Cisco Earnings Could Finally Bring The Stock Breakout

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) may have had trouble over the last couple of years in growing its share price, but now hours ahead of earnings the stock is about 1.5% or so within a 52-week high. The Thomson Reuters consensus for today is $0.48 EPS and $12.06 billion in revenue. That would be up 1-cent from a year ago on earnings, and sales growth would be about 4.7%.

Cisco's share price peak has been $21.34 and that was just on this last Monday. Cisco shares have just not been able to hold up above $20.00 since May 2012 even as it has raised its common dividend. You have to go back to October of 2010 before the early 2012 move to above $20.

Cisco has since completed its restructuring for the most part. The company has retired more shares than most technology companies would ever dream of and its market cap is roughly $111 billion now that shares back above $21.00.

We would caution that Wall Street's consensus analyst price target is up at $22.82 according to Thomson Reuters. The technology and communications equipment giant has also supposedly been gaining market share.

Cisco's cash and cash equivalents and investments were $45.0 billion at the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2013 reported in November of 2012. We would note that Cisco's last earnings report also showed that some $5.6 billion is remaining under its share buyback plan. It said last quarter, "Cisco repurchased 15 million shares of common stock under the stock repurchase program at an average price of $16.44 per share for an aggregate purchase price of $253 million. As of October 27, 2012, Cisco had repurchased and retired 3.8 billion shares of Cisco common stock at an average price of $20.34 per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $76.4 billion since the inception of the stock repurchase program."

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