CSCO: Real Demand or Customer Pull Forward?

Research evidence excerpt

CSCO: Real Demand or Customer Pull Forward?

Telecom and Networking Equipment

Communications Technology - Market Overweight

CISCO SYSTEMS, INC. (CSCO) May 14, 2026

CSCO: Real Demand or Customer Pull Forward? Rating:

Peer Perform

The Wolfe Byte Price: $101.87

The shares are trading ~$120 in the aftermarket on strong Product Order metrics. Price Target:

While there IS some fundamental improvement, the weight of the evidence NA

suggests there’s a lot of order pull-forward as customers try to get ahead of price View CSCO Model

increases / availability issues. View Comp Table

Company Information

Massive Growth or Customers Getting Orders in Ahead of Price Increases? We 52-Week Range $61 - $102

Market Cap. (MM) $402,376

think there’s a lot of demand pull forward here – as customers try to get in front Enterprise Value (MM) $421,812

of pricing increases and memory/component availability. It just makes sense. CFO Shares Out. (MM) 3,949.9

Mark Patterson noted that there could be a “modest” pull forward going on (Product Avg. Value Traded (MM) $2,847.64 Adj. Debt to Cap 7.2%

Orders were up 35% Y/Y, +19% ex-Hyperscalers). We’ve seen other companies also SI% of Float 1.6%

generate very strong orders under similar circumstances. Cisco themselves saw order FCF Yield 3.0%

EV/ EBITDA 20.7x

rates take off in 2021-2022 on customers’ supply chain worries. That led to an excess Price to Earnings 22x

inventory buildup. At the same time, business trends are genuinely better. We’re

still in the very early days of AI getting deployed in earnest among mainstream 105

enterprises. Moreover, customers will have to upgrade their campus networks to 10095

support AI traffic. 9085

75Hyperscale Frenzy Beneficiary... Webscale orders were $1.9B (down $200M Q/