Cisco Systems (CSCO) shares had climbed 6% by early trading on Thursday, propelling it above its all-time closing high of $77.31, which was set more than 25 years ago in March 2020.
Driving the gains was another quarterly financial report that surpassed market expectations. Cisco’s first quarter fiscal 2026 earnings report marked the 14th consecutive set of results to surpass the consensus estimates for earnings per share and total revenue.
Financial analysts posted positive reactions following the results, pointing to strong growth in Cisco’s Networking segment, which increased by 15% year over year.
“AI infrastructure orders were $1.3B, a new record, and with Neocloud, Sovereign, Enterprise orders of $200M+ total orders from these new customer categories totaled ~$1.5B, a new record,” said KeyBanc analyst Brandon Nispel in an investor note. “CSCO called out it now expects AI Infrastructure orders to be ‘at least two times’ the orders received from the same set of customers in ’25 (>$2.0B), and called out a pipeline of Neocloud/Sovereign of $2.0B.”
KeyBanc reiterated its Overweight rating and increased its price target to $87 from $77.
Cisco’s Observability and Services revenue segments also increased by 6.2% and 2.1% year over year, respectively, while the Security and Collaboration segments dipped 2% and 3%, respectively.
“CSCO highlighted that it saw a notable shift in terms of how customers consume Splunk in 1Q, where customers moved from on-premise to cloud deals rapidly during the quarter, where cloud deals are recognized ratably and revenue recognition is delayed,” Nispel added.
Meanwhile, Piper Sandler retained its Neutral rating but hiked its price target to $86 from $70.
“Cisco continues to put good quarters in a row as the webscale AI infrastructure buildout is now being helped by the campus refresh opportunity showing up early,” said Piper Sandler analysts James Fish and Caden Dahl in a note.
Finally, Morgan Stanley retained its Overweight rating on Cisco and increased its price target to $82 from $77.
“While we had entered the quarter relatively muted, we did note that AI orders greater than $1bn would be a positive catalyst, which Cisco outperformed with $1.3bn of orders,” said Morgan Stanley analysts Meta Marshall and Mary Lenox in a note. “With the company now expecting ~$3bn of revenue in FY26 from AI, Cisco’s AI business has gone from ~2% of the company to almost 5% in a couple of years, becoming a more meaningful contributor to growth.”
Cisco competitors, such as Arista Networks (ANET) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) had inched down 1% and 0.6%, respectively.