Tag Archives: Networking

T-Mobile Says Hackers Stole Data on About 37 Million Customers

T-Mobile

TMUS -0.52%

US Inc. said hackers accessed data, including birth dates and billing addresses, for about 37 million of its customers, the second major security lapse at the wireless company in two years.

The company said in a regulatory filing Thursday that it discovered the problem on Jan. 5 and was working with law-enforcement officials and cybersecurity consultants. T-Mobile said it believes the hackers had access to its data since Nov. 25 but that it has since been able to stop the malicious activity.

The cellphone carrier said it is currently notifying affected customers and that it believes the most sensitive types of records—such as credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and account passwords—weren’t compromised. T-Mobile has more than 110 million customers.

The company said its preliminary investigation indicates that data on about 37 million current postpaid and prepaid customer accounts was exposed. The company said hackers may have obtained names, billing addresses, emails, phone numbers, birth dates and account numbers. Information such as the number of lines on the account and plan features could have also been accessed, the company said.

“Some basic customer information (nearly all of which is the type widely available in marketing databases or directories) was obtained,” T-Mobile said in a statement. “No passwords, payment card information, social security numbers, government ID numbers or other financial account information were compromised.”

The company said its systems weren’t breached but someone was improperly obtaining data through an API, or application programming interface, that can provide some customer information. The company said it shut down the activity within 24 hours of discovering it.

The company’s investigation into the incident is ongoing. T-Mobile warned that it could incur significant costs tied to the incident, though it said it doesn’t currently expect a material effect on the company’s operations. The company is set to report fourth-quarter results on Feb. 1.

T-Mobile acknowledged a security lapse in 2021 after personal information regarding more than 50 million of its current, former and prospective customers was found for sale online. T-Mobile later raised its estimate and said about 76.6 million U.S. residents had some sort of records exposed.

A 21-year-old American living in Turkey claimed credit for the 2021 intrusion and said the company’s security practices cleared an easy path for the theft of the data, which included Social Security numbers, birth dates and phone-specific identifiers. T-Mobile’s chief executive later apologized for the failure and said the company would improve its data safeguards.

T-Mobile proposed paying $350 million to settle a class-action lawsuit tied to the 2021 hack. As part of the settlement, the company also pledged to spend $150 million for security technology in 2022 and this year.

Write to Will Feuer at Will.Feuer@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
T-Mobile US Inc. acknowledged a security lapse in 2021. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it was last year. (Corrected on Jan. 19)

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TuSimple Plans Layoffs That Could Cut at Least Half Its Workforce Next Week

Self-driving trucking company

TuSimple Holdings Inc.

TSP -3.75%

plans to cut potentially at least half of its workforce next week, people familiar with the matter said, as it scales back efforts to build and test autonomous truck-driving systems.

A staff reduction of that size would likely affect at least 700 employees, the people said. As of June, TuSimple had 1,430 full-time employees globally. It has operations in San Diego, Arizona, Texas and China.

The retrenchment follows a dramatic series of events, including the removal of the chief executive in October after a board investigation concluded that TuSimple had shared confidential information with a Chinese startup. TuSimple faces multiple federal investigations into its relationship with the Chinese startup, Hydron Inc.

TuSimple President and Chief Executive

Cheng Lu,

who previously held the CEO job and returned to the position in November, said on Friday, when asked for comment on the planned layoffs, that he intended “to right the ship, and this includes ensuring the company is capital efficient.”

The company plans to scale back significantly its work on building self-driving systems and testing self-driving trucks on public roads in Arizona and Texas, the people familiar with the matter said. As part of the downsizing, much of TuSimple’s operation in Tucson, Ariz., where it does a lot of its test driving, will be eliminated, and the team that works on the algorithms for the self-driving software will be pared back significantly, the people said.

TuSimple will focus on building out a software product that matches self-driving trucks with shippers that have freight to haul, with the aim of offering freight transport at a lower cost than human-driven trucks, the people said.

This month, TuSimple and Navistar International Corp. said they had jointly ended a two-year-old partnership. TuSimple had planned to incorporate its self-driving systems into Navistar trucks that would be sold to freight haulers starting in 2025. TuSimple doesn’t build trucks itself.

Employees have been bracing for the layoffs. Early this month, Mr. Lu sent an email to staff that said management was reviewing “our people expenses, the biggest part of our cash burn,” according to a copy viewed by The Wall Street Journal. He advised employees “to focus on the work at hand.”

TuSimple, based in San Diego, told employees this week that offices would be closed Tuesday and Wednesday, the people said. The job cuts are expected to be announced on Tuesday, they said.

TuSimple is cutting costs and scaling back its ambitions as it reels from a string of crises this year, including a crash of one of its self-driving trucks in April, the loss of key business partnerships, two CEO changes, a plummeting stock price and concurrent government investigations. Federal authorities are probing whether TuSimple improperly financed and transferred technology to Hydron, the Journal reported in October.

TuSimple has struggled to generate significant revenue as its technology remained in a testing phase; in the first half of the year, it reported $4.9 million in revenue on $220.5 million in losses. That revenue largely came from hauling freight for shippers in trucks while keeping a human driver behind the wheel. In recent weeks, some of those partners, including McLane Company Inc., have moved to distance themselves from TuSimple, according to people familiar with the matter.

“McLane is aware of the recent leadership, operational and route changes at TuSimple and is in communication with their team. We are in the process of assessing the business relationship with TuSimple and will determine the next course of action in due time,” said Larry Parsons, McLane’s chief administrative officer.

In October, following a board investigation and the day after the Journal reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or Cfius, were investigating TuSimple, the company’s board fired then-CEO

Xiaodi Hou.

After being ousted, Mr. Hou joined forces with fellow co-founder Mo Chen, who is also the leader of Hydron, to fire the board. Together they brought Mr. Lu back to run the company. Mr. Chen now controls the company with 59% of the voting power, while Mr. Hou has 30%, according to securities filings.

Last month, accounting company KPMG LLP said in a letter to the SEC it had resigned as TuSimple’s auditor as a result of the board firing, which also involved dismissing TuSimple’s audit committee.

TuSimple has announced leadership changes in an effort to get back into compliance with regulators and public stock market rules. This included adding two independent board directors and a security director to its board. Cfius had required the security director role as part of a national-security agreement with the company, but TuSimple fired the previous security director.

TuSimple’s stock closed at $1.54 on Friday, a 75% decline over the past two months and down 96% from its 2021 initial public offering price.

Write to Heather Somerville at heather.somerville@wsj.com

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TuSimple Fires CEO Xiaodi Hou Amid Federal Probes

TuSimple Holdings Inc.,

TSP -46.16%

a self-driving trucking company, said Monday it had fired its chief executive and co-founder,

Xiaodi Hou.

The San Diego-based company said in a news release and securities filing that its board of directors on Sunday had ousted Mr. Hou, who was also the board chairman and chief technology officer. 

Mr. Hou was fired in connection with a continuing investigation by members of the board, the release said. That review “led the board to conclude that a change of Chief Executive Officer was necessary,” the company said in the release.

The securities filing said that the board’s investigation found that TuSimple this year shared confidential information with Hydron Inc., a trucking startup with operations mostly in China and funded by Chinese investors. The filing also said that TuSimple’s decision to share the confidential information hadn’t been disclosed to the board before TuSimple entered into a business deal with Hydron.

TuSimple said it didn’t know whether Hydron shared, or publicly disclosed, the confidential information, the securities filing said.

Messrs. Hou and Chen didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Hou’s termination was announced the day after The Wall Street Journal reported TuSimple and its leadership, principally Mr. Hou, faced investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Securities and Exchange Commission and Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., known as Cfius, into whether the company improperly financed and transferred technology to a Chinese startup, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

TuSimple’s stock plunged more than 44% Monday. Shares in the company are down more than 90% for the year. 

Investigators at the FBI and SEC are looking at whether Mr. Hou breached fiduciary duties and securities laws by failing to properly disclose TuSimple’s relationship with Hydron, the China-backed startup founded in 2021 by TuSimple co-founder Mo Chen that says it is developing autonomous hydrogen-powered trucks, the Journal reported. Federal investigators are also probing whether TuSimple shared with Hydron intellectual property developed in the U.S. and whether that action defrauded TuSimple investors by sending valuable technology to an overseas adversary.

The Journal also has reported that the board in July began investigating similar issues, including whether TuSimple incubated Hydron in China without informing regulators, the TuSimple board or its shareholders, said other people familiar with the matter. A June business presentation from Hydron viewed by the Journal named TuSimple as Hydron’s first customer, and said TuSimple would purchase from Hydron several hundred hydrogen-powered trucks equipped with self-driving technology. A TuSimple spokesman said the company has considered an agreement to buy freight trucks from Hydron but isn’t a Hydron customer. 

TuSimple’s securities filing on Monday said that TuSimple employees worked for Hydron and were paid, earning less than $300,000. The board wasn’t aware of this nor had members approve it, the filing said. Mr. Chen, who founded and leads Hydron, is TuSimple’s largest shareholder, owning about 11.8% of the company, according to FactSet.   

Mr. Hou’s dismissal follows months of upheaval at the company, including the departures of its chief financial officer and chief legal officer and a sharp drop in its stock price. Much of the turmoil began when Mr. Hou took over as CEO in March, said former employees. 

In April, one of TuSimple’s autonomous semi trucks crashed on an Arizona freeway. The accident revealed safety and security problems at TuSimple that former employees said leadership had dismissed, the Journal reported in August. 

The company said

Ersin Yumer,

TuSimple’s executive vice president of operations, will serve as interim CEO while the board searches for Mr. Hou’s successor. Mr. Yumer previously worked on autonomous-vehicle technology at

Aurora Innovation Inc.,

Uber Technologies Inc.

and Argo AI, the autonomous-driving venture partly owned by

Ford Motor Co.

and

Volkswagen AG

that was shut down recently. Independent board director

Brad Buss,

the former chief financial officer at SolarCity Corp. and Cypress Semiconductor Corp., will be chairman, TuSimple said.

TuSimple said it would release its third-quarter earnings on Monday after the market closes. The earnings release was previously scheduled for Tuesday. The company, ahead of the results, said it remained on track to meet the full-year guidance disclosed in August, including ending the year with a cash balance of about $950 million.

Write to Heather Somerville at heather.somerville@wsj.com and Kate O’Keeffe at kathryn.okeeffe@wsj.com

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Cisco Made $20 Billion-Plus Takeover Offer for Splunk

Cisco Systems Inc.

CSCO -1.77%

has made a takeover offer worth more than $20 billion for software maker

Splunk Inc.,

SPLK -2.76%

according to people familiar with the matter.

The offer was made recently and the companies aren’t currently in active talks, some of the people said.

Should there be a deal, it would be Cisco’s biggest ever, eclipsing the roughly $7 billion acquisition of Scientific Atlanta in 2005. Its most recent deal of size was its nearly $5 billion purchase of Acacia Communications Inc. in 2021.

Splunk is currently searching for a chief executive after

Doug Merritt

stepped down from the role in November after roughly six years following a series of disappointing earnings reports. The company named Chairman

Graham Smith

as interim CEO, a position he still holds.

Splunk shares rose sharply early in the pandemic as did those of a number of other technology companies with strong growth potential, but have almost fallen in half since then.

It isn’t clear whether other potential suitors are circling Splunk.

Splunk, founded in 2003, makes software used by companies’ information-technology and security operations to monitor and analyze data.

San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco sells routers, switches and security services as well as software products such as its Webex meeting application.

Cisco’s interest shows that the networking giant—a serial acquirer, but usually of smaller companies—has an appetite for big deals.

And it has the wherewithal, with a market value of around $235 billion and more than $20 billion in cash and short-term investments.

Software has been a hot corner of the M&A market lately, with a number of companies in the sector being snapped up by private-equity firms or other industry players. In one of the latest examples,

Citrix Systems Inc.

agreed to be taken private by a pair of private-equity firms in an acquisition valued at $16.5 billion, including debt.

Splunk said in June that technology-focused private-equity firm Silver Lake was making a $1 billion investment in the company to help support the transformation of the business. Splunk has been shifting from a traditional software-licensing arrangement to a cloud-based subscription model. An increase in the shares on news of that investment had evaporated by the close of trading Friday.

Cisco is set to report its fiscal second-quarter earnings Feb. 16, while Splunk reports March 2.

Write to Dana Cimilluca at dana.cimilluca@wsj.com and Cara Lombardo at cara.lombardo@wsj.com

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U.S. Plans Sanctions, Export Controls Against Russia if It Invades Ukraine

WASHINGTON—The U.S. is prepared to impose sanctions and export controls on critical sectors of the Russian economy if Russian President Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, and is working to mitigate market shocks if Russia withholds energy supplies in retaliation, officials said.

Taking a page out of the Trump administration playbook to pressure Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co., senior administration officials on Tuesday described potentially banning the export to Russia of various products that use microelectronics based on U.S. equipment, software or technology.

While the officials didn’t specify the products, they said that the goal would be to hit critical Russian industrial sectors that President Putin has given priority to, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

“The export control options we’re considering alongside our allies and partners would hit Putin’s strategic ambitions to industrialize his economy quite hard, and it would impair areas that are of importance to him,” a senior administration official said.

Administration officials declined to provide many specifics on the kinds of sanctions it would impose, but said the moves would exacerbate the selloff in Russian markets, raise the country’s cost of borrowing and hurt the value of Russia’s currency.

Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders, moved tanks and other military gear westward from bases in the east, and deployed troops to neighboring Belarus, which also borders Ukraine. White House officials are preparing for an incursion, and in addition to preparing sanctions, the U.S. said it would bolster NATO forces in Eastern Europe.

President Biden said at a news conference that the U.S. is ready to unleash sanctions against Russia if President Vladimir Putin makes a move against Ukraine. Biden also laid out a possible diplomatic resolution. Photo: Susan Walsh/Associated Press (Video from 1/19/22)

After weeks of calls and meetings in European capitals, U.S. and European officials said Tuesday they were seeing “convergence” on prospective sanctions among the U.S. and European nations, in part due to assurances the U.S. is working to secure energy supplies should Mr. Putin invade Ukraine. U.S. officials said they are looking for energy stockpiles in North Africa, the Middle East, Asia and inside the U.S.

“If Russia decides to weaponize its supply of natural gas or crude oil, it wouldn’t be without consequences to the Russian economy,” one of the U.S. officials said. “This is a one-dimensional economy, and that means it needs oil and gas revenue at least as much as Europe needs its energy supply.”

European officials said the Biden administration’s hands-on approach in consulting them and keeping them informed of U.S. plans, including the personal outreach by Mr. Biden and his top officials, has spurred cooperation.

Still, Russia’s ability to mitigate the impact of Western sanctions is significant—far higher than the likes of Iran, whose economy plummeted into a deep slump in 2018 after the Trump administration reimposed nuclear sanctions.

The Bank of Russia puts the country’s reserves at around $630 billion at the end of 2021 and Europe is dependent on Russia for almost 40% of its gas supplies, an export stream sanctions are unlikely to cut off. Russia’s trade and political links with China also make it less vulnerable to being isolated from the world economy.

The U.S. announcement came a day after President Biden discussed the Ukraine crisis with several European leaders. The leaders, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, discussed their coordination of sanctions measures and the situation in Ukraine.

The leaders agreed that no major sanctions options should be taken off the table, a European Union official said, even if some would likely be used only as a last resort. Those might include measures that could cause collateral economic harm to Western countries, like cutting Russia out of the SWIFT financial network that enables banks to settle transactions across the world, and embargoes on energy imports from Russia.

“The leaders agreed that, should a further Russian incursion into Ukraine happen, allies must enact swift retributive responses including an unprecedented package of sanctions,” Mr. Johnson’s office said in a statement after the call. “They resolved to continue coordinating closely on any such response.”

The export controls under consideration, the officials said, would be implemented through a powerful U.S. policy tool known as the Foreign Direct Product Rule, which the Trump administration used to cripple China’s Huawei.

Using the rule to target a country or multiple industrial sectors as opposed to a single company is a novel strategy that could potentially have wide-ranging effects given the global dominance and ubiquity of U.S. chip-making tools and software. For example, the U.S. could use the rule to block a foreign company that made a phone in a different foreign country from selling that item to Russia if the device uses any U.S. chips.

The impact of the rule would depend on how broadly officials decide to apply the restrictions and on the precise wording in any regulation. The Trump administration made multiple attempts before settling on language for a regulation that ultimately exacted a meaningful impact on Huawei.

Write to Gordon Lubold at Gordon.Lubold@wsj.com, Kate O’Keeffe at kathryn.okeeffe@wsj.com and Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com

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IBM Sells Watson Health Assets to Investment Firm

International Business Machines Corp. agreed to sell the data and analytics assets from its Watson Health business to investment firm Francisco Partners, the companies said Friday.

The deal is the latest step by IBM to refocus its core business around the cloud. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that IBM was exploring a sale of its healthcare-analytics business as a way to streamline the computing giant’s operations and sharpen its focus on computing services provided via the internet. The Watson Health business uses artificial intelligence to analyze diagnostic tests and other health data and to manage care.

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Cisco Stock Slides on Disappointing Outlook and Continued Shortages


Cisco Systems

shares are heading lower in late trading Wednesday after the networking infrastructure company posted results that were in line with guidance, but shy of some investor expectations.

January quarter revenue guidance was short of Street estimates. The company said supply issues are restraining its ability to meet customer demand.

In an interview with Barron’s, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins conceded that one question the company wrestles with is whether at some point deferred demand results in lost business.

“At some point you lose something to someone who can deliver faster,” he says, while adding that “we are getting our share the other way as well.” Robbins notes that some competitors have deferred shipments to existing customers in order to supply new customers. But he also says that cancelation rates are running below historic norms.

CFO Scott Herren says that the company’s supply chain issues go beyond chips—there are also shortages of power supplies and substates used to build devices. And he says that logistics struggles continue, with air, ocean and trucking all still “snarled.”

For the fiscal first quarter ended October 30, the company posted revenue of $12.9 billion, up 8% from a year earlier, which was toward the lower end of the company’s forecast growth range of 7.5% to 9.5%, and slightly below the Street consensus forecast of $13 billion.

On a non-GAAP basis, the company earned 82 cents a share, a penny above the high end of the guidance range of 79 cents to 81 cents a share. Under generally accepted accounting principles, the company earned 70 cents a share.


Cisco

(ticker: CSCO) said that order growth was up 33% from a year ago, higher than the 31% order growth in the July quarter. Annual recurring revenue was $21.6 billion, up 10% from a year ago.

Cisco is projecting quarter revenue growth for the January 2022 fiscal second quarter of between 4.5% and 6.5%, which implies $12.6 billion at the midpoint, below the Street consensus at $12.9 billion. Cisco sees profits for the quarter on a non-GAAP basis of 80 cents to 82 cents a share; Street consensus was 82 cents.

For the July 2022 fiscal year, Cisco sees revenue up 5% to 7%, consistent with the Street consensus forecast for 6.1% growth. The company sees full year non-GAAP profits of between $3.38 and $3.45 a share, bracketing the Street consensus at $3.42 a share.

“In Q1, we had robust growth and continued strong demand despite the very dynamic supply environment,” CEO Robbins said in a statement.

This is the first quarter of a new segment reporting structure. Cisco reported revenue from “secure, agile networks,” which includes campus, data center and enterprise routing, compute and switching, of $5.97 billion, up 10%.

“Hybrid work,” including collaboration and contact center products, had revenue of $1.1 billion, down 7%. The “end to end security” segment had revenue of $895 million, up 4%.

“Internet for the Future,” including optical networking and 5G products, had revenue of $1.37 billion, up 46%. Revenue from “optimized application experiences,” including observability and cloud software, was $181 million, up 3%. Services revenue was $3.37 billion, up 1%.

On a conference call with investors, Robbins said that Cisco saw the strongest demand in over a decade, but that supply issues constrained what the company could build and ship to customers, putting pressure on gross margins. The company sees non-GAAP January quarter gross margin of between 63.5% and 64.5%, versus 64.5% in the October quarter.

Without giving a specific number, Cisco said it finished the quarter with the largest backlog in its history. CFO Herren said the company is “working night and day” to resolve the component issues.

As for how much faster the company could be growing if it could get parts to meet demand, Robbins declined to provide a specific number, while adding that with more parts, “we can ship a lot more growth out the door.”

Cisco also said it bought back $256 million stock in the quarter.

Cisco shares fell 6.3% in after-hours trading. The


S&P 500

closed the day down 0.3% and the


Dow Jones Industrial Average

closed down 0.6%.

Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com

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Cisco Earnings Matched Expectations. Why the Stock Is Falling.

Text size

Cisco reported product revenue in the quarter that was 10% higher than last year.


Dreamstime

Shares of

Cisco Systems

fell in late trading Wednesday after reporting July quarter results and fiscal year 2022 guidance that largely matched expectations. But the company warned that it continues to see pressure from component shortages, a factor that figured into the company’s October quarter outlook.

The stock was down 1.6% in after-hours trading at $54.25.

For the quarter, Cisco (ticker: CSCO) posted revenue of $13.12 billion, up 8% from a year ago and at the high end of the company’s forecast range of 6% to 8% growth. Street consensus had been $13.03 billion. Non-GAAP profit were 84 cents a share, toward the high end of the company’s guidance range of 81 to 85 cents a share. Street consensus called for 82 cents a share. Under generally accepted accounting principles, the company earned 71 cents a share, ahead of the company’s guidance range of 64 to 69 cents a share.

Product revenue was $9.7 billion, up 10% year over year, while service revenue was $3.4 billion, up 3%. Revenues were up 8% in the Americas, 6% in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), and 13% in Asia. Infrastructure platforms revenue was up 13%, while applications revenue was off 1% and security revenue was up 1%.

For the full fiscal year, revenue was $49.8 billion, up 1% from a year ago. Non-GAAP profit were up a penny from the previous year at $3.22 a share.

The company said orders in the quarter were up double-digits across all customer markets and geographies, with product orders up 31%, the strongest growth in more than a decade. The company saw particularly strong growth from the webscale cloud business, with orders up 160% from a year ago and 80% sequentially. Cisco reported 25% growth in enterprise customer orders and 41% growth from smaller commercial customers. Overall product orders were up 17% from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019.

Gross margins on a non-GAAP basis expanded to 65.6% from 65% a year ago, above expectations, with product gross margin improving to 65% from 63.2%.

Cisco said it bought back $791 million of stock in the quarter. The company has $7.9 billion remaining on its current repurchase authorization.

For the fiscal first quarter ending in October, Cisco projects revenue growth of 7.5% to 9.5%, with profit of 79 to 81 cents a share on a non-GAAP basis. Street consensus called for profit of 81 cents. On a GAAP basis, the company projects profit of 61 to 66 cents a share. Cisco sees non-GAAP gross margins slipping to the 63.5% to 64.5% range, falling as much as 2 percentage points from the July quarter, reflecting continued component shortages.

Chief Financial Officer Scott Herren said on a conference call with analysts that the company is taking steps to ensure it can meet customer demand, including buying parts in the spot market and qualifying second sources for some parts. He noted that Cisco installed price increases on some products earlier this month.

In an interview with Barron’s, Herren added that Cisco is seeing shortages of memory, other semiconductors, power supplies, and substrates, among other things, with lead times for some parts stretching to 40 to 50 weeks. He said the company could have produced higher revenue in the quarter if it had more parts. Herren said that higher shipping costs were also a factor, with reduced commercial flights to Asia reducing air freight capacity and boosting costs.

Cisco sees full-year fiscal 2022 revenue up 5% to 7%, a little higher than the Street consensus forecast for 4.4% growth. At the middle of the range, 6% would imply revenue of $52.8 billion, a little above the Street consensus at $51.9 billion. Cisco sees full-year profit of $3.38 to $3.45 a share, with the midpoint a little above the Street consensus at $3.40. Note that Cisco had not previously provided annual guidance; Herren said Cisco’s decision to offer a full-year view reflects growing visibility as the company grows the software portion of its business.

“We continue to see great momentum in our business as customers are looking to modernize their organizations for agility and resiliency,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said. “The demand for Cisco technology is strong with our Q4 performance marking the highest product order growth in over a decade. With the power of our portfolio, we are well positioned to help our customers accelerate their digital transformation and thrive in a hybrid world.”

Robbins added told Barron’s that Cisco isn’t seeing any impact on demand from the rise of the Delta variant of Covid and that customers continue to invest in their networks to adjust to hybrid work environments. “People need a permanently adaptable network,” he said. “The pandemic has exacerbated the need for a flexible architecture.”

Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com

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