Cisco 3Q profit beats views, shares rise

The company reported third-quarter profit Tuesday that beat analyst forecasts by 2 cents per share, and it offered fourth-quarter sales guidance in line with Wall Street's projections.

Cisco shares rose 29 cents in after-hours trading after the results were reported. The stock had gained 5 cents to close at $26.33 during the regular trading session, giving Cisco a market value of about $157 billion.

But Cisco still has a long way to go to get its stock price back to last fall's levels.

The stock is still down more than 20 percent from its 52-week high of $34.24 on Nov. 6, when the company had a market value of about $207 billion.

Analysts said Cisco continues to feel the effect of the general downturn in technology stocks since then, which was triggered in part by Cisco's troubling assessment in November about the health of U.S. technology spending.

Kenneth Muth, a senior research analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co., said Cisco's fourth-quarter outlook of 9 percent to 10 percent sales growth likely won't be enough to convince investors to jump back into Cisco's stock.

"You need 100 percent of the equation for the stock to move up -you need a good quarter and good guidance," Muth said. "And the guidance was really unchanged. And given how the stock has moved, I don't think that's enough for the stock to move higher from here."

San Jose-based Cisco is particularly vulnerable to economic downturns because its routers and switches -which direct traffic over the Internet -each can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and even millions of dollars. That makes them the kind of big expense that companies try to cut when times get tough.

But a big advantage for Cisco is its worldwide sales base and strong growth in emerging markets where Internet infrastructure is being deployed rapidly, a factor that has helped Cisco as the U.S. economy has faltered.