Cisco Continues To Slim Down

Cisco Systems has announced that it will cut 6,000 jobs - roughly eight per cent of its workforce - despite this week delivering quarterly earnings and revenue that surpassed analysts' expectations.

The firm also posted a smaller-than-expected decline in sales during its second quarter before confirming its restructuring plan.

Cisco has now adjusted earnings for the current quarter to come in between 51 and 53 cents per share against analyst expectation of 53 cents per share.

The company also expects sales for Q3 to come in between flat and up one per cent, while Wall Street predicts fiscal first quarter revenue to come in flat at $12.08 billion (£7.24 billion).

Cisco said that revenue from product sales came in at $9.53 billion, exceeding expectations of $9.34 billion. The firm also confirmed that it paid a cash dividend of 19 cents per share and repurchased roughly 61 million shares of common stock during the fourth quarter.

"We returned a record $13.3 billion to shareholders this fiscal year through share buybacks and dividends," announced Frank Calderoni, a Cisco executive vice president.

Asia Not Yet Helping Recovery

In order to continue its impressive financial results, the Chinese market has been targeted as a potential growth area for the company, but this has so far proven difficult with the Asian country restricting outside access to its technology hardware market.

Cisco Systems is not the only high-profile technology company to announce job cuts recently: last month, Microsoft confirmed that it will be making the largest job cuts in its history by trimming its books of 18,000 members of staff, mostly from its recently-acquired Nokia handset division.