NEW YORK, June 26, 2026, 17:01 EDT
- Cisco Systems, Inc. NASDAQ:CSCO closed at $113.77, off roughly 4.5%. Volume was close to 50.10 million shares.
- KeyBanc lifted its Cisco price target to $130 from $125 on Thursday, putting it just below the stock’s 52-week high of $130.37.
- Friday saw choppy volume, with FTSE Russell’s rebalancing landing after the U.S. market closed. Reuters put the day’s index trade at about $150 billion.
Cisco Systems, Inc. NASDAQ:CSCO dropped 4.5% to $113.77 Friday afternoon, down $5.41 a share and wiping out about $21 billion in market cap based on Google Finance’s 3.94 billion shares figure. Cisco’s trading volume hit 50.10 million shares, above the 28.09 million average, according to Google Finance.
Valuation is still in focus. KeyBanc’s Jackson Ader kept an Overweight on Cisco Thursday and bumped the target up to $130 from $125, according to GuruFocus. The new target is just 37 cents under Cisco’s 52-week high, leaving about 14% upside from where shares settled Friday.
Cisco is trading at $113.77, putting it at around 26.6 times the midpoint of its fiscal 2026 non-GAAP EPS outlook, which sits between $4.27 and $4.29. KeyBanc’s price target of $130 would lift the multiple to roughly 30.4. The AI business makes up just a minority of Cisco’s total sales, which keeps the focus on that earnings multiple.
Cisco is looking for AI infrastructure revenue from hyperscalers to hit around $4 billion in fiscal 2026, which would be close to 6.4% of the $62.8 billion to $63.0 billion full-year revenue range it guided. Cisco also reported that AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers have totaled $5.3 billion so far this year and lifted its fiscal 2026 AI orders outlook to about $9 billion, up from its earlier $5 billion estimate.
Conversion is the big focus for Cisco now. The company needs to pull its AI order book into recognized sales but also has to keep its core networking refresh going. In its fiscal Q3, Cisco reported total product orders climbed 35% year over year, up 19% if hyperscalers are left out. Orders for networking products jumped more than 50%. Campus networking orders moved up over 25%, and data-center switching orders rose more than 40%.
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said the company posted “record quarterly revenue” and pointed to demand for “connecting and securing AI.” CFO Mark Patterson said non-GAAP operating income also hit a record. Cisco’s third-quarter revenue was $15.8 billion, up 12%, with non-GAAP EPS at $1.06, up 10%. Cisco Investor Relations
Friday’s session saw an index move. Reuters said Jefferies analyst Steven DeSanctis described the Russell trade as “really massive,” while Stephens analyst Melissa Roberts labeled the day a “key liquidity day.” FTSE Russell confirmed the new index makeup started after U.S. markets shut on June 26. Reuters
Cisco’s 78% volume premium isn’t a reliable read for company demand by itself. A Nasdaq Trader alert said Russell was set to use the Nasdaq Closing Cross to price Nasdaq-listed stocks for its annual U.S. index rebalancing.
Cisco dropped, with losses seen across AI infrastructure and networking stocks. Arista Networks Inc NYSE:ANET lost 4.7%. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co NYSE:HPE slipped 6.5%. The Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1 NASDAQ:QQQ fell 1.35%.
Tech stocks with bigger valuations struggled as rates stayed firm. Wall Street was jittery with moves in tech and chip names ahead of next week’s jobs report, Reuters said. Julia Hermann at New York Life Investment Management called out the big question: do higher rates put the “cyclical and volatile” leaders at risk? Reuters
Cisco has leaned on its capital-return program, but Friday’s selloff pushed past that support. The company said it gave back $2.9 billion to shareholders in the third quarter with buybacks and dividends. It bought about 16 million shares at an average price of $80.28, with $9.6 billion still left on its buyback plan. Cisco declared a 42-cent quarterly dividend, payable July 22 to shareholders of record as of July 6.
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