Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) Given Average Recommendation of “Hold” by Brokerages

Shares of Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCOGet Free Report) have been assigned a consensus recommendation of “Hold” from the twenty-one ratings firms that are covering the company, MarketBeat.com reports. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, fourteen have given a hold rating and five have given a buy rating to the company. The average 12-month price objective among brokerages that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $56.36.

A number of analysts have recently weighed in on the stock. UBS Group increased their target price on shares of Cisco Systems from $54.00 to $55.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Monday, February 12th. Oppenheimer dropped their target price on shares of Cisco Systems from $58.00 to $54.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, November 16th. Melius Research reiterated a “hold” rating and set a $55.00 target price on shares of Cisco Systems in a report on Monday, January 8th. Rosenblatt Securities lowered their price objective on shares of Cisco Systems from $59.00 to $51.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, November 16th. Finally, Raymond James lowered shares of Cisco Systems from a “market perform” rating to an “underperform” rating in a report on Monday, October 30th.

View Our Latest Report on CSCO

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Cisco Systems news, CFO Richard Scott Herren sold 106,321 shares of Cisco Systems stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, December 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $50.02, for a total value of $5,318,176.42. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now owns 345,994 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $17,306,619.88. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Cisco Systems

Large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. BlackRock Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Cisco Systems by 1.7% during the 2nd quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 347,569,395 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock valued at $17,983,240,000 after buying an additional 5,924,553 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp lifted its stake in shares of Cisco Systems by 1.4% during the 2nd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 187,505,879 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock valued at $9,701,554,000 after buying an additional 2,626,429 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of Cisco Systems by 7.3% during the 2nd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 84,109,563 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock valued at $4,341,473,000 after buying an additional 5,731,285 shares in the last quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Cisco Systems by 9.5% during the 4th quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 73,439,747 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock valued at $3,672,445,000 after buying an additional 6,345,954 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Morgan Stanley lifted its stake in shares of Cisco Systems by 17.4% during the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 61,788,267 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock valued at $2,943,593,000 after buying an additional 9,160,347 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 72.21% of the company’s stock.

Cisco Systems Stock Performance

NASDAQ CSCO opened at $48.40 on Tuesday. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $50.20 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $51.91. The company has a quick ratio of 1.26, a current ratio of 1.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.14. Cisco Systems has a 12-month low of $45.56 and a 12-month high of $58.19. The firm has a market cap of $195.98 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 14.71, a PEG ratio of 2.21 and a beta of 0.90.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCOGet Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, February 14th. The network equipment provider reported $0.87 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.84 by $0.03. The business had revenue of $12.79 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $12.71 billion. Cisco Systems had a net margin of 23.49% and a return on equity of 33.01%. The company’s revenue was down 5.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $0.76 earnings per share. On average, equities analysts forecast that Cisco Systems will post 3.16 EPS for the current year.

Cisco Systems Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, April 24th. Investors of record on Thursday, April 4th will be given a dividend of $0.40 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, April 3rd. This represents a $1.60 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 3.31%. This is an increase from Cisco Systems’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.39. Cisco Systems’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 47.42%.

Cisco Systems Company Profile

(Get Free Report

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.

See Also

Analyst Recommendations for Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO)

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