Cisco reports third quarter earnings

Chairman and CEO John Chambers said the company delivered “solid” results, considering the economic impact and changes to the market.

In a call with analysts, Chambers said guidance for the fourth quarter is a decrease of 17-20 percent from the year-ago quarter.

He noted that customers are saying that the marketplace is starting to stabilize. But customers are also warning that revenues are still down year-over-year. And it remains unclear how long the stabilization of the market will last, assuming it’s reached bottom.

During the third quarter of fiscal 2009, Cisco repurchased 77 million shares of common stock at an average price of $15.57 per share for an aggregate purchase price of $1.2 billion. As of April 25, 2009, Cisco had repurchased and retired 2.8 billion shares of Cisco common stock at an average price of $20.43 per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $56.4 billion since the inception of the stock repurchase program. The remaining authorized repurchase amount as of April 25, 2009 was $5.6 billion with no termination date.

Selected customer and partner announcements from Q3

In India, Cisco is working on a pilot program to assist the government of Karnataka in developing a road map for an intelligent and sustainable Bengaluru city.
France's leading cable operator, Numericable, announced plans to deploy the Cisco Content Delivery System to bring next generation home entertainment to France.
Arab National Bank in Saudi Arabia selected Cisco to upgrade its branch infrastructure with an integrated wide-area network solution.
In Peru, Rural Telecom has selected a Cisco Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network to provide broadband connectivity and communications to the most remote and rural towns.
Cisco and Tata Consultancy Services announced the forging of a strategic alliance agreement.
Fujitsu and Cisco expanded strategic alliance for unified communications in Japan.