Topic: How To Invest

Pat: what is your opinion about well-known company Cisco? I am a new Inner Circle member.

Article Excerpt

Cisco Systems Inc., $19.08, symbol CSCO on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 5.4 billion; Market cap: $103.0 billion; www.cisco.com), is a leading maker of hardware and software that links and manages computer networks. The company’s hardware includes routers, local area network (LAN) and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switches, and dial-up access servers. Cisco’s Internet Operating System (IOS) software ties these products together, delivers network services (which interconnect and move information between networks) and lets programs run across networks. Cisco gets about 47% of its revenue from overseas customers. In 2011, Cisco announced a major restructuring plan that included closing its Flip camcorder operations and its other consumer-products businesses. As a result of these closures, the company cut 9% of its workforce. Thanks to these moves, Cisco has already reached its goal of cutting its yearly costs by $1 billion. If you exclude one-time items, such as severance costs, Cisco’s earnings rose 23.3%, to $2.6 billion, in its fiscal 2012 second quarter, which ended January 28, 2012…