Cisco Systems (CSCO) — Company Research

Last Updated: 27 August 2026

Cisco Systems finished fiscal 2026 on 25 July 2026 with revenue of $63.3bn, up 12%, and reported it on 12 August 2026. The company has spent five years telling investors it was becoming a subscription software business; fiscal 2026 was the year the story changed. Hyperscaler orders for AI infrastructure reached $9.3bn, networking revenue grew 22%, and the recurring-revenue metrics Cisco used to lead with have quietly disappeared from the press release. This report sets out what the filings and releases say, with no ratings and no price targets.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	CSCO — Nasdaq. Constituent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100
Sector	Technology — communication equipment and networking
Headquarters	170 West Tasman Drive, San Jose, California
Founded / incorporated	Incorporated in California in 1984; reincorporated in Delaware in 2021
CEO / Leadership	Chuck Robbins, Chair and Chief Executive Officer, quoted as such in the results release of 12 August 2026. Mark Patterson has been Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer since 27 July 2025, succeeding Scott Herren, whose advisory transition ended on 1 May 2026. Jeetu Patel is President and Chief Product Officer
Employees	Approximately 86,200 as at 26 July 2025, the latest disclosed figure. The FY2026 Form 10-K had not been filed as at 27 August 2026, and the count predates the restructuring announced 13 May 2026 that cuts roughly 4,000 roles
Revenue (latest reported fiscal year)	$63,325m for FY2026 (year ended 25 July 2026), up 11.8%
Net income (FY2026, GAAP)	$13,267m; GAAP diluted EPS $3.33. Non-GAAP diluted EPS $4.33
Annualised recurring revenue	$32.1bn as at 25 July 2026, up 3%. Disclosed on the earnings call only — the metric no longer appears in the press release
Remaining performance obligations	$46,734m, up 7% (product $23,436m, services $23,298m)
Market cap	Approximately $442.9bn, based on the 26 August 2026 closing price of $112.36 and 3,941.4m shares outstanding
Dividend	$0.42 per share per quarter, $1.68 annualised, a yield of about 1.50%. Raised from $0.41 on 11 February 2026 — the fifteenth consecutive annual increase
Fiscal year end	Last Saturday of July. FY2026 ended 25 July 2026; FY2027 ends around 25 July 2027

Related ChartsView tools: Live Charts for price action, and the Economic Calendar for the macro backdrop.

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• The AI order book went from rounding error to $9.3bn in a year: FY2026 hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders totalled $9.3bn, of which $4.0bn landed in Q4 alone, roughly 4.5 times the FY2025 level. AI infrastructure revenue was about $4bn in FY2026 and the company has targeted $7.5bn for FY2027.
• FY2027 guidance implies a step change, not a plateau: revenue of $72.2bn to $73.4bn against a FY2026 base of $63.3bn is growth of 14% to 16%, the fastest Cisco has guided in its modern history. Non-GAAP EPS of $5.05 to $5.11 is growth of 17% to 18%, and management indicated roughly 10% growth in the core business excluding AI infrastructure.
• Operating leverage is offsetting margin mix: Q4 FY2026 non-GAAP gross margin fell 210 basis points year on year to 66.3%, yet non-GAAP operating margin rose 160 basis points to 35.9%, because non-GAAP operating expenses dropped from 34.1% to 30.4% of revenue. Full-year non-GAAP operating income was $22.0bn, up 13%.
• Demand is broad, not a single-customer story: Q4 total product orders rose 35% year on year and were still up 25% excluding hyperscalers, with double-digit growth in every geography and customer market. Enterprise product orders rose 21%, public sector 30% and service provider and cloud 95%. Networking product orders grew 40%, an eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.
• Cash return is uninterrupted and long-term debt has fallen: $12.7bn was returned to shareholders in FY2026, long-term debt was cut from $22,861m to $19,372m, and the dividend rose for a fifteenth consecutive year with $8.1bn of buyback authorisation still available.

Bear Case

• Gross margin is being traded away for AI volume, by design: Q4 product non-GAAP gross margin fell 270 basis points year on year to 64.8%. The Chief Financial Officer told the call to expect a slight gross margin headwind through FY2027, and Q1 FY2027 non-GAAP gross margin is guided to 65% to 66%, below the 66.9% FY2026 average.
• The recurring-revenue story has stalled and left the press release: ARR of $32.1bn grew only 3% and product ARR 5%, against total revenue growth of 12%. Subscription revenue fell to 48% of the total in Q4 FY2026 from 51% in FY2024, and deferred revenue grew 3%. Neither ARR nor subscription revenue appears anywhere in the FY2026 quarterly releases; both are now spoken remarks on the call.
• Security, the strategic bet, grew 2%: FY2026 security revenue of $8,232m was up just 2% on $8,063m, with Q2 down 4% and Q3 flat. Collaboration grew 4% and Observability 4%. Outside Networking, essentially nothing is growing.
• Working capital absorbed the growth and cash flow did not move: FY2026 operating cash flow of $14,177m was flat against $14,193m in FY2025 despite net income rising 30%. Inventories jumped 80% from $3,164m to $5,694m, financing receivables rose from $6,527m to $8,332m, and short-term debt nearly doubled from $5,232m to $10,161m.
• Goodwill exceeds equity: goodwill of $59,477m plus purchased intangibles of $7,557m totals $67.0bn against total equity of $50,285m, largely a legacy of the $28bn Splunk deal. Cisco no longer discloses Splunk's revenue, ARR or margin separately, so the return on that capital cannot be verified from outside.

3. Segments and Revenue Breakdown

Cisco did not realign its product categories in FY2026 — Networking, Security, Collaboration and Observability, plus Services, are unchanged across all four quarters and against FY2025, as are the Americas, EMEA and APJC geographic segments. The material disclosure change is the removal of ARR and subscription metrics from the earnings release.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Networking	54.7% ($34,668m in FY2026, up 22%)	Switching, routing, wireless and the data-centre portfolio, including the AI infrastructure sold to hyperscalers and the campus refresh cycle. Q4 alone was $9,791m, up 28%. This single category delivered essentially all of Cisco's FY2026 growth.
Services	23.7% ($15,030m in FY2026, flat)	Technical support and advanced services attached to the installed hardware base. Carries a 68.8% GAAP gross margin against 63.2% for product, and behaves as an annuity — but it did not grow at all in FY2026, in the year or in Q4.
Security	13.0% ($8,232m in FY2026, up 2%)	Network security, Splunk, Duo, Hypershield and AI Defense. Q4 rose 14% on strength in Splunk and network security, but the full year grew 2% with Q2 down 4%.
Collaboration	6.8% ($4,300m in FY2026, up 4%)	Webex, calling, meetings and devices. Q4 grew 12%.
Observability	1.7% ($1,095m in FY2026, up 4%)	ThousandEyes, AppDynamics and the newly acquired Galileo. The smallest category, and the one Cisco is expanding by acquisition.

By geography in FY2026: Americas $37,799m (59.7%, up 12%, gross margin 65.1%); EMEA $16,613m (26.2%, up 12%, gross margin 71.2%); APJC $8,914m (14.1%, up 9%, gross margin 66.6%). Total product revenue was $48,295m (76.3%, up 16%) against services of $15,030m (23.7%, flat).

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Two lines. Product revenue of $48,295m in FY2026 is hardware and the software licensed onto it; services revenue of $15,030m is technical support and advanced services attached to the installed base. Services carry the better margin — 68.8% GAAP against 63.2% for product — and behave as an annuity, but they grew 0% in FY2026, so the growth is entirely in the lower-margin line. That mix shift is the single most important thing happening to Cisco's income statement.

The subscription shift has partially reversed. Subscription revenue peaked at 51% of the total in FY2024, when Splunk was newly consolidated, and was 48% in Q4 FY2026. ARR of $32.1bn is growing 3%. Remaining performance obligations of $46,734m (up 7%) and deferred revenue of $29,781m (up 3%) are the contracted backlog, and both are growing well below total revenue — because hardware, which is recognised on shipment, is growing far faster than anything sold as a subscription.

Switching costs come from operations, not features. The 10-K describes customers treating Cisco as a strategic partner for network design, deployment and support because of the scale and complexity of their networks. In practice the lock-in is the CCNA, CCNP and CCIE certification ecosystem, IOS and NX-OS operational tooling embedded in customers' change-management processes, and a sales and technical organisation of roughly 25,600 people.

Silicon One is the moat Cisco is actually betting on. The strategy is to control the switching silicon, the systems and the operating software together. The G300 for scale-out was announced in February 2026 and the P200 for what Cisco calls scale-across followed at Cisco Live in June. Notably, Cisco runs a dual track: it also ships NVIDIA Spectrum silicon under a Cisco operating system in the 102.4Tbps N9100, offering customers either architecture rather than forcing a choice.

Vertical supply-chain control is now explicit. The Chief Financial Officer told the Q4 call there is no intermediary between Cisco and TSMC across wafers, substrates, assembly and test. Cisco also took a direct equity position of roughly 2% to 3% in DRAM maker Nanya Technology, in a private placement that closed on 8 April 2026, to secure memory supply into a shortage the vendor says runs to at least the end of 2027.

5. Financial Health

All figures below come from Cisco's quarterly earnings releases furnished on Form 8-K and its Form 10-K filings. Balance-sheet and cash-flow items for FY2022 to FY2025 have been re-derived from SEC XBRL company facts; FY2026 figures come from the results release of 12 August 2026, as the FY2026 Form 10-K had not been filed as at 27 August 2026.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2022 (to 30 Jul 2022)	51,557	+3.0%	$2.82	$3.36	$1.50	$8,416m
FY2023 (to 29 Jul 2023)	56,998	+10.6%	$3.07	$3.89	$1.54	$6,658m
FY2024 (to 27 Jul 2024)	53,803	−5.6%	$2.54	$3.73	$1.58	$19,621m
FY2025 (to 26 Jul 2025)	56,654	+5.3%	$2.55	$3.81	$1.62	$22,861m
FY2026 (to 25 Jul 2026)	63,325	+11.8%	$3.33	$4.33	$1.66	$19,372m

† The long-term debt column is the non-current portion only. Short-term debt sat alongside it at $5,232m in FY2025 and $10,161m in FY2026, so total debt was $28,093m and $29,533m respectively — the FY2026 fall in long-term debt is maturities rolling into the current bucket rather than net repayment. FY2026 cash-flow data shows $13,048m of debt issued and $12,251m repaid, with no new benchmark bond deal identified in calendar 2026. The step up in FY2024 reflects the borrowing that funded the Splunk acquisition, which closed 18 March 2024. Dividends are the amounts declared per share; the FY2026 total of $1.66 comprises $0.41, $0.41, $0.42 and $0.42.

Quarter / Half	Revenue ($m)	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q4 FY2026 (to 25 Jul 2026)	17,252	$1.22	$0.97
Q3 FY2026 (to 25 Apr 2026)	15,841	$1.06	$0.85
Q2 FY2026 (to 24 Jan 2026)	15,349	$1.04	$0.80
Q1 FY2026 (to 25 Oct 2025)	14,883	$1.00	$0.72
Q4 FY2025 (to 26 Jul 2025)	14,673	$0.99	$0.64
FY2026 total (to 25 Jul 2026)	63,325	$4.33	$3.33

The quarterly revenue figures reconcile: first-half revenue of $30,232m plus Q3 $15,841m plus Q4 $17,252m equals the $63,325m full-year total. FY2026 GAAP results carry $693m of restructuring charges, of which $511m fell in Q4, relating to the plan announced on 13 May 2026.

Cash flow and balance sheet. FY2026 operating cash flow was $14,177m, essentially flat on $14,193m in FY2025, against capital expenditure of $1,410m (up 56% from $905m), giving free cash flow of $12,767m. Depreciation, amortisation and other was $2,540m, of which $1,834m was amortisation of acquisition-related intangibles. Cash and equivalents of $7,218m plus short-term investments of $8,700m totalled $15,918m at year end, against total debt of $29,533m — net debt of $13,615m. Share-based compensation was $3,830m. Dividends paid were $6,553m and buybacks $6,106m, with a further $1,873m of tax-withholding repurchases.

Guidance issued 12 August 2026. For FY2027 the company guides to revenue of $72.2bn to $73.4bn, non-GAAP EPS of $5.05 to $5.11 and GAAP EPS of $4.00 to $4.06. For Q1 FY2027 it guides to revenue of $18.0bn to $18.2bn, non-GAAP gross margin of 65% to 66%, non-GAAP operating margin of 35.5% to 36.5%, non-GAAP EPS of $1.32 to $1.34 and GAAP EPS of $1.08 to $1.10. The release explicitly names the actual impact of tariffs as a risk to that guidance.

6. Valuation

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Market cap	~$442.9bn (26 August 2026 close of $112.36 × 3,941.4m shares outstanding)
Enterprise value	~$456.5bn (market cap $442.9bn + total debt $29.5bn − cash and short-term investments $15.9bn, per the balance sheet at 25 July 2026. Total debt is short-term $10,161m plus long-term $19,372m)
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	~33.7x (share price $112.36 / FY2026 GAAP diluted EPS $3.33). On FY2026 non-GAAP diluted EPS of $4.33 the multiple is about 25.9x; the $1.00 gap is share-based compensation, acquisition-related amortisation and restructuring
P/E (forward)	~22.1x (share price $112.36 / the $5.08 midpoint of company FY2027 non-GAAP EPS guidance of $5.05 to $5.11). On the GAAP guidance midpoint of $4.03 the multiple is about 27.9x
P/S (TTM)	~7.0x (market cap $442.9bn / FY2026 revenue $63,325m)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	~25.5x (enterprise value $456.5bn / EBITDA $17,908m; EBITDA = FY2026 GAAP operating income $15,368m + depreciation, amortisation and other of $2,540m from the cash flow statement, which is the wider figure and includes the $1,834m of acquisition-related intangible amortisation)
P/FCF	~34.7x (market cap $442.9bn / free cash flow $12,767m; free cash flow = FY2026 operating cash flow $14,177m − capital expenditure $1,410m). Cisco returned $12.7bn in FY2026, roughly 99% of that free cash flow
Price/book	~8.8x (market cap $442.9bn / total equity $50,285m). Price to tangible book is not meaningful: goodwill and purchased intangibles of $67.0bn exceed total equity
52-week high	$130.37
52-week low	$66.13
Short interest (% of float)	1.50% (58,942,738 shares short against a float of 3,942,642,110), settlement date 14 August 2026 — down from 64,824,369 the prior month
Days to cover	2.58 days, same 14 August 2026 settlement date
Dividend yield	~1.50% ($1.68 annualised / $112.36). FY2026 payout was 38% of non-GAAP EPS

7. What Are They Building

Silicon, on two tracks at once. Silicon One G300 for scale-out was announced at Cisco Live EMEA in February 2026, and P200 for scale-across followed at Cisco Live US in June. Alongside its own silicon, Cisco ships the N9100 — a 102.4Tbps switch running NVIDIA Spectrum silicon under a Cisco operating system — and was named a premier partner for partner-developed Spectrum-X systems at NVIDIA GTC in March 2026. The bet is that controlling silicon, systems and software together produces better performance and better supply-chain economics; the hedge is that customers who want the NVIDIA architecture can still buy Cisco.

AI data-centre reference architectures. Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA was expanded at GTC in March 2026 and extended in August 2026 to the rack-scale era with support for NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 and HGX Rubin NVL8. Supermicro compute is to be offered inside the Secure AI Factory from October 2026.

Security and agentic AI. Cisco Live US in June 2026 moved Hypershield from early-access preview toward broader production availability, added adaptive testing and guardrails to AI Defense along with agentic supply-chain security and any-agent-platform support, and launched Cisco Cloud Control, which the company says roughly 4,500 enterprises have signed up to since. Two 2026 acquisitions feed this: Galileo Technologies, for AI trust, evaluation and failure detection, announced 9 April 2026 and completed 22 May 2026; and Astrix Security, for non-human identity covering API keys, service accounts, OAuth tokens and AI agent identity, announced 4 May 2026 and closed in Q4 FY2026. Combined FY2026 acquisition spend net of divestitures was $516m.

Quantum networking, at research stage. Cisco announced a Universal Quantum Switch on 23 April 2026, with a proof of concept that preserved quantum information with degradation of 4% or less in encoding and entanglement fidelity. There is no revenue attached to this.

AI applied internally as operating leverage. Management said 145,000 support cases were resolved entirely by AI with no human intervention in FY2026, and that Cisco IQ is used by more than 8,600 customers. Wi-Fi 7 is now more than half of wireless orders.

8. Peers and Competitive Position

Market capitalisations below were re-checked on 27 August 2026 against the previous session's closing prices.

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025/2026 metric
Broadcom (AVGO)	~$1,691.7bn	Q2 FY2026 revenue $22.2bn, up 48%, with AI semiconductor revenue of $10.8bn, up 143%. The merchant-silicon alternative sitting directly upstream of Cisco's switches
Palo Alto Networks (PANW)	~$276.5bn	Q3 FY2026 revenue $3.0bn, with Q4 guided to $3.345bn to $3.355bn, up 32%. Completed the $25bn CyberArk acquisition on 11 February 2026
Arista Networks (ANET)	~$255.1bn	First $3.0bn quarter in Q2 2026, up 37.7% year on year, with FY2026 guidance raised to roughly $12.6bn, up about 40% — the growth expression of the AI-networking trade against Cisco's guided 15%
Fortinet (FTNT)	~$115.6bn	Q2 2026 revenue $2.05bn, up 26%, with FY2026 guidance raised to $8.02bn to $8.18bn, up about 19%. Growing security revenue roughly ten times faster than Cisco
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)	~$73.1bn	Q2 FY2026 revenue $10.7bn, up 40%, with Networking revenue of $2.7bn up 148% and FY2026 Networking growth guided to 72% to 75% — largely the Juniper acquisition, which closed 2 July 2025, rather than organic growth. Juniper (JNPR) no longer trades
Nokia (NOK)	~$58.3bn	Q2 2026 net sales EUR 4,815m, up 8% as reported and 9% at constant currency, with AI and Cloud customer sales up 105%
Ericsson (ERIC)	~$32.9bn	Q2 2026 net sales SEK 52.7bn, down 6% year on year and down 1% organically, reported 14 July 2026

On forward non-GAAP earnings Cisco is the cheapest large-cap in this group at roughly 22 times. That discount is the market pricing the difference between 15% guided growth and Arista's 40%, and between security revenue growing 2% and Fortinet's 19% to 26%.

9. Insider Activity

Chair and Chief Executive Chuck Robbins sold 21,628 shares on 14 August 2026 under a Rule 10b5-1 plan, two days after the FY2026 results, leaving 602,710 shares held. Chief Financial Officer Mark Patterson sold on the same day under a plan adopted 19 December 2025. Selling is systematic, plan-driven and clustered on the same calendar dates across essentially the whole executive team, with no open-market purchases by any insider in the last twenty-four months. Note the escalating price through the year: February sales cleared around $76, May and June around $117 to $121, and August around $111.50.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Thimaya Subaiya (EVP, Operations)	19 Aug 2026	Sale	5,832	$111.47	$650,074	Presumed 10b5-1 plan
Chuck Robbins (Chair & CEO)	14 Aug 2026	Sale	21,628	$111.54 weighted average	$2,412,346	Rule 10b5-1(c) plan
Mark Patterson (EVP & CFO)	14 Aug 2026	Sale	5,192	$111.51 weighted average	$578,979	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 19 Dec 2025
Jeetu Patel (President & CPO)	14 Aug 2026	Sale	7,170	$111.57	$799,928	Rule 10b5-1 plan
Deborah Stahlkopf (EVP, General Counsel)	14 Aug 2026	Sale	6,487	$111.53	$723,494	Rule 10b5-1 plan
Oliver Tuszik (EVP, Global Sales)	14 Aug 2026	Sale	2,760	$112.46	$310,390	Rule 10b5-1 plan
Mark Patterson (EVP & CFO)	11 Jun 2026	Sale	7,397	$119.96	$887,322	Presumed 10b5-1 plan
Chuck Robbins (Chair & CEO)	22 May 2026	Sale	21,400	$120.03	$2,568,584	Presumed 10b5-1 plan
Jeetu Patel (President & CPO)	15 May 2026	Sale	7,169	$117.28	$840,781	Presumed 10b5-1 plan
Chuck Robbins (Chair & CEO)	13 Feb 2026	Sale	19,545	$76.00	$1,485,395	Presumed 10b5-1 plan
Maria Victoria Wong (SVP, Chief Accounting Officer)	24 Feb 2026	Sale	2,179	$77.74	$169,395	Presumed 10b5-1 plan

For context on scale, the largest recent block sat just before this window: on 14 November 2025, two days after Q1 FY2026 results, Robbins sold 602,432 shares at $77.97 for approximately $47.0m, reducing his holding by roughly 46%. Deborah Stahlkopf and Jeetu Patel sold comparable proportions on the same day.

10. Key Risks

• Gross-margin erosion is structural and already disclosed: Q4 FY2026 non-GAAP gross margin of 66.3% was 210 basis points below a year earlier, with product margin down 270 basis points to 64.8%. Management has guided to a further headwind through FY2027. If operating-expense leverage stops offsetting it, the earnings growth in the guidance does not arrive.
• Memory cost inflation: DRAM average selling prices at Cisco's own investee Nanya rose more than 70% quarter on quarter and more than 200% year on year in Q1 2026, with the shortage expected to run to at least the end of 2027. Cisco says memory is 15% to 20% of the bill of materials on non-server products and is raising hardware prices selectively — raising prices into a demand cycle is a risk if that cycle turns.
• Hyperscaler concentration and the merchant-silicon threat: the FY2027 target of $7.5bn of AI revenue rests on a handful of buyers, described as triple-digit growth from four of the top hyperscalers. Those same customers design their own silicon and buy white-box systems, and Broadcom booked $10.8bn of AI semiconductor revenue in a single quarter. Cisco's decision to ship NVIDIA silicon in the N9100 concedes it cannot win on Silicon One alone.
• Tariffs, named by the company: the FY2027 forward-looking statement specifically calls out the actual impact of tariffs on both Q1 and full-year guidance, alongside supply constraints and variability of component costs. The exposure is flagged but not quantified.
• Splunk integration and goodwill: goodwill of $59,477m plus purchased intangibles of $7,557m exceeds total equity of $50,285m. FY2026 amortisation of acquisition-related intangibles was $1,834m and acquisition and divestiture costs $375m. With Splunk no longer broken out and security revenue growing 2%, there is no external way to verify the return on a $28bn acquisition.
• The annuity underneath is barely growing: ARR up 3%, product ARR up 5%, deferred revenue up 3% and services revenue flat for the full year. When the AI and campus hardware cycle rolls over, what remains is growing in low single digits — the opposite of the durable software business Cisco described from 2020 to 2024.
• Cash conversion broke down in FY2026: operating cash flow was flat at $14,177m while GAAP net income rose 30%. Inventories rose $2,541m and financing receivables $1,835m, and capital expenditure rose 56%. Free cash flow of $12,767m covered $12.7bn of capital returns with essentially no margin of safety.
• Short-term debt nearly doubled: $10,161m now falls due inside twelve months against $15,918m of cash and investments, with FY2026 interest expense already $1,470m. No new long-dated benchmark issue was identified in calendar 2026, so maturities have rolled into the current bucket rather than being termed out.
• Enterprise refresh cycles end: the multi-year campus networking refresh Cisco has cited every quarter since Q2 FY2026 is by definition a replacement cycle. Wi-Fi 7 is already more than half of wireless orders, so the easy conversion is largely done.
• Restructuring during a demand surge: the plan announced 13 May 2026 removes roughly 4,000 roles at a cost of up to $1bn, with $693m charged in FY2026 and the balance expected in FY2027. Executing that while orders grow 35% is an operational risk in its own right.

11. Recent Developments

• 12 Aug 2026 — Q4 and full-year FY2026 results, and FY2027 guidance. FY2026 revenue of $63,325m rose 12%, with GAAP diluted EPS of $3.33 and non-GAAP EPS of $4.33. Q4 revenue was $17,252m, up 18%, with total product orders up 35% and up 25% excluding hyperscalers. FY2026 hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders reached $9.3bn. FY2027 guidance was set at revenue of $72.2bn to $73.4bn and non-GAAP EPS of $5.05 to $5.11. The shares rose 2.92% to $123.95 in the session and then fell 4.19% after hours.
• Aug 2026 — Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA extended to rack scale. Support added for NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 and HGX Rubin NVL8, with Supermicro compute to be offered inside the Secure AI Factory from October 2026.
• 23 Jun 2026 — Supreme Court dismissed Cisco Systems v. Doe I. The Alien Tort Statute and Torture Victim Protection Act claims concerning alleged assistance to Chinese authorities in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners were disposed of, following oral argument on 28 April 2026.
• 8 – 12 Jun 2026 — Cisco Live US, San Diego. Launches spanned Catalyst, Nexus and Silicon One P200 for scale-across, Hypershield moving toward broader production availability, adaptive testing and guardrails for AI Defense, and the launch of Cisco Cloud Control.
• 13 May 2026 — Q3 FY2026 results and a raised AI order target. Revenue of $15,841m rose 12%, networking product orders accelerated above 50% year on year, and the FY2026 hyperscaler AI order target was raised from $5bn to $9bn. Full-year revenue guidance was lifted to $62.8bn to $63.0bn.
• 13 May 2026 — restructuring plan announced. Roughly 4,000 roles, under 5% of the workforce, at a cost of up to $1bn, redirecting investment to silicon, optics, security and internal AI. Substantially complete by the end of FY2027.
• 4 May 2026 — intent to acquire Astrix Security announced. Non-human identity security covering API keys, service accounts, OAuth tokens and AI agent identity, reported at $250m to $350m. Closed in Q4 FY2026.
• 23 Apr 2026 — Universal Quantum Switch announced. Proof of concept preserved quantum information with degradation of 4% or less in encoding and entanglement fidelity.
• 9 Apr 2026 — intent to acquire Galileo Technologies announced. AI observability, trust, evaluation and failure detection. Completed 22 May 2026.
• 8 Apr 2026 — Nanya Technology private placement closed. Cisco invested alongside SanDisk, Kioxia and Solidigm in a placement of roughly NT$78.7bn, taking approximately 2% to 3% of the DRAM maker to secure memory supply.
• 16 Mar 2026 — Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA expanded at GTC. The 102.4Tbps Cisco N9100 was introduced, running NVIDIA Spectrum silicon under a Cisco operating system, and Cisco was named a premier partner for partner-developed Spectrum-X systems.
• 11 Feb 2026 — Q2 FY2026 results and a dividend increase. Revenue of $15,349m rose 10%, product orders rose 18% and hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders reached $2.1bn in the quarter. The quarterly dividend was raised from $0.41 to $0.42, a fifteenth consecutive annual increase.
• 9 – 13 Feb 2026 — Cisco Live EMEA, Amsterdam. Silicon One G300 for scale-out was announced with supporting systems and optics for AI data centres.

12. Key Dates

• 2 Oct 2026 — record date and ex-dividend date for the $0.42 quarterly dividend declared on 12 August 2026.
• 21 Oct 2026 — payment date for that $0.42 quarterly dividend.
• 26 Oct 2026 — Cisco Partner Summit 2026 opens in Vancouver, running to 28 October 2026.
• Expected Sep 2026 — FY2026 Form 10-K filing. The FY2025 10-K was filed on 3 September 2025. This will carry the first FY2026 employee count and the full segment and debt detail.
• Expected Oct 2026 — Supermicro compute becomes available inside the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA.
• Expected Oct 2026 — Q1 FY2027 quarter end, falling around 24 October 2026.
• Expected Nov 2026 — Q1 FY2027 results. Cisco had not issued its conference-call scheduling release as at 27 August 2026; that notice typically appears about two weeks ahead. Q1 FY2026 was reported on 12 November 2025.
• 8 Feb 2027 — Cisco Live EMEA opens, running to 12 February 2027. Dates are listed by Cisco; the venue is stated inconsistently across Cisco pages, so confirm before travelling.
• 6 Jun 2027 — Cisco Live US opens in Las Vegas, running to 10 June 2027, per Cisco's save-the-date page.
• Expected Jul 2027 — FY2027 fiscal year end, and the deadline by which the May 2026 restructuring plan is expected to be substantially complete.

No investor day or financial analyst conference has been scheduled or announced; on the Q4 call the Chief Executive referred to the last such event as having been a long time ago. Discussion of these dates continues on the ChartsView Forum.

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