special Situation Investing Newsletter; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.