Why Cisco Is Upsetting the Cisco Bears and Critics After Earnings

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) has finally reported earnings, and the company is including more dividend and buyback news with earnings growth. The report is also far less cautious than many of the tech bears had been expecting. With shares having closed down 0.6% at $22.51 ahead of earnings, what stands out now is that Cisco shares were down 16.5% from its dividend-adjusted share price of $26.95 as recently as the end of 2015.

Earnings were reported as $0.57 non-GAAP and revenue rose 2% to $11.8 billion. Thomson Reuters had estimates at $0.54 in non-GAAP EPS and $11.76 billion in revenue.

Cisco offered guidance ahead as well. Its revenue growth is now projected to be 1% to 4% year over year (normalized to exclude SP Video CPE Business for the third quarter of 2015). It sees non-GAAP earnings per share in a range of $0.54 to $0.56 versus a $0.55 estimate.

Cisco declared a quarterly dividend of $0.26 per share, a 24% or increase over the previous quarter’s dividend. Its board of directors has also approved a $15 billion increase to the authorization of the stock repurchase program. Keep in mind that Cisco is a serial buyback player — Cisco’s board had previously authorized up to $97 billion in stock repurchases and its remaining authorized amount for stock repurchases under this program, including the additional authorization, is approximately $16.9 billion.

As of January 23, 2016, Cisco said that it has repurchased and retired 4.5 billion shares of Cisco common shares at an average price of $20.97 per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $95.1 billion since the inception.
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Additional segment and financial data was shown as follows:

• Service revenue growth was 3%.
• Revenue by geographic segment was: Americas and EMEA each up 1%, and APJC up 11%.
• Security increased 11%.
• NGN Routing rose 5%.
• Collaboration increased 3%.
• Wireless was flat.
• Switching was down by 4%.
• Data Center was down 3%.
• Cash and Equivalents was $60.4 billion (versus $59.1 billion prior and versus $60.4 billion year ago).
• Gross Margin (Non-GAAP) total was 64.2%, and product gross margin was 63.3%.
• Non-GAAP operating expenses were $3.9 billion, down 1% and at 33.0% of revenue.
• Headcount compared with the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2016 decreased by 406 to 71,657 (includes impact from divestiture).
• Deferred Revenue was up 8% to $15.2 billion, with deferred product revenue up 11%.

CEO Chuck Robbins said:

We delivered a strong second quarter, and are managing the business extremely well in a challenging macro environment. We’re managing the company on two fronts. We’re focused on continued strong execution in the near term while investing in the innovation to lead our customers into the future.

Kelly Kramer, Cisco’s CFO, said:

We had another strong quarter, delivering both the top line and bottom line growth. I’m happy with the progress we are making as we continue to shift our business model to more software, and recurring revenue. We are very confident in the strength of our business and future cash flows allowing the substantial increase of our dividend this quarter to $0.26. We remain committed to our shareholders in delivering profitable growth and returning a minimum of 50 percent of our free cash flow back annually.

Cisco shares were last seen up almost 10% at $24.80 in the after-hours session. Its 52-week range is $22.46 to $30.31 and its consensus analyst price target was last seen at $29.90.