Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) delivered better than expected quarterly results and guidance after the market closed on Wednesday, but its shares fell anyway in after-hours trading.
Cisco’s fiscal third quarter sales rose 27 percent to $10.4 billion, better than the $10.24 billion analysts expected, and earnings of 42 cents a share were 3 cents better than the Thomson Reuters forecast.
Cisco also forecast potentially better than expected sales for its July quarter, but its shares fell 3 percent in after-hours trading, giving back the day’s gains ahead of the report. Apparently cautiousness about Europe weighed on the stock.
“Our financial results were outstanding, achieving record level revenue and earnings per share results,” CEO John Chambers said in a statement. “We witnessed a return to strong balanced growth across geographies, products and customer segments that we haven’t seen since before the global economic challenges began.”
Major stock indexes posted gains of 1.4 percent during the day, as the market continued to recover from last week’s “flash crash.”
Sybase (NYSE: SY) was the day’s biggest gainer, up more than 50 percent on news that it will be acquired by SAP (NYSE: SAP).
IBM (NYSE: IBM) was up 4.6 percent on an upbeat analyst meeting.
SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK), Micron (NYSE: MU), AMD (NYSE: AMD) and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) led a strong chip sector higher.
Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) jumped 9.5 percent on a 10-for-1 stock split.
