Cisco Systems Inc.‘s fiscal second-quarter earnings report today was certainly a mix of good and bad. The networking giant put up a solid quarter, with earnings per share of 87 cents, slightly ahead of its guide, and revenue of $12.8 billion, which was at the high end of its estimate from last quarter.
As usual, Cisco Systems Inc.‘s annual user conference, Cisco Live EMEA in Amsterdam, serves as a platform for the networking giant to release the latest innovations across many of its product lines. Although this event is considerably smaller than the U.S. Cisco Live, it’s important for the company as Europe, the Middle East and Africa is a highly diverse region spread out across 120 countries.
The partnership between Hitachi Ltd. and Cisco Systems Inc. goes back a couple of decades. Last year, the two firms announced a strategic partnership agreement. Yesterday they deepened the deal to include a new hybrid cloud services suite focusing on enterprise data management.
After the closing bell sounded on Monday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story stating that Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. was nearing a deal to acquire Juniper Networks Inc. for $13 billion. When the story ran, Juniper’s market cap was roughly $10 billion, meaning the purchase price of $13 billion represents a 30% premium on where the stock was trading.
It was an interesting year for the world’s largest networking vendor. Cisco Systems Inc. put up record revenue and earnings despite a highly volatile macro environment affected by wars, social issues, inflation, rising interest rates and the like. The company also made the biggest acquisition in its history in September when it announced the purchase of Splunk.