EW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Concerns that finished-goods inventories climbed last quarter pushed shares of computer networking firm Cisco Systems Inc. down sharply Friday in heavy trading.
The inventory concerns stem from the company's 10Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week. Since the filing on Tuesday, Cisco's shares (CSCO) have been weak, falling from Monday's close of $89.75 to Friday's close of $76.563, down $6.125, or 7.4%, on Nasdaq volume of 26.7 million shares, compared with average daily volume of 8.6 million. Earlier, the shares traded as low as $76.
Compounding Friday's losses were SEC reports that several Cisco officers had sold shares in the San Jose-based company during November, analysts and investors said.
In the 10Q filing, Cisco reported that finished-goods inventory rose to $69.7 million in the quarter ended Oct. 25, from $21.7 million in the preceding quarter. While higher inventory can indicate slowing sales, analysts by and large did not see signs that end-demand is softening. Instead, they said, much of the inventory buildup was probably of lower-end products designed for use by small and medium-sized businesses.
Cisco sells these products through distributors and has been filling the distribution channel to meet growing end-demand. The inventory numbers reported in the 10Q may simply reflect this buildup as well as Cisco's policy of not recording revenue until products sell through to users, analysts said.
Still, coming just a week after networking giants 3Com Corp. (COMS) and Cabletron Systems Inc. (CS) warned they would miss estimates for their November quarters, the Cisco filing unnerved investors.
One analyst also suggested that investors may be concerned because the company cautioned in the SEC filing that corporate spending on technology could be shifted from networking equipment to solutions to the Year 2000 problem. The analyst added, however, that this is nothing new, and the company has warned about it in past SEC filings.
Cisco's shares also seem to be suffering from general market worries about business in Southeast Asia, and the shares were also down after SEC filings revealed that several Cisco officers sold company stock in November. These include Chief Financial Officer Larry R. Carter, Senior Vice President Gary J. Daichendt and Chief Technology Officer Edward R. Kozel. |
