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Cisco Systems (CSCO) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

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In the latest trading session, Cisco Systems (CSCO - Free Report) closed at $49.06, marking a +0.53% move from the previous day. The stock outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.03%. At the same time, the Dow lost 0.03%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.14%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the seller of routers, switches, software and services had gained 2.13% over the past month. This has lagged the Computer and Technology sector's gain of 6.3% and the S&P 500's gain of 3.23% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from CSCO as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be February 12, 2020. The company is expected to report EPS of $0.76, up 4.11% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $11.99 billion, down 3.7% from the year-ago period.

For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $3.25 per share and revenue of $51.06 billion, which would represent changes of +4.84% and -1.62%, respectively, from the prior year.

It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for CSCO. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.

Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.

The Zacks Rank system, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection remained stagnant. CSCO is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

In terms of valuation, CSCO is currently trading at a Forward P/E ratio of 15.01. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 16.08, so we one might conclude that CSCO is trading at a discount comparatively.

We can also see that CSCO currently has a PEG ratio of 2.56. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. The Computer - Networking industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 2.56 as of yesterday's close.

The Computer - Networking industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 36, which puts it in the top 15% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

Be sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.


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