The Cisco numbers
The link notes the accelerating revenue growth trend. The issue of how long growth can accelerate aside, for clues as to CSCO the stock's weakness, you might also want to check out the trends in:
* margins
* share count
* inventories
* DSOs
* other income (as a percent of pretax income)
* composition of CSCO's investment portfolio (percentage of bonds therein)
Amazingly, I have yet to see a Cisco bull discuss these numbers, much less explain how to derive a bullish case from them.
or at least we should know include how much cash some of the companies we follow like Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Siebel, Oracle, i2, Qualcomm, JDS Uniphase, Network Appliance, Sun Microsystems, etc... have on hand to weather the environment.
Remember, it is not just how much cash these cos. have, but often, it is how much cash their customers have. A look at the spread between corporates and Treasurys indicates certain customers may have difficulties raising capital. This is what has killed the momentum in optical networking stocks, despite continued stellar numbers out of numerous companies. I don't think the cos. you mention have to worry yet about their own working capital and other capital needs*, but if they ever do, God help this market.
* GLW just the other week raised like $1.75 billion, upped from $1.25 billion due to popular demand.
Did we buy Qualcomm in 1999 as a one year play?
Yes! |
