Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) will report its fiscal second-quarter earnings Wednesday after the markets close. Thomson Reuters has consensus estimates of $0.51 in earnings per share (EPS) and $11.8 billion in revenue. In the same period of the previous year, the company posted $0.47 in EPS and $11.16 billion in revenue.
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In 2014, technology companies were the largest downsizers, with several long-time stalwarts leading the way. Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Cisco announced the most job cuts, not only among tech companies, but also overall. The industry as a whole announced more than 58,000 job cuts in 2014, the highest number among all industries.
Currently, Cisco trades around 12 times its forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio. The networking giant also seems to have fought through numerous headwinds, including up and down demand from telecom carriers, weakness in emerging markets and threats to its very lucrative switching business, all of which the analysts feel are going away. Cisco also stands to benefit from a better corporate spending environment in Europe, as well as continued growth at home.
So far in February, Cisco has received couple key analyst calls. Deutsche Bank reiterated a rating of Buy with a price target of $32, implying an upside of 16% from Tuesday’s close $27.49. Oppenheimer had an Outperform rating for Cisco and lifted its price target to $29 from $27, implying an upside of 5.5%.
Cisco’s 50-day moving average is currently at $27.37. Shares of Cisco crossed under the moving average in late January and have continued to test it since. The 200-day moving average is immaterial at $25.19.
Options traders appear to be braced for Cisco to move roughly $1.00 in either direction, based on the speculative contracts.
Shares of Cisco were down 0.5% at $27.36 in the first half of Wednesday’s trading day. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $28.63 and a 52-week trading range of $21.27 to $28.70.
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