Emerging markets, routers and switching sales growth and future strategy are among the Cisco worries in the second quarter.
Cisco has launched a bevy of new products and a vision to put its architecture in the middle of hybrid data centers as well as private and public clouds. But those efforts may take time to pay off.
In the meantime, the waiting game and worries about the global economy as well as pricing pressure for networking gear has analysts fretting about Cisco's earnings.
Cisco reports its fiscal second quarter results Wednesday after the market closes.
Analysts will be listening closely for products and services that will deliver revenue growth for Cisco, which has formed a narrative around the Internet of things and networking it together. Wall Street is looking for second quarter earnings of 46 cents a share on revenue of $11.03 billion.
FBR analyst Scott Thompson sums up the problem with Cisco.
Our checks indicate that many clients still trust Cisco to deliver an end-to-end solution that is generally well received by these companies' tech teams. This dynamic supports Cisco's goal of being the client's top IT partner. However, our conversations also suggest that IT professionals at carriers and enterprises are increasingly considering alternative solutions to reduce total cost of ownership (including bare metal architectures and less capital-intensive options). We believe the traditional networking methods will continue to slowly give way to much leaner and more efficient Web scale–like architectures, which could be a risk to Cisco and its hardware-intensive go-to-market strategy.
Indeed, Cisco is seen as a hardware company. Its latest efforts to bridge clouds, however, revolve around software. Ultimately, Cisco wants to do the integrated system approach and capture the profit margins that go with it.
Cisco has been disproportionately affected by NSA fallout in emerging economies, and this may be a lingering problem, especially given the company's top-down approach to foreign markets.
Weak switching and routing sales. Credit Suisse expects switching revenue to fall 7 percent in the second quarter and routing sales to sink 20 percent.
Cisco's ongoing product cycle including Insieme, NCS and UCS could also weigh on Cisco's outlook. Sales cycles are likely to lengthen as customers evaluate next-gen technologies although these are critical updates.