Heading into the U.S. market open on Monday, December 22, 2025, Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) is trading in a week where holiday-thinned liquidity can amplify headline-driven moves—especially for mega-cap, widely held tech names like Cisco.
This is what investors and traders should have on their radar before the opening bell:
- Breaking cybersecurity headline risk: a critical, actively exploited Cisco email-security zero-day (CVE-2025-20393) is in focus, with government-tracked remediation deadlines approaching.
- Fundamental momentum vs. segment mix: Cisco’s latest quarter showed strong networking growth and raised FY2026 guidance, but with continued unevenness across Security and Collaboration.
- AI infrastructure is still the bull case: management and sell-side commentary continue to tie Cisco’s upside to hyperscaler buildouts, campus refresh cycles, and AI-era networking.
- Capital returns remain a pillar: dividend + buybacks continue to underpin the stock, with key dividend dates coming soon.
- Analyst targets recently moved: at least one major bank boosted its target recently, while Street consensus still implies upside from many models.
Below is a detailed, publication-ready briefing.
CSCO stock snapshot going into Monday, Dec. 22
Cisco’s most recent available quote shows CSCO at $78.42, up $1.45 (about +1.9%) versus the prior close, after trading between $76.43 and $79.16 on roughly 84.9 million shares.
Two context points matter this week:
- Holiday market structure: U.S. markets are closed on Christmas Day (Dec. 25) and scheduled for an early close (1:00 p.m. ET) on Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2025. [1]
- Thin liquidity can exaggerate reactions: in shortened weeks, single headlines—security advisories, analyst notes, or large block trades—often create outsized intraday swings.
The biggest near-term headline: Cisco email-security appliances hit by an actively exploited zero-day
The most time-sensitive Cisco-related story right now is a maximum-severity vulnerability tied to Cisco’s email security appliance ecosystem.
What happened
Cisco Talos (Cisco’s threat intelligence arm) reported an active campaign targeting Cisco AsyncOS Software used in Cisco Secure Email Gateway and Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager, enabling attackers to execute system-level commands and deploy a persistent backdoor named “AquaShell.” Talos says Cisco became aware of the activity on Dec. 10, and that the campaign has been ongoing since at least late November 2025. [2]
Why markets care
- The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2025-20393 and carries a CVSS 3.1 base score of 10.0 (Critical) from Cisco (as the CNA). [3]
- The U.S. National Vulnerability Database page flags that this CVE is in CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) ecosystem and lists a due date of Dec. 24, 2025 for required action (apply mitigations per vendor instructions or discontinue use if mitigations aren’t available). [4]
Investor takeaway (practical, not alarmist)
For CSCO shares, this is usually not a “revenue catalyst” by itself—but it can matter in three ways:
- Services/support load: large customer bases often lean on vendor support during incident response.
- Reputation and competitive optics: enterprise security buyers may scrutinize appliance vendors after high-profile campaigns.
- Security demand tailwind (longer-term): major incidents can also reinforce the need for modernization and layered defenses, supporting broader security spend—an area Cisco continues to push.
The key thing to watch into and through Dec. 22 is whether Cisco issues updated guidance, patches, or expanded mitigations—because fast-moving security narratives can drive short-term sentiment.
Fundamentals: Cisco’s last earnings showed strength in Networking and raised FY2026 guidance
The market’s medium-term anchor for Cisco remains earnings power and guidance.
In Cisco’s Q1 FY2026 earnings release (reported Nov. 12, 2025), the company posted:
- Total revenue:$14.883B, up 8% YoY
- Non-GAAP EPS:$1.00, up 10% YoY
- Product revenue: up 10% YoY; Services: up 2% YoY
- Product group performance:Networking +15%, Observability +6%, Security -2%, Collaboration -3%
- RPO (Remaining Performance Obligations):$42.9B, up 7%, with product RPO up 10% [5]
Guidance investors are still trading against
Cisco’s same release included forward guidance:
Q2 FY2026 guidance
- Revenue: $15.0B–$15.2B
- Non-GAAP EPS: $1.01–$1.03
- Cisco explicitly notes that margin and EPS guidance includes the estimated impact of tariffs based on current trade policy [6]
FY2026 guidance
- Revenue: $60.2B–$61.0B
- Non-GAAP EPS: $4.08–$4.14 [7]
Valuation framing (simple math, not a recommendation): using $78.42 and Cisco’s FY2026 non-GAAP EPS guide, CSCO trades around ~19x forward non-GAAP EPS (roughly 18.9–19.2x across the guidance range). [8]
The AI bull thesis: Cisco is positioning itself as “AI-era infrastructure”
Cisco’s stock narrative in late 2025 has remained tightly linked to AI-driven infrastructure spending—especially in data centers and high-performance networking.
Reuters’ reporting around Cisco’s Q1 results highlighted three datapoints that matter for any CSCO pre-market brief:
- Cisco raised its FY2026 forecast (revenue and profit) on AI-driven networking demand.
- The company expects $3 billion in AI infrastructure revenue from hyperscalers in FY2026.
- Cisco said it secured more than $2 billion in AI-related orders in FY2025, nearly all from hyperscalers, and flagged a $2B+ pipeline for high-performance networking products across multiple customer types. [9]
Product roadmap signals (why it reinforces the AI narrative)
Cisco’s own December communications have continued to emphasize data center networking for distributed AI workloads. In a Cisco newsroom post, the company described infrastructure designed for connecting distributed data centers, pointing to the Cisco 8223 router and Silicon One P200 positioning for AI-era bandwidth and efficiency, plus integration across observability and resilience tooling like Splunk and ThousandEyes. [10]
Separately, Cisco’s Partner Summit messaging has emphasized AI-assisted operations (“AgenticOps”) and unified visibility across Meraki and Catalyst management—features aimed at making enterprise network upgrades easier to deploy at scale. [11]
What to watch before/after the open: Any incremental datapoints that clarify whether AI demand is broadening beyond hyperscalers into enterprise/public sector—because that’s where the “duration” of the AI upgrade cycle gets priced.
Analyst forecasts and price targets: what Wall Street is signaling right now
Analyst sentiment is mixed-to-positive, and targets generally still imply upside—though the stock is no longer “cheap” on many models after a strong run.
- MarketWatch’s analyst summary shows an average recommendation of “Overweight” with an average target price around $87 (based on the page snapshot). [12]
- Morgan Stanley recently raised its price target to $91 and maintained an Overweight rating (as reflected by aggregator coverage citing the Dec. 17, 2025 update). [13]
How to interpret this (without hype):
- If your lens is 12-month total return, targets in the high-80s/low-90s suggest analysts are still underwriting earnings durability plus capital returns.
- If your lens is short-term trading, analyst target moves matter mostly when they coincide with fresh catalysts (earnings revisions, AI order commentary, or major product demand signals).
Dividend and buybacks: the “quiet” support under CSCO
Cisco remains a dividend-and-buyback-heavy mega-cap, which matters in volatile tape.
From Cisco’s Q1 FY2026 earnings release:
- Cisco declared a quarterly dividend of $0.41 per share, payable Jan. 21, 2026, to shareholders of record as of Jan. 2, 2026. [14]
- In Q1 FY2026, Cisco returned $3.6B to shareholders via buybacks and dividends, including repurchasing ~29 million shares for $2.0B at an average price of $68.28. [15]
- Remaining repurchase authorization: $12.2B (no termination date). [16]
At $78.42, the annualized dividend run-rate ($1.64) implies a yield around ~2.1% (price-dependent). [17]
Near-term “date risk” to remember: Dividend-focused flows often pick up as ex-div/record dates approach—especially in slower holiday weeks.
Insider and governance headlines: what changed in the last few days
Two items may show up on Monday morning scanners:
1) Insider sale (Form 4)
A recent SEC Form 4 filing shows Cisco director Michael D. Capellas reporting transactions dated Dec. 18, 2025 and signed Dec. 19, 2025. [18]
Insider sales don’t automatically signal bad news—executives sell for many personal reasons—but large, well-timed sales sometimes become part of the short-term narrative, particularly in a low-volume week.
2) Annual meeting / shareholder actions
Coverage of Cisco’s annual meeting indicates shareholders approved an amended stock incentive plan and elected directors (including Capellas among nominees listed). [19]
“No new financial information” — but investors still watch Cisco’s conference circuit
Cisco also flagged its December investor-conference participation schedule and explicitly noted that no new financial information would be discussed at those events.
Notably, the company listed appearances including:
- UBS Global Technology and AI Conference (Dec. 2)
- Barclays TMT Conference (Dec. 10), featuring CFO Mark Patterson in a fireside chat
- Additional investor meetings in London and New York [20]
Even when companies say “no new financial information,” traders still parse tone and demand commentary—especially on AI infrastructure, campus refresh cycles, and security.
Key dates ahead: what CSCO investors should mark on the calendar
Here’s the clean “what to watch next” checklist:
- Dec. 22, 2025 (Mon): first full session of a holiday-shortened week; liquidity can be thinner than normal. [21]
- Dec. 24, 2025 (Wed):early market close (1:00 p.m. ET). [22]
- Dec. 24, 2025: KEV-listed due date associated with CVE-2025-20393 actions on impacted products (per NVD/KEV metadata). [23]
- Jan. 2, 2026: shareholder-of-record date for the next Cisco dividend (per Cisco earnings release). [24]
- Jan. 21, 2026: dividend payment date ($0.41). [25]
- Feb. 11, 2026 (Wed): Cisco’s next quarterly call for Q2 FY2026 results is cited as Feb. 11, 2026 (1:30 p.m. PT / 4:30 p.m. ET) in an earnings call transcript source; multiple market calendars also cluster around this date. [26]
Bottom line for Monday’s open: CSCO is a fundamentals-led AI infrastructure story—until headlines take over
Going into the Dec. 22 open, Cisco stock is being pulled by two forces:
- Fundamentals + AI infrastructure optimism: raised FY2026 guidance, strong networking growth, and continued messaging around hyperscaler demand and AI-era infrastructure. [27]
- Security headline sensitivity: an actively exploited, critical vulnerability tied to Cisco email-security products is a real-time story, with government-linked remediation timelines close at hand—an environment where updates can move sentiment quickly. [28]
References
1. www.nyse.com, 2. blog.talosintelligence.com, 3. nvd.nist.gov, 4. nvd.nist.gov, 5. investor.cisco.com, 6. investor.cisco.com, 7. investor.cisco.com, 8. investor.cisco.com, 9. www.reuters.com, 10. newsroom.cisco.com, 11. investor.cisco.com, 12. www.marketwatch.com, 13. www.benzinga.com, 14. investor.cisco.com, 15. investor.cisco.com, 16. investor.cisco.com, 17. investor.cisco.com, 18. www.sec.gov, 19. www.investing.com, 20. investor.cisco.com, 21. www.nasdaq.com, 22. www.nyse.com, 23. nvd.nist.gov, 24. investor.cisco.com, 25. investor.cisco.com, 26. www.investing.com, 27. investor.cisco.com, 28. blog.talosintelligence.com
