Wall Street Edges Higher on Thursday

Cisco Systems surges on quarterly results

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Nov 16, 2017
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Wall Street was up in Thursday premarket trading following strong U.S. industrial production growth of 0.9%, higher than the expected increase of 0.5%.

Shares of Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO, Financialjumped after reporting financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2018. The company posted EPS of 61 cents, beating estimates by one cent. Revenue of $12.14 billion also beat expectations but was down 1.7% year over year.

CEO Chuck Robbins said the results were achieved as a result of the continued progress of their strategy.

"The network has never been more critical to business success," he said. "Cisco is delivering more insights and intelligence as we help our customers build highly secure, intelligent platforms for digital business."

Furher, the total gross margin and product gross margin were 61.2% and 60.1% respectively. The decrease in the latter metric, when compared with 63.4% in the prior-year quarter, was primarily due to pricing, legal and indemnification settlements, and lower productivity benefits.

Guidance is solid; the company expects EPS will be in the range of 46 cents to 51 cents in the second quarter of fiscal 2018.

Gainers

  • NetApp Inc. (NTAP, Financial)
  • Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT)
  • Rockwell Automation Inc.”‹ (ROK, Financial)
  • KLA-Tencor Corp. (KLAC)
  • Scana Corp. (SCG, Financial)
  • PayPal Holdings Inc. (PYPL)

Losers

Global markets

The main European stock markets traded higher. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 gained 0.19%, Germany's DAX climbed 0.55%, France's CAC 40 rose 0.66% and Spain's IBEX 35 increased 0.75%.

In Asia, China's SSE Composite slid 0.10% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 0.58%. India’s BSE Sensex swelled 1.06% and Japan's Nikkei 225 jumped 1.47%.

Disclosure: The author holds no positions in any stocks mentioned.