Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) reported its fiscal fourth-quarter results after the market close on Wednesday, August 12, 2026, beating the top end of its own guidance on revenue, operating margin and earnings per share. Despite the beat, the stock tumbled about 9 percent in Thursday's session — a sell-the-news move after a strong 2026 rally that had left expectations very high.
"Revenue, operating margin and EPS all came in above the high end of our guide for Q4," Chief Financial Officer Mark Patterson said, adding that orders grew at double-digit rates across all technologies, customer markets and geographies.
For the quarter ended in July, total revenue rose 18 percent year over year to 17.3 billion dollars, with non-GAAP net income of 4.9 billion dollars, or 1.22 dollars per share, and GAAP net income of 3.9 billion dollars, or 0.97 dollars per share, according to [Mirror Review](https://www.mirrorreview.com/news/ciscos-ai-infrastructure/). Full-year fiscal 2026 revenue reached 63.3 billion dollars, up 12 percent from fiscal 2025.
For fiscal 2027, Cisco guided revenue of 72.2 billion to 73.4 billion dollars, above analyst estimates, as [Investor's Business Daily](https://www.investors.com/news/technology/cisco-stock-csco-cisco-earnings-q22026/) reported. The company expects about 7.5 billion dollars of AI infrastructure revenue in fiscal 2027, Patterson told [Yahoo Finance](https://finance.yahoo.com/video/cisco-raises-ai-outlook-infrastructure-144000556.html). [Mirror Review](https://www.mirrorreview.com/news/ciscos-ai-infrastructure/) also notes Cisco closed fiscal 2026 with 9.3 billion dollars in AI infrastructure orders — 4 billion of them booked in the fourth quarter alone by hyperscale cloud customers — against roughly 4 billion dollars of AI infrastructure revenue recognized during the year, a sizable backlog still working its way through production and delivery.
The market reaction was nonetheless negative. CSCO closed at 123.88 dollars on Wednesday and traded around 112 dollars on Thursday morning, down about 9 percent. [Investor's Business Daily](https://www.investors.com/news/technology/cisco-stock-csco-cisco-earnings-q22026/) said shares fell "amid a big run-up in 2026 and high expectations," while Citi, on the conference call, voiced concern that networking sales growth could decelerate over fiscal 2027, according to the transcript published by [Yahoo Finance](https://finance.yahoo.com/video/cisco-raises-ai-outlook-infrastructure-144000556.html).
Sources
- [Investor's Business Daily](https://www.investors.com/news/technology/cisco-stock-csco-cisco-earnings-q22026/) (primary source)
- [Yahoo Finance – interview and conference call transcript](https://finance.yahoo.com/video/cisco-raises-ai-outlook-infrastructure-144000556.html)
- [Mirror Review](https://www.mirrorreview.com/news/ciscos-ai-infrastructure/)
