The networking company saw its year over year revenue for the third quarter of 2006 improve by 18 percent but net income felt the impact of stock-based compensation expense and ended up matching last year’s reported net income.
Stock expenses pushed Cisco (CSCO) on the net income side as they have many other companies in 2006. As financial reports have arrived from throughout the technology industry, companies have been reporting net income minus those stock expenses for the first time.
Cisco’s $7.3 billion in revenue for the quarter easily exceeded the same period last year, where revenue reached $6.2 billion. It was also an improvement over the second quarter 2006 figure of $6.6 billion.
Cisco ended up with earnings of 22 cents per share on net income of $1.4 billion; that was the same as Cisco’s second quarter 2006 figure. In the third quarter of 2005, when net income did not include the effect of stock expenses, Cisco reported $1.4 billion.
Investors dropped shares of Cisco by 8 cents at market close, to 21.68. In after hours trading, Cisco had moved further down to 21.45. Part of that discomfort likely comes from Cisco’s margins.
The total cost of sales for Cisco hit $2.596 billion for Q3 2006, compared to $2.052 billion year over year. Shareholders may not like that Cisco spent a half-billion dollars to increase sales by about one billion for the quarter.
Cisco made a big play for the home entertainment market when it picked up Scientific Atlanta for $6.9 billion in 2005. Scientific Atlanta’s digital cable boxes add a video component to Cisco’s existing data, voice, and mobility solutions.
A “converged” box that executives of both companies discussed last year could contain everything a household needs to accept connections from various methods of delivering data, and move that data to high-definition televisions, computers, and even wireless phones.
Until then, Cisco has expressed confidence in its myriad business moves and partnerships made in the third quarter. CEO John Chambers noted in comments about the third quarter that Cisco’s “balanced performance from a geographic perspective” was atop its highlights for the period.
—
Tag:
Add to document.write(“Del.icio.us”) | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web | Furl
Bookmark Murdok: 
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
