Cisco Systems Inc's recent orders were in line with the same stable pattern the company experienced in previous months, Chief Executive John Chambers said, without offering specific sales figures.
"Our booking linearity that we saw [earlier in the year] ... continued again in November and December," Chambers said during a speech Tuesday afternoon at a Salomon Smith Barney investment conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Chambers declined to update Cisco's financial forecast for the quarter.
The largest maker of computer-networking equipment also expects to capture a "dramatic" additional share of the market from rivals in its fiscal second quarter ending Jan. 26, Chambers said. He said last month that the San Jose, California-based company expects to gain sales from competitors.
"What he's really telling you is they did 66 percent of the quarter [in] November and December," said Ariane Mahler, an analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein who recommends selling Cisco shares and doesn't personally own any. "What he's hinting at is maybe he did even better."
Also, Cisco granted all of its 38,500 employees stock options yesterday, Chambers said in a second presentation Tuesday evening. The options were priced at US$20.53, the stock's closing price yesterday, spokeswoman Terry Anderson said. The company will grant and price the second half of the options grant later in the fiscal year, which ends July 27, she said.
Cisco gave an undisclosed number of stock options to employees last May, half priced in May at US$18.57 and the second half in August at US$16.01.
Chambers gave his current view on economic conditions in geographic regions: In Europe, "we are seeing strength;" the US "is still struggling" and "Asia is mixed," with China "feeling a little bit of stress, in terms of the US economy" and Japan expected to see "three to five years of challenging times."
On Dec. 4, Chambers said that Cisco's November orders met the company's expectations. A month earlier, Cisco said sales this quarter would be unchanged or rise by a "very low single-digit" percentage from the first quarter. Officials declined to forecast beyond this quarter.
"We're gaining market share rapidly," Chambers said today.
In the fiscal second quarter, analysts expect Cisco to earn US$0.05 a share, excluding acquisition costs and other items, on revenue of US$4.54 billion. On that basis, which doesn't conform to generally accepted accounting principles, Cisco had a profit of US$0.18 a share a year earlier on record sales of US$6.75 billion.
Cisco rivals Lucent Technologies Inc, Nortel Networks Corp and Juniper Networks Inc all said their sales in the quarter ended last month fell from the previous period.
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