For most investors, how much a stock's price changes over time is important. This factor can impact your investment portfolio as well as help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.
FOMO, or the fear of missing out, also plays a role in investing, particularly with tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.
What if you'd invested in Cisco Systems (CSCO) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to CSCO for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?
Cisco Systems' Business In-Depth
With that in mind, let's take a look at Cisco Systems' main business drivers.
Cisco enables enterprises and service providers to deliver highly secure connectivity from workplaces to data centers worldwide. The company delivers a unified architecture with integrated, end-to-end solutions that help customers in simplifying complex challenges. CSCO is incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into its product portfolios across Networking (68% of product revenues), Security (19.5%), Collaboration (10%) and Observability (2.5%).
Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Cisco reported revenues of $56.65 billion in fiscal 2025. Product and Services segments contributed 73.4% and 26.6%, respectively, to revenues. Americas, EMEA and APJC generated 59.4%, 26.2% and 14.4% of total revenues in fiscal 2025, respectively.
Networking category comprises core networking technologies of switching, routing, wireless, and servers. The switching portfolio encompasses campus switching as well as data center switching offerings. Campus switching offerings includes Catalyst 9000 family of switches, Meraki cloud-managed switches, as well as smart switches – Cisco 9350 and Cisco 9610 – built on Cisco Silicon One. Data center switching offerings include the Nexus 9000 series and the newly introduced Cisco N9300 series smart switches that embeds Cisco Hypershield, the company’s cloud native and AI-powered approach to highly distributed security for AI-scale data centers.
Security category consists of Network Security, Identity and Access Management, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Threat Intelligence, Detection, and Response (TIDR) solutions. Addition of Splunk platform and security offerings significantly strengthened CSCO’s TIDR capabilities.
Collaboration category comprises of Webex Suite, Collaboration Devices, Contact Center and CPaaS. It offers end-to-end collaboration solutions that can be delivered on-premises, from the cloud, or within hybrid cloud environments. Observability category comprises of network assurance (ThousandEyes), monitoring and analytics and observability suites (including Splunk Observability and AppDynamics).
Cisco competes with companies like Amazon Web Services, Arista Networks, Broadcom, Ciena, CrowdStrike Holdings, Dell, Fortinet, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Huawei, Microsoft, Nokia, Nvidia, Palo Alto Networks, RingCentral, Zoom Video Communications, and Zscaler, to name a few.
Bottom Line
While anyone can invest, building a lucrative investment portfolio takes research, patience, and a little bit of risk. If you had invested in Cisco Systems ten years ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.
A $1000 investment made in June 2016 would be worth $4,175.76, or a gain of 317.58%, as of June 8, 2026, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.
In comparison, the S&P 500's gained 251.75% and the price of gold went up 228.61% over the same time frame.
Looking ahead, analysts are expecting more upside for CSCO.
Cisco is seeing broad-based demand, with third-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of $15.8 billion up 12% year over year and non-GAAP earnings of $1.06 per share, up 10% year over year. Total product orders rose 35% and networking product orders grew more than 50%, helped by a campus refresh and data center switching orders up more than 40%. AI infrastructure is a key driver, with $5.3 billion of hyperscaler orders taken year to date; management raised expected fiscal 2026 AI orders to $9 billion and AI revenue to $4 billion. Non-GAAP gross margin was 66.0% and operating margin was 34.2%. For fiscal 2026, guidance calls for $62.8-$63 billion revenue and $4.27-$4.29 non-GAAP earnings, assuming current tariffs and exemptions persist. However, declining services revenue, flat security product revenue, and stiff competition are major concerns.
The stock has jumped 25.96% over the past four weeks. Additionally, no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 9 higher, for fiscal 2026; the consensus estimate has moved up as well.
Beyond Nvidia: AI's Second Wave Is Here
The AI revolution has already minted millionaires. But the stocks everyone knows about aren't likely to keep delivering the biggest profits. AI’s second wave is moving from infrastructure to implementation and these companies are at the forefront of this transition, positioned to become what Amazon and Google were to the internet era.
See Stocks Now >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report
Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO): Free Stock Analysis Report
This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).