Adding insult to injury, Cisco's woes have come during what's been a great year for the market. The Dow is up nearly 10% and only three other Dow components are even in the red this year.
Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500) will report its latest quarterly results after the closing bell on Wednesday afternoon, and investors are eager to hear if CEO John Chambers has a plan to get the company back on track.
Cisco has underwhelmed investors for awhile now. The stock fell more than 15% last year. Chambers has been super cautious during conference calls about the economic environment. And it looks like the major cutbacks in government spending (especially at the local level) is one reason why Cisco has struggled as of late.
But many investors also feel that Cisco is now an unfocused, unwieldy mess.
In addition to its bread-and-butter business of making switches and routers for large corporate customers, it owns a big cable set-top box maker (Scientific-Atlanta), several online video conferencing businesses (WebEx, Tandberg) and divisions that make networking gear for consumers.
Some think Cisco got big for bigness' sake and it's time to slim down.
To Cisco's credit, the company has taken some baby steps to try and please restless investors.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/10/technology/thebuzz/index.htm
Wow, I wonder if the mighty Cisco is falling, it may be time for the CEOs of the company to reformat their lackluster customer and marketing schemes.
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