Cisco, which is in the midst of a significant reorganization, could cut as many as 5,000 jobs in hopes of saving $1 billion, Gleacher analyst Brian Marshall said in a research note.
Cisco Systems may cut as many as
5,000 jobs in August, the latest significant move as the networking giant looks
to reorganize its business and improve its bottom line, according to market
research firm Gleacher & Co.
In a research note July 11, Gleacher
analyst Brian Marshall said the job cuts could rival the 8,000 layoffs that
Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) initiated in 2001, soon after the Internet market crash.
In this case, the 5,000 job cuts to the company's 73,000-strong workforce would
be painful but necessary, Marshall said, saving Cisco about $1 billion
annually.
They also would mark only one of
several steps the analyst said Cisco has to make to ease Wall Street concerns.
"While this is a difficult decision
to make, in our view, it is required in order to maintain the -competitiveness'
of [Cisco] going forward," Marshall wrote in his research note.
His message comes after Cisco, which
has been hampered by several quarters of disappointing financial numbers, looks
for ways to improve the company's operations. The company restructured its
consumer business in April, including shuttering its profitable Flip personal
video camera business. In May, Cisco
streamlined its management, sales and services units,
a move to help it more easily focus on five IT areas-routing and switching,
collaboration, data center virtualization and cloud, video, and what officials
are calling architectures for business transformation. Cisco also reduced the
number of management councils from nine to three.
A week later, during a conference
call to announce quarterly financial earnings, Chairman and CEO
John Chambers warned of layoffs as the company
looked to cut $1 billion in operating expenses this year. Days after Chambers'
talk,
analysts were predicting significant cuts of
4,000 or more.
Marshall's research note also was
released as Cisco Live, the company's major customer and partner event, gets
under way in Las Vegas. The Gleacher analyst said he expects "significant news
flow this week," adding that he is focusing on Chambers' keynote July 12 and
other keynotes July 12 and 13.
Along with the job cuts and
restructuring that already were announced, Marshall pointed to several other
steps the vendor needs to make, including formally lowering its long-term
financial targets. Chambers had been saying over the past couple of years that
he was targeting annual revenue growth for Cisco at 12 to 17 percent. During
his conference call in May, Chambers said that goal was "off the table."
Marshall said the company would do well to offer a more modest goal of 10
percent or so, noting that Cisco has seen annual revenue growth of 11 percent
over the past five years.
He suggested that formal lowering of
the financial goals could come at Cisco's annual analyst conference in
September.
Despite Cisco's recent disappointing
financial numbers, the vendor has some significant factors working in its
favor, according to Marshall. The company has a strong valuation, and it still
holds about 70 percent of the core routing and switching market, a maturing
sector that doesn't offer Cisco much room for growth. However, some other
business areas that Cisco is looking to grow-from video communications to data
center infrastructure-represent strong growth areas.
He also noted Cisco's Vblock
data-center-in-a-box offering, which includes not only Cisco's infrastructure
products, but also EMC's storage and security technologies and VMware's vSphere
virtualization management and services offerings. Marshall called it Cisco's
"ace in the hole," adding that it seems to be gaining traction in the market.
"Although early in its lifecycle
(e.g., Vblocks started shipping at the start of 2010), the ramp has been
impressive thus far with partner management (e.g., EMC) recently commenting
that Vblock has a $1.0+ billion pipeline with over 120 partners," Marshall
wrote.
However, there are ongoing concerns,
he said. Marshall said that Cisco is seeing increasing competition in its core
routing and switching business, not only from large competitors such as
Hewlett-Packard, but also from the likes of Juniper Networks, Riverbed
Technology, Brocade and Force Five, a scenario that he described as
"chimpanzees ... attacking the gorilla."
"Due to their smaller status,
innovative culture and ability to remain nimble in changing times, these
competitors have started to chip away at CSCO's dominance," he wrote.
For example, between 2008 and 2010,
Cisco grew its total revenue base by 7 percent, or $2.8 billion. However, the
group of smaller competitors, while only having a collective total revenue base
of $9.7 billion in 2010, added $2.2 billion during the same two years, almost
as much as Cisco.
"Based on this analysis, it is clear
that innovative companies can still have an impact in the technology industry
even when competing against an 800 pound gorilla," he wrote. "Many expect this
trend to continue for the foreseeable future."
Analysts have argued that Cisco has
seen increasing pressure on its switching and routing business because of
increasing competition among vendors looking to become a lower-cost
alternative. They also have said that Cisco's focus on expanding into more than
two dozen adjacent markets over the past couple of years has enabled rivals to
attack Cisco's core business.
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