CSCO Cisco Systems Inc

SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ --

News Summary:

• Broad-based strength in product orders demonstrating growing demand for Cisco technologies
  • Product orders up 29% year over year; up 11% excluding Splunk
  • AI Infrastructure orders of more than $350 million, bringing the total for 1HFY25 to approximately $700 million
• Revenue of $14.0 billion, above the high end of our guidance range
• Strong profitability:
  • GAAP gross margin of 65.1% and non-GAAP gross margin of 68.7%
  • GAAP EPS of $0.61 and non-GAAP EPS of $0.94, above the high end of our guidance range
• Quarterly dividend increased to $0.41 per share, up 3%, and additional $15 billion authorized for stock repurchases
• Q2 FY 2025 Results:
  • Revenue: $14.0 billion
    • Increase of 9% year over year
  • Earnings per Share: GAAP: $0.61; Non-GAAP: $0.94
    • GAAP EPS decreased 6% year over year
    • Non-GAAP EPS increased 8% year over year
• Q3 FY 2025 Guidance:   
  • Revenue: $13.9 billion to $14.1 billion
  • Earnings per Share: GAAP: $0.57 to $0.61; Non-GAAP: $0.90 to $0.92
• FY 2025 Guidance:
  • Revenue: $56.0 billion to $56.5 billion
  • Earnings per Share: GAAP: $2.40 to $2.52; Non-GAAP: $3.68 to $3.74

Cisco today reported second quarter results for the period ended January 25, 2025. Cisco reported second quarter revenue of $14.0 billion, net income on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis of $2.4 billion or $0.61 per share, and non-GAAP net income of $3.8 billion or $0.94 per share.

"Cisco's strong quarterly results were driven by accelerating customer demand for our technology," said Chuck Robbins, chair and CEO of Cisco. "As AI becomes more pervasive, we are well positioned to help our customers scale their network infrastructure, increase their data capacity requirements, and adopt best-in-class AI security."

"Q2 was another quarter of solid execution which drove revenue and EPS above our guidance ranges. Splunk continues to perform in line with our expectations on the top line, and was accretive to Q2 non-GAAP EPS, earlier than we had planned," said Scott Herren, CFO of Cisco. "Our strong cash flows have led us to increase our annual dividend again this year, as well as our overall share repurchase authorization."

Reconciliations between net income, EPS, and other measures on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis are provided in the tables located in the section entitled "Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP Measures."

Cisco Increases Quarterly Dividend; Stock Repurchase Program Authorization Increased

Cisco has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.41 per common share, a 1-cent increase or up 3% over the previous quarter's dividend, to be paid on April 23, 2025, to all stockholders of record as of the close of business on April 3, 2025. Future dividends will be subject to Board approval.

Cisco's board of directors has also approved a $15 billion increase to the authorization of the stock repurchase program. There is no fixed termination date for the repurchase program. The remaining authorized fixed amount for stock repurchases including the additional authorization is approximately $17 billion.

Financial Summary

All comparative percentages are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted.

Q2 FY 2025 Highlights

Revenue -- Total revenue was $14.0 billion, up 9%, with product revenue up 11% and services revenue up 6%. Excluding the contribution from Splunk, total revenue was down 1%.

Revenue by geographic segment was: Americas up 9%, EMEA up 11%, and APJC up 8%. Product revenue performance reflected growth in Security up 117%, Observability up 47%, and Collaboration up 1%. Networking was down 3%. Excluding Splunk, Security and Observability grew 4% and 3%, respectively, in the second quarter of fiscal 2025.

Gross Margin -- On a GAAP basis, total gross margin, product gross margin, and services gross margin were 65.1%, 63.7%, and 68.9%, respectively, as compared with 64.2%, 62.7%, and 68.2%, respectively, in the second quarter of fiscal 2024.

On a non-GAAP basis, total gross margin, product gross margin, and services gross margin were 68.7%, 67.7%, and 71.6%, respectively, as compared with 66.7%, 65.2%, and 70.5%, respectively, in the second quarter of fiscal 2024.

Total gross margins by geographic segment were: 67.6% for the Americas, 71.3% for EMEA and 68.3% for APJC.

Operating Expenses -- On a GAAP basis, operating expenses were $6.0 billion, up 17%, and were 42.9% of revenue. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $4.8 billion, up 10%, and were 34.0% of revenue.

Operating Income -- GAAP operating income was $3.1 billion, up 1%, with GAAP operating margin of 22.3%. Non-GAAP operating income was $4.9 billion, up 15%, with non-GAAP operating margin at 34.7%.

Provision for Income Taxes -- The GAAP tax provision rate was 15.9%. The non-GAAP tax provision rate was 19.0%.

Net Income and EPS -- On a GAAP basis, net income was $2.4 billion, a decrease of 8%, and EPS was $0.61, a decrease of 6%. On a non-GAAP basis, net income was $3.8 billion, an increase of 6%, and EPS was $0.94, an increase of 8%.

Cash Flow from Operating Activities -- $2.2 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2025, an increase of 177%, compared with $0.8 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2024.

Balance Sheet and Other Financial Highlights

Cash and Cash Equivalents and Investments -- $16.9 billion at the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2025, compared with $17.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2024.

Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) -- $41.3 billion, up 16% in total, with 51% of this amount to be recognized as revenue over the next 12 months. Product RPO up 25% and services RPO up 8%.

Deferred Revenue -- $27.8 billion, up 8% in total, with deferred product revenue up 12%. Deferred services revenue up 4%.

Capital Allocation -- In the second quarter of fiscal 2025, we returned $2.8 billion to stockholders through share buybacks and dividends. We declared and paid a cash dividend of $0.40 per common share, or $1.6 billion, and repurchased approximately 21 million shares of common stock under our stock repurchase program at an average price of $58.58 per share for an aggregate purchase price of $1.2 billion.

Acquisitions

In the second quarter of fiscal 2025, we closed the acquisition of Deeper Insights AI Ltd., a privately held AI services company.

Guidance

Cisco estimates the following results for the third quarter of fiscal 2025:

Gross margin guidance includes the estimated impact of proposed tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China.

Cisco estimates that GAAP EPS will be $0.57 to $0.61 for the third quarter of fiscal 2025.

Cisco estimates the following results for fiscal 2025:

Gross margin guidance includes the estimated impact of proposed tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China.

Cisco estimates that GAAP EPS will be $2.40 to $2.52 for fiscal 2025.

Our Q3 FY 2025 guidance assumes an effective tax provision rate of approximately 17% for GAAP and approximately 19% for non-GAAP results. Our FY 2025 guidance assumes an effective tax provision rate of approximately 9% for GAAP and approximately 19% for non-GAAP results.

A reconciliation between the guidance on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis is provided in the tables entitled "GAAP to non-GAAP Guidance" located in the section entitled "Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP Measures."

Editor's Notes:

• Q2 fiscal year 2025 conference call to discuss Cisco's results along with its guidance will be held on Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Conference call number is 1-888-848-6507 (United States) or 1-212-519-0847 (international).
• Conference call replay will be available from 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time, February 12, 2025 to 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time, February 18, 2025 at 1-800-395-6236 (United States) or 1-203-369-3270 (international). The replay will also be available via webcast on the Cisco Investor Relations website at https://investor.cisco.com.
• Additional information regarding Cisco's financials, as well as a webcast of the conference call with visuals designed to guide participants through the call, will be available at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time, February 12, 2025. Text of the conference call's prepared remarks will be available within 24 hours of completion of the call. The webcast will include both the prepared remarks and the question-and-answer session. This information, along with the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation information, will be available on the Cisco Investor Relations website at https://investor.cisco.com.

Forward Looking Statements, Non-GAAP Information and Additional Information

This release may be deemed to contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include, among other things, statements regarding future events (such as customer demand and our position to help our customers scale their network infrastructure, increase their data capacity requirements, and adopt best-in-class AI security) and the future financial performance of Cisco (including the guidance for Q3 FY 2025 and full year FY 2025) that involve risks and uncertainties. Readers are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results due to a variety of factors, including: business and economic conditions and growth trends in the networking industry, our customer markets and various geographic regions; global economic conditions and uncertainties in the geopolitical environment; our development and use of artificial intelligence; overall information technology spending; the growth and evolution of the Internet and levels of capital spending on Internet-based systems; variations in customer demand for products and services, including sales to the service provider market, cloud, enterprise and other customer markets; the return on our investments in certain key priority areas, and in certain geographical locations, as well as maintaining leadership in Networking and services; the timing of orders and manufacturing and customer lead times; supply constraints; changes in customer order patterns or customer mix; insufficient, excess or obsolete inventory; variability of component costs; variations in sales channels, product costs or mix of products sold; our ability to successfully acquire businesses and technologies and to successfully integrate and operate these acquired businesses and technologies; our ability to achieve expected benefits of our partnerships; increased competition in our product and services markets, including the data center market; dependence on the introduction and market acceptance of new product offerings and standards; rapid technological and market change; manufacturing and sourcing risks; product defects and returns; litigation involving patents, other intellectual property, antitrust, stockholder and other matters, and governmental investigations; our ability to achieve the benefits of restructurings and possible changes in the size and timing of related charges; cyber attacks, data breaches or other incidents; vulnerabilities and critical security defects; our ability to protect personal data; evolving regulatory uncertainty; terrorism; natural catastrophic events (including as a result of global climate change); any pandemic or epidemic; our ability to achieve the benefits anticipated from our investments in sales, engineering, service, marketing and manufacturing activities; our ability to recruit and retain key personnel; our ability to manage financial risk, and to manage expenses during economic downturns; risks related to the global nature of our operations, including our operations in emerging markets; currency fluctuations and other international factors; changes in provision for income taxes, including changes in tax laws and regulations or adverse outcomes resulting from examinations of our income tax returns; potential volatility in operating results; and other factors listed in Cisco's most recent reports on Forms 10-Q and 10-K filed on November 19, 2024 and September 5, 2024, respectively. The financial information contained in this release should be read in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and notes thereto included in Cisco's most recent reports on Forms 10-Q and 10-K as each may be amended from time to time. Cisco's results of operations for the three and six months ended January 25, 2025 are not necessarily indicative of Cisco's operating results for any future periods. Any projections in this release are based on limited information currently available to Cisco, which is subject to change. Although any such projections and the factors influencing them will likely change, Cisco will not necessarily update the information, since Cisco will only provide guidance at certain points during the year. Such information speaks only as of the date of this release.

This release includes non-GAAP net income, non-GAAP gross margins, non-GAAP operating expenses, non-GAAP operating income and margin, non-GAAP effective tax rates, non-GAAP interest and other income (loss), net, and non-GAAP net income per share data for the periods presented. It also includes future estimated ranges for gross margin, operating margin, tax provision rate and EPS on a non-GAAP basis.

These non-GAAP measures are not in accordance with, or an alternative for, measures prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and may be different from non-GAAP measures used by other companies. In addition, these non-GAAP measures are not based on any comprehensive set of accounting rules or principles. Cisco believes that non-GAAP measures have limitations in that they do not reflect all of the amounts associated with Cisco's results of operations as determined in accordance with GAAP and that these measures should only be used to evaluate Cisco's results of operations in conjunction with the corresponding GAAP measures.

Cisco believes that the presentation of non-GAAP measures when shown in conjunction with the corresponding GAAP measures, provides useful information to investors and management regarding financial and business trends relating to its financial condition and its historical and projected results of operations.

For its internal budgeting process, Cisco's management uses financial statements that do not include, when applicable, share-based compensation expense, amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets, acquisition/divestiture-related costs, significant asset impairments and restructurings, significant litigation settlements and other contingencies, Russia-Ukraine war costs, gains and losses on investments, the income tax effects of the foregoing and significant tax matters. Cisco's management also uses the foregoing non-GAAP measures, in addition to the corresponding GAAP measures, in reviewing the financial results of Cisco. In prior periods, Cisco has excluded other items that it no longer excludes for purposes of its non-GAAP financial measures. From time to time in the future there may be other items that Cisco may exclude for purposes of its internal budgeting process and in reviewing its financial results. For additional information on the items excluded by Cisco from one or more of its non-GAAP financial measures, refer to the Form 8-K regarding this release furnished today to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that is revolutionizing the way organizations connect and protect in the AI era. For more than 40 years, Cisco has securely connected the world. With its industry leading AI-powered solutions and services, Cisco enables its customers, partners and communities to unlock innovation, enhance productivity and strengthen digital resilience. With purpose at its core, Cisco remains committed to creating a more connected and inclusive future for all. Discover more on The Newsroom and follow us on X at @Cisco.

Copyright © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. This document is Cisco Public Information.

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