FILE PHOTO: A man passes under a Cisco logo at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 25, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Perez/ File Photo
(Reuters) -Cisco Systems said on Wednesday that its finance chief Scott Herren will retire from the company in July, and raised its annual results forecast, betting on steady demand from cloud customers for its networking equipment, driven by the artificial intelligence boom.
Herren will be replaced by Mark Patterson, currently Cisco's chief strategy officer, who will start as the CFO on July 27.
Shares of the San Jose, California-based company rose 2% in extended trading.
With products such as ethernet switches and routers, Cisco has benefited from a boom in data center investment, as technology giants have ramped up capital expenditure to meet the computing power needed to run generative AI applications.
Cisco has improved its position in the market for switches targeted at cloud data centers, said David Heger, technology analyst at Edward Jones. He expects continued strong growth from cloud data center customers.
In the third quarter, Cisco received AI infrastructure orders worth over $600 million from web-scale customers, bringing the year-to-date total to over $1 billion, CEO Chuck Robbins said on a post-earnings call.
Cisco's forecast assumes current tariffs and exemptions remain in place until the end of the 90-day pause on July 9 and then revert to country-specific reciprocal levies, Herren said on the call.
The company expects revenue between $56.5 billion and $56.7 billion for fiscal 2025, compared with its prior forecast of $56 billion to $56.5 billion, while analysts see revenue of$56.47 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Cisco now expects adjusted per-share profit between $3.77 and $3.79 for its current fiscal year, compared to its prior projection of $3.68 to $3.74 per share.
Revenue for the quarter ended April 26 came in at $14.15 billion, ahead of an estimate of $14.08 billion.
On an adjusted basis, Cisco earned 96 cents per share in the quarter, also beating estimates of 92 cents apiece.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona)
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