Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins speaks at the Semafor World Economic Summit in Washington on April 15, 2026.
Alex Wong | Getty Images
Cisco Shares soared 17% in after-hours trading Wednesday after the networking company announced earnings and guidance that beat Wall Street expectations.
The company announced fewer than 4,000 job cuts this quarter, representing less than 5% of its workforce.
Here’s how the company performed compared to the LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $1.06 adjusted vs. $1.04 expected Sales: $15.84 billion vs. $15.56 billion expected
Cisco said in a statement that revenue for the quarter ended April 25 increased 12% from $14.15 billion in the same period last year. Net income rose to $3.37 billion, or 85 cents per share, from $2.49 billion, or 62 cents per share, in the year-ago period.
For the fiscal fourth quarter, Cisco expects adjusted earnings per share to be in the range of $1.16 to $1.18 on revenue of $16.7 billion to $16.9 billion. Analysts polled by LSEG expected adjusted earnings per share of $1.07 on revenue of $15.82 billion.
Cisco announced that it has received $5.3 billion in orders for artificial intelligence infrastructure and hyperscalers so far this year, and raised its forecast for orders for this year to $9 billion from $5 billion. The company said it expects revenue from the market to be $4 billion for the fiscal year, higher than its previous estimate of $3 billion.
Cisco has lagged behind many of its data center peers in the AI race, but Wall Street has recently pushed back on the company’s story, pushing the stock to all-time highs late last year, finally surpassing the highs of dot-com stocks. The stock has continued to rise this year, rising 33%, outpacing the Nasdaq’s 14% rise.
If stocks maintain their after-hours gains through Thursday, it will be the sharpest rise since 2002.
CEO Chuck Robbins said in a blog post Wednesday that the latest round of layoffs will begin May 14. Cisco is the latest company to announce AI-related layoffs.
“Companies that will win in the AI era will be those with the focus, urgency and discipline to continually shift investments to areas where demand and long-term value creation is strongest,” Robbins said. “I believe Cisco will be one of those winners, and that means making difficult decisions about where to invest, how to organize, and how to reflect the opportunity at hand in our cost structure.”
Cisco said in its filing that it will incur $1 billion in pre-tax charges for severance and other expenses, of which it will recognize approximately $450 million in its fourth fiscal quarter.
During the third quarter, Cisco introduced switches and routers using next-generation processors. The company also debuted a leaderboard that ranks generated AI models based on their robustness to cybersecurity attacks.
Cisco’s network revenue rose 25% to $8.82 billion, beating the $8.47 billion consensus of analysts surveyed by StreetAccount. Security revenue was flat at about $2.0 billion versus the StreetAccount consensus of $1.99 billion.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call beginning at 4:30 p.m. ET.
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