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CiscoCSCOTOP PICKNov 29, 2017Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Jun 18, 2026. Market Open.
CSCO is seeing similar industry issues that other companies are seeing which essentially has been a buildup of product at end customers who are now focusing on deployment in the short-term as opposed to buying new product, alongside some general macro pressures. It is not a name that excites us a whole lot and has been appearing to lose market share to competitors over the years. With that said, as a large, slower growth company trading at 12X forward earnings and with a dividend, it might not be our 'favourite' name out there but hard for us to be overly critical of it at these levels as well. It has underperformed, and the recent earnings miss will likely keep it quiet for at least a couple of quarters. We would thus consider it OK but not good enough to add to at this time.
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This business is probably a lot simpler than people think. They sell equipment that allows people to connect to the Internet. This can include routers and switches, and for the longest time this was their bread-and-butter. All of a sudden, we had the advent of software defined networks. Software was decoupled from hardware. Cisco sold them together, so they encountered some margin pressures. Now they have transitioned where you are starting to see some positive organic growth, focused on security. Looking forward, the Internet of things is a whole bunch of different devices connected to the Internet. That’s a lot of data flowing across the networks, which should benefit companies like this. Trading at 12X earnings. Dividend yield of 3%. (Analysts’ price target is $39.)