Cisco announces CFO Scott Herren’s departure as the company reports earnings exceeding expectations.

Cisco reported earnings and revenue that topped analysts’ estimates on Wednesday and issued guidance that also exceeded Wall Street’s predictions. Here’s how the company performed compared to the LSEG consensus:

• Earnings per share: 96 cents adjusted vs. 92 cents expected
• Revenue: $14.15 billion vs. $14.08 billion expected

Revenue increased 11% during the quarter, which ended on April 26, from $12.7 billion a year earlier, according to a statement. Net income rose to $2.49 billion, or 62 cents per share, from $1.89 billion, or 46 cents per share, a year ago. The macroeconomic environment is uncertain, CEO Chuck Robbins said on a conference call with analysts.

Robbins mentioned that Cisco’s finance chief, Scott Herren, will retire on July 26 after joining in 2020 from Autodesk, where he held the same role. Mark Patterson, Cisco’s chief strategy officer and a nearly 25-year company veteran, will succeed Herren.

Management projected earnings per share between 96 cents and 98 cents for fiscal 2025 on revenue of $14.5 billion to $14.7 billion. Analysts had predicted 95 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $14.58 billion in revenue.

Cisco indicated that the guidance accounts for the anticipated impact of President Trump’s tariffs on imported goods, including 30% on products from China and 25% on those from Canada and Mexico. Robbins noted that the company didn’t observe significant purchasing changes prior to the tariffs taking effect.

“We haven’t seen any meaningful change in their purchasing, and so we haven’t seen any customers really fundamentally slowing down,” Robbins said.

Cisco reported over $600 million in artificial intelligence infrastructure orders from web companies, bringing the fiscal year’s total to upward of $1.25 billion. The total exceeded the $1 billion mark a quarter ahead of schedule. One web company has explored Ethernet fabrics for AI clusters alongside InfiniBand, a networking standard partly pioneered by Mellanox, which Nvidia acquired for $7 billion in 2020.

“It’s been the intent of these customers from day one to move away from InfiniBand,” Robbins mentioned. “And the gating factor was, how soon did they feel good about the technology? And they feel very good about the technology and how it’s enabling them to run these training models over native Ethernet or some enhanced Ethernet that we’re delivering.”

During the quarter, Cisco began selling a Webex AI agent for customer service and announced Ethernet switches featuring AMD Pensando data processing units, which could aid in hardware consolidation. Networking revenue rose 8% to $7.07 billion, surpassing analyst expectations of $6.81 billion.

Revenue from security products surged 54% to $2.01 billion, though it fell short of the $2.17 billion consensus. This unit includes the addition of Splunk, which Cisco acquired last year for $27 billion.

Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s executive vice president and chief product officer, is being promoted to Cisco’s president and chief product officer, according to the company. As of Wednesday’s close, Cisco shares were up 3.5% for the year, while the S&P 500 index was about flat.