Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) Upgraded to Strong-Buy at Melius Research

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) was upgraded by Melius Research from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report issued to clients and investors on Monday,Zacks.com reports.

Other equities analysts have also issued reports about the stock. UBS Group increased their price objective on shares of Cisco Systems from $55.00 to $62.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, November 14th. Piper Sandler raised their price target on Cisco Systems from $52.00 to $57.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, November 14th. Morgan Stanley upped their price objective on Cisco Systems from $62.00 to $68.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Tuesday, December 17th. Wells Fargo & Company raised their target price on Cisco Systems from $57.00 to $60.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Thursday, November 14th. Finally, Barclays upped their price target on Cisco Systems from $49.00 to $56.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Thursday, November 14th. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twelve have issued a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $60.95.

Cisco Systems Stock Performance

CSCO stock opened at $58.77 on Monday. The company has a 50 day moving average price of $58.38 and a 200 day moving average price of $52.85. Cisco Systems has a fifty-two week low of $44.50 and a fifty-two week high of $60.23. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.43, a current ratio of 0.88 and a quick ratio of 0.80. The stock has a market capitalization of $234.07 billion, a PE ratio of 25.22, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.37 and a beta of 0.84.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, November 13th. The network equipment provider reported $0.91 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.87 by $0.04. The business had revenue of $13.84 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $13.78 billion. Cisco Systems had a return on equity of 25.70% and a net margin of 17.73%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was down 5.6% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted $0.98 earnings per share. Analysts forecast that Cisco Systems will post 2.97 EPS for the current year.

Insider Transactions at Cisco Systems

In other news, SVP Maria Victoria Wong sold 586 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, December 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $58.69, for a total value of $34,392.34. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now owns 50,767 shares in the company, valued at $2,979,515.23. This trade represents a 1.14 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CEO Charles Robbins sold 171,744 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $57.49, for a total value of $9,873,562.56. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 783,786 shares in the company, valued at $45,059,857.14. The trade was a 17.97 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 353,522 shares of company stock valued at $20,349,721 in the last ninety days. 0.01% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. State Street Corp increased its holdings in Cisco Systems by 1.7% during the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 193,489,477 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock worth $10,297,506,000 after buying an additional 3,241,682 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its stake in shares of Cisco Systems by 1.3% during the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 95,630,469 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock worth $5,075,320,000 after purchasing an additional 1,262,017 shares during the last quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Cisco Systems by 2.1% in the 3rd quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 82,720,255 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock valued at $4,402,239,000 after purchasing an additional 1,677,383 shares during the period. FMR LLC lifted its stake in Cisco Systems by 10.1% in the 3rd quarter. FMR LLC now owns 63,931,461 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock valued at $3,402,432,000 after purchasing an additional 5,885,879 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Legal & General Group Plc increased its position in Cisco Systems by 3.3% during the second quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 47,593,944 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock worth $2,261,185,000 after buying an additional 1,530,468 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds 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.