Cisco (CSCO) Earnings Tomorrow: What You Need to Know

 

• Cisco Systems (CSCO) is set to report their Q3 FY2025 earnings on Wednesday, November 12, after market close.

• Analyst consensus estimates call for an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.99 and revenue of $14.8 billion.

• Order and backlog quality, AI networking traction, and Splunk integration are the primary factors that investors will be looking out for during this report. 

 

Where Cisco Stands Now

Cisco is quietly having an excellent year, trading up over 20% year-to-date (YTD) and beating expectations for both EPS and revenue in their Q1 and Q2 FY2025 calls. As is true with many tech companies this year, AI has been the primary driver of growth; Cisco has booked more than $2 billion in AI infrastructure orders so far in FY2025, more than double their prior target.

 

This AI demand is caused by Cisco’s ever-improving Silicon One chip family, enabled by 800G datacenter networking gear. The company is currently working alongside Nvidia (NVDA) to build these 800G switch ports and improve their AI networking as a whole. Additionally, the company recently acquired Splunk, a software platform for aggregation and referencing of machine data. 

 

What to Watch on Wednesday

While Cisco’s forward guidance and core numbers will obviously be the biggest drivers of a move in share price after this call, there are a number of other factors that could have an impact as well. Orders and backlog quality, AI networking traction, and Splunk integration will be chief among them. 

 

A big question ahead of this call is whether new AI and cloud builds can keep orders growing for Cisco, and how the company’s backlog looks compared to last quarter. The strength of their order flow has underpinned their full 2025 fiscal year to this point; a continuation or increase in that positive trend would be a bullish variable, and vice versa. 

 

Additionally, AI networking traction is a major variable. Any numbers on 800G ramps, webscale wins, or lead times for AI datacenter gear could easily sway investor outlook. The company’s Nvidia partnership is one of the main drivers of investor optimism to this point, and those investors will want to see a quick and notable impact on 800G production from that partnership.

 

Lastly, Splunk integration is another big question mark that investors hope to have answered in this earnings call. Namely, any information on early revenue contribution or how security and observability bundles are landing with large customers would be big. 

 

For this call, the options market is pricing in a move of about $5 in either direction, which would be almost exactly 7%. While that would be a considerably large move in the grand scheme of things, it is not a considerably large expected move ahead of an earnings call. This smaller expected move indicates that investors feel most of this call’s information is already priced in, and that anything unexpected could have serious consequences. 

 

FY26 Setup: Growth, Cash, Capital Returns

Looking beyond this earnings call and beyond this calendar year, there are a number of factors that could have a great impact on CSCO into the 2026 fiscal year. Notably, analysts and Cisco’s forward guidance alike call for top-line revenue growth of about 5% in the 2026 fiscal year, but that number is based on AI orders continuing to convert and enterprise demand growing in size and steadiness. Should either of those to segments start to slack in 2026, it could bring on turbulent times for Cisco. 

 

Another such factor is Cisco’s execution compared to their competitors. There is no shortage of competition in the AI space right now, and sustained AI wins and 800G adoption need to translate into profits for shareholders and recurring software progress. If competitors are able to get the upper hand or steal high-value clientele from Cisco, growth could slow sharply. 

 

Finally, there is infrastructure and delivery timeline risk. Cisco’s AI build schedules in 2026 are very robust, and there are questions as to whether the company can keep parts, power, and optics flowing fast enough to keep up with those schedules. If they start to fall considerably behind, that would translate into lower-than-expected revenue, and likely a subsequent selloff. 

 

Cisco has the potential to take on a Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) or ASML (ASML) type role in the AI space in 2026; a quiet giant making boatloads of profits in the shadows. However, much of the company’s AI growth has yet to be realized, and executing on that roadmap will be critical. 

Gus Downing is host of the tastylive Network show Risk and Reward. @GainsByGus
For live daily programming, market news and commentary, visit tastylive or the YouTube channels tastylive (for options traders), and #tastyliveTrending for stocks, futures, forex & macro. 
Trade with a better broker, open a tastytrade account today. tastylive Inc. and tastytrade Inc. are separate but affiliated companies.