If American pennies were bits, then Cisco Systems Inc. would be a consumer-grade dial-up modem from the mid 90s, because it makes more than 24,000 of them in a second.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based network equipment manufacturer announced Wednesday its net earnings for the year ending July 31 were US$7.767 billion.
Though Cisco did not include revenue by the second, a Network World Canada struggling to apply his Grade 6 math reckoned the 26-year-old firm is now garnering a pure profit of 24,600 cents, or $246, per second.
That’s only Cisco's net earnings for the year. Revenues were $40 billion, up from $36.1 billion for the year ending July 25, 2009, which in official accounting terms is known as a “killing.”
Cisco’s long-term debt is now $12.2 billion, and it has $16.67 billion in “goodwill” on it balance sheet, which is essentially the difference between what it paid to buy a company and the book value of the company.
But it also has $4.6 billion in cash and more than $30 billion invested, so the $623 million a year it spends on its debt is more than offset by $635 million in interest earned.
In a presentation to investors posted to Cisco’s Web site, the firm said of the $40 billion in annual sales, $13.6 billion was from switches, $6.6 billion from routers, $9.6 billion from its advanced technology group, $7.6 billion was from services and $2.6 billion was “other.”
Revenues from its Nexus switches was up 325 per cent and it has now sold Unified Computing System servers to 1,700 customers.