Topic: Growth Stocks

Wall Street Stock Forecaster Hotline – Friday, November 15, 2013

Article Excerpt

CISCO SYSTEMS INC., $21.53, Nasdaq symbol CSCO, reported higher-than-expected earnings in its latest quarter. However, it expects weaker sales in the current quarter. That caused the stock to drop 8% this week. The company is a leading maker of hardware and software that links and manages computer networks. Its hardware includes routers, local area network (LAN) and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switches, and dial-up access servers. In Cisco’s 2014 first quarter, which ended October 26, 2013, its earnings rose 11.6%, to $2.9 billion from $2.6 billion a year earlier. Earnings per share rose 10.4%, to $0.53 from $0.48, on more shares outstanding. These figures exclude several unusual items, such as costs to integrate recent acquisitions. On that basis, the latest earnings beat the consensus estimate of $0.51 a share. Revenue rose 1.8%, to $12.1 billion from $11.9 billion. However, that missed the consensus revenue estimate of $12.3 billion. The slow-growing global economy and the 16-day U.S. government shutdown have hurt demand for networking equipment. As…