(Associated Press via NewsEdge) Cisco's second-quarter profit surged nearly 40 % as the world's largest maker of networking gear benefited from equipment upgrades to support bandwidth-hogging video downloads.
The company also raised its revenue guidance for the current quarter, apparently quashing near-term fears about slowing growth as its customers complete the most extensive round of network upgrades since the pre-Y2K scramble.
Cisco shares jumped nearly 5% in extended-session trading.
For the quarter ended January 27, Cisco's net income was $1.9 billion, compared with $1.4 billion for the same period last year.
Excluding one-time charges, Cisco said it earned $2.1 billion for the quarter.
The company, which makes the routers and switches that direct data over computer networks, said revenue for the quarter was $8.4 billion, a 27% jump from the $6.6 billion in the same period last year.
Analysts were expecting Cisco to earn, on average, $0.31 per share on $8.28 billion in revenue, according to a survey by Thomson Financial.
'Cisco achieved record results that were well balanced across our geographies, products, services, customer segments and new markets,' Cisco CEO John Chambers said in a statement. 'This illustrates our key competitive advantage of being able to develop a long-term vision, execute on our strategy and deliver consistent results.'
The company is profiting from an onslaught of service providers spending lavishly to boost the bandwidth on their networks and accommodate video downloads that consume thousands of times the network space as email messages.
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