Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) Price Target Raised to $71.00

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) had its price target lifted by Barclays from $66.00 to $71.00 in a report issued on Thursday,Benzinga reports. Barclays currently has an equal weight rating on the network equipment provider’s stock.

CSCO has been the subject of several other reports. Piper Sandler increased their price objective on Cisco Systems from $60.00 to $64.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, May 15th. UBS Group increased their price objective on Cisco Systems from $70.00 to $74.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 5th. New Street Research reissued a “neutral” rating and set a $70.00 price objective on shares of Cisco Systems in a report on Friday, May 16th. Wall Street Zen lowered Cisco Systems from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, July 12th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their price target on Cisco Systems from $73.00 to $78.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, July 17th. Ten analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fourteen have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $74.53.

Cisco Systems Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ CSCO opened at $66.20 on Thursday. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $67.98 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $63.36. Cisco Systems has a 1-year low of $47.85 and a 1-year high of $72.55. The firm has a market cap of $262.15 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 25.27, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.67 and a beta of 0.91. The company has a current ratio of 1.01, a quick ratio of 0.87 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.49.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, August 13th. The network equipment provider reported $0.99 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.98 by $0.01. Cisco Systems had a return on equity of 27.02% and a net margin of 18.45%. The business had revenue of $14.67 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $14.63 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $0.87 earnings per share. Cisco Systems’s revenue was up 7.6% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts anticipate that Cisco Systems will post 3.04 earnings per share for the current year.

Cisco Systems Announces Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, October 22nd. Shareholders of record on Friday, October 3rd will be given a dividend of $0.41 per share. The ex-dividend date is Friday, October 3rd. This represents a $1.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.5%. Cisco Systems’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 62.60%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Cisco Systems

In other Cisco Systems news, insider Jeetendra I. Patel sold 899 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, June 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $64.27, for a total transaction of $57,778.73. Following the sale, the insider owned 255,377 shares in the company, valued at $16,413,079.79. This trade represents a 0.35% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, CFO Richard Scott Herren sold 15,678 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, June 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $65.52, for a total value of $1,027,222.56. Following the sale, the chief financial officer owned 309,543 shares in the company, valued at $20,281,257.36. The trade was a 4.82% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders have sold 77,731 shares of company stock valued at $5,021,519. 0.01% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several large investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Norges Bank purchased a new position in Cisco Systems during the 2nd quarter valued at about $3,816,825,000. DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main increased its holdings in Cisco Systems by 413.3% during the 2nd quarter. DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main now owns 22,393,371 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock valued at $1,553,645,000 after purchasing an additional 18,030,441 shares during the period. Kingstone Capital Partners Texas LLC purchased a new position in Cisco Systems during the 2nd quarter valued at about $904,542,000. Franklin Resources Inc. increased its holdings in Cisco Systems by 46.2% during the 2nd quarter. Franklin Resources Inc. now owns 40,836,858 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock valued at $2,833,261,000 after purchasing an additional 12,904,969 shares during the period. Finally, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. increased its holdings in Cisco Systems by 37.4% during the 1st quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 46,973,293 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock valued at $2,898,722,000 after purchasing an additional 12,775,066 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 73.33% of the company’s stock.

About Cisco Systems

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.