Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) Rating Lowered to Buy at Wall Street Zen

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) was downgraded by stock analysts at Wall Street Zen from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a note issued to investors on Saturday.

CSCO has been the topic of a number of other research reports. Evercore ISI increased their target price on Cisco Systems from $67.00 to $72.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, May 15th. Wolfe Research assumed coverage on Cisco Systems in a research note on Tuesday. They issued a “peer perform” rating on the stock. Wells Fargo & Company upgraded Cisco Systems from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and increased their target price for the stock from $72.00 to $75.00 in a research note on Thursday, May 15th. Citigroup increased their target price on Cisco Systems from $68.00 to $71.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, May 15th. Finally, Rosenblatt Securities increased their target price on Cisco Systems from $63.00 to $74.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, May 15th. Eight research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have assigned a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Cisco Systems presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $69.53.

Cisco Systems Stock Performance

NASDAQ:CSCO opened at $67.95 on Friday. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $65.02 and its 200 day moving average is $61.81. Cisco Systems has a fifty-two week low of $44.50 and a fifty-two week high of $69.78. The firm has a market capitalization of $269.08 billion, a PE ratio of 27.73, a PEG ratio of 4.11 and a beta of 0.90. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.50, a quick ratio of 0.87 and a current ratio of 0.95.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, May 14th. The network equipment provider reported $0.96 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.92 by $0.04. Cisco Systems had a return on equity of 26.48% and a net margin of 17.60%. The company had revenue of $14.15 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $14.05 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted $0.88 EPS. Cisco Systems’s quarterly revenue was up 11.4% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that Cisco Systems will post 3.04 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Cisco Systems news, EVP Thimaya K. Subaiya sold 8,726 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, June 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $65.54, for a total value of $571,902.04. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 174,669 shares in the company, valued at approximately $11,447,806.26. This trade represents a 4.76% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, insider Jeetendra I. Patel sold 899 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Thursday, June 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $64.27, for a total value of $57,778.73. Following the completion of the sale, the insider owned 255,377 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $16,413,079.79. This trade represents a 0.35% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 97,335 shares of company stock valued at $6,271,054 in the last 90 days. 0.01% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. Ashton Thomas Securities LLC increased its holdings in shares of Cisco Systems by 2.9% during the first quarter. Ashton Thomas Securities LLC now owns 5,654 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock worth $349,000 after buying an additional 159 shares in the last quarter. Central Valley Advisors LLC increased its holdings in shares of Cisco Systems by 2.6% during the second quarter. Central Valley Advisors LLC now owns 6,303 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock worth $437,000 after buying an additional 159 shares in the last quarter. Capital Advisory Group Advisory Services LLC increased its holdings in shares of Cisco Systems by 1.1% during the second quarter. Capital Advisory Group Advisory Services LLC now owns 14,291 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock worth $992,000 after buying an additional 159 shares in the last quarter. Boltwood Capital Management increased its holdings in shares of Cisco Systems by 1.4% during the second quarter. Boltwood Capital Management now owns 11,593 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock worth $804,000 after buying an additional 160 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Sapient Capital LLC increased its holdings in shares of Cisco Systems by 0.6% during the second quarter. Sapient Capital LLC now owns 24,957 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock worth $1,732,000 after buying an additional 160 shares in the last quarter. 73.33% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Cisco Systems Company Profile

Cisco Systems, Inc designs, manufactures, and sells Internet Protocol based networking and other products related to the communications and information technology industry in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, Japan, and China. The company also offers switching portfolio encompasses campus switching as well as data center switching; enterprise routing portfolio interconnects public and private wireline and mobile networks, delivering highly secure, and reliable connectivity to campus, data center and branch networks; wireless products include wireless access points and controllers; and compute portfolio including the cisco unified computing system, hyperflex, and software management capabilities, which combine computing, networking, and storage infrastructure management and virtualization.