Company profile
SEC EDGAR ↗- Industry
- Computer Communications Equipment
- Listed
- Nasdaq: CSCO
- Incorporated
- DE
- Headquarters
- San Jose, CA
- Fiscal year end
- Jul 25
Financials
FY2025- Revenue
- $56.7B
- Net income
- $10.2B
- Total assets
- $122.3B
| Fiscal year | Revenue | Net income | Total assets |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | $56.7B | $10.2B | $122.3B |
| FY2024 | $53.8B | $10.3B | $124.4B |
| FY2023 | $57.0B | $12.6B | $101.9B |
| FY2022 | $51.6B | $11.8B | $94.0B |
| FY2021 | $49.8B | $10.6B | $97.5B |
| FY2020 | $49.3B | $11.2B | $94.9B |
Reported fiscal years from SEC filings (10-K) — SEC EDGAR ↗. Stratrix is a strategy publication, not a real-time financial data service.
Decisions on record
2 verified Decision Records on Cisco, and the casebook each one belongs to.
| Fork date | Decision type | What Cisco chose | Where it stood | The story | Casebook |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | Adjacency Expansion | Buy the adjacency | a $2.77 billion inventory write-down and product gross margin collapsing from 64.9% to 47.9% (2001) | Read the story → | Adjacency Expansion Casebook → |
| 2024 | Cannibalization Choice | Acquire Splunk | Splunk had a negative $0.04 impact on non-GAAP EPS for fiscal 2024, accretion not expected until fiscal 2026 (2024) | Read the story → | Cannibalization Choice Casebook → |
Videos on Cisco
Run one of these yourself
The decisions Cisco faced, as kits you can run.
Each pack takes one of these decisions and gives you the framework, a deck for the room, a model that resolves to one number, and the sourced cases behind it. $499, one-time.
Growth & PortfolioThe Adjacency ExpansionWhen does the business next door belong to you?See the pack →Decision ForksThe CannibalizationShould you launch the thing that takes revenue from your best business?See the pack →Decision ForksThe Road Not TakenWhat did the decision you did not take actually cost?See the pack →
The analyses
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
From $97M in 1993 to $27B in 2024, Cisco Bought the Future Whenever It Threatened to Outrun the Router
Cisco is remembered as the visionary that conquered switching, optical, wireless, and security. The record says otherwise: a $97M deal in 1993 and a $27B one in 2024 were both defensive — Cisco was a fast follower in its own backyard, buying the future every time it threatened to outrun the router.
8 min
The Cannibalization Choice · Growth & Portfolio
Cisco Says It's a Software Company Now. It Bought That Identity for $28 Billion.
Cisco's FY2024 subscription revenue reached 51% of total revenue and ARR jumped 22% — proof the pivot worked, the story goes. But $4.3B of that ARR arrived in a single $28B acquisition, while the core networking business fell 23% in a quarter.
8 min
The Counterfactual · Decision Forks
Cisco's Acquisition Machine Was Stock Arbitrage: 98% of $34.2 Billion Paid in Shares
Cisco's famous acquisition machine bought 71 companies for $34.2 billion between 1994 and 2001. The detail nobody repeats: 98% of it was paid in Cisco shares. The genius wasn't integration. It was arbitrage — and arbitrage dies the instant the currency does.
8 min
The Counterfactual · Decision Forks
Cisco Was the Most Valuable Company on Earth for a Day. The Math Was the Whole Story.
For one afternoon in March 2000, Cisco was worth more than Microsoft - around $579 billion at roughly 200x earnings. The business kept growing for two decades. The stock never came back. The reason isn't a collapse; it's arithmetic.
8 min
The Moat Anatomy · Moat & Competition
Cisco Trained the People Who Buy Its Gear. The AI Data Center Never Took the Course.
Cisco built the deepest demand-side moat in networking: 28 million learners trained to think in its command line. But while that flywheel keeps the enterprise loyal, its overall Ethernet switch share collapsed from 47.1% to 27.6% in about two and a half years - because the AI fabric was never certified by anyone.
8 min