Finance
Cisco shares climb on strong AI-fueled equipment demand
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on November 13, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on November 13, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Cisco shares climbed due to strong AI and cloud demand, with over $2 billion in AI orders for fiscal 2025, boosting revenue forecasts.
(Reuters) -Shares of Cisco Systems rose 7.22% in premarket trading on Thursday, after the networking equipment maker raised its annual profit and revenue forecast on robust cloud demand.
Cisco, a key supplier to cloud, enterprise and telecom customers, has been riding a wave of AI-driven infrastructure spending as businesses accelerate cloud migrations and upgrade campus networks, which has propelled its shares to gain almost 25% this year.
CEO Chuck Robbins on Wednesday said the company secured more than $2 billion in AI-related orders for fiscal 2025, nearly all from hyperscalers, and expects $3 billion in AI infrastructure revenue in fiscal 2026.
AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers totaled $1.3 billion during the quarter ended October 25.
"We believe the momentum for Cisco with enterprise customer orders will further reinforce the bull case around a robust campus refresh cycle," J.P. Morgan said.
"But investor focus will still primarily be on the momentum of AI orders which are accelerating at a much more robust pace than anticipated."
Tech giants including Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have signaled plans to boost annual capital spending on data centers and advanced chips, which could act as tailwinds for Cisco.
"We are seeing a growing pipeline in excess of $2 billion for our high-performance networking products across sovereign, neocloud and enterprise customers," Robbins said.
Cisco expects fiscal 2026 revenue between $60.2 billion and $61 billion, compared with $59 billion to $60 billion projected earlier.
Cisco trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 17.73, compared with Arista Networks' 40.90 and Dell Technologies' 12.83.
(Reporting by Kanishka Ajmera in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Danilo Masoni in London; Editing by Amanda Cooper)
AI infrastructure refers to the hardware and software resources required to support artificial intelligence applications, including data storage, processing power, and network capabilities.
Hyperscalers are large technology companies that provide cloud services and have the ability to scale their infrastructure rapidly to meet high demand, such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
The price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio is a valuation metric calculated by dividing a company's current share price by its earnings per share (EPS), indicating how much investors are willing to pay for each dollar of earnings.
Cloud demand refers to the increasing need for cloud computing services, driven by businesses seeking scalable and flexible IT solutions for data storage, processing, and application hosting.
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