Cisco前景看法保守，顯示企業IT支出能否回升還不一定

Cisco的guidance數字部分，只有稍微不如預期，並沒有很嚴重，讓人不安的不是數字，而是公司法說上不時透露出來的語氣，對經濟、需求、大環境和客戶心態，都充滿了謹慎、保守和不確定性，看報告可能看不出來， 看全文紀錄比較能體會，舉例摘錄如下:

......Each quarter, many of you ask me in different ways the following question: Your results indicate your strategy is working. What are the areas that you have the most concern about? The answer for me this quarter is I'm concerned about what my customers are concerned about, and most of these customer concerns are centered on what they view as mixed signals in their business environment. Therefore their strategy in the short-term in terms of investments and projections for their businesses. As an example, the economy continues to be on the wild card in many customers' minds. We are all aware of GDP growth in the U.S. slowing from 5% from 3.7 to 2.4% over the last three quarters. Many of the customers that we talk with are anticipating growth of only 2% or so in the second half of the calendar year. Yet at the same time, many of these same customers are seeing steadily improving results in their own companies. But when you press them on their comfort level to predict either of trends over the next year, many of them are not comfortable at all. This is just one of the many examples of today's uncertainty in the environment that is sending such mixed signals to us and others about the customers' capital spending and job creation intention over the next year. Another example of mixed signals would be our own product order pattern for Q4. On first review, the 23% year-over-year growth in product orders was obviously very strong. And the monthly results which we tend to fold SKWE in terms of linearity were well within our normal expectations in each of the three months in Q4. In fact, actually almost exactly on as a percentage of what we would have expected in each month. However, some E  several of our customers [indiscernible] early June and July. Upon review, we saw a similar pattern of approximately 4 to 5 weeks from mid June to mid July where the normal order growth rates were off over 10 points versus our quarterly 23% average. Normally I would not have paid much attention to this except this is the exact time period where we saw the challenges in Europe and the corresponding challenges in global stock markets. Then just as the quarter had started in May, the end of July was very strong, well above average for the quarter in terms of year-over-year growth rates from an order perspective. Operating in an uncertain environment can obviously be difficult, but if you watch our track record over the last two decades, I believer this is one of Cisco's core strengths. And we have always used these periods of uncertainty to move into new markets and to expand our share of existing markets. We are the best position we have ever been in terms of timing, new organization structures, new business models and 30 plus market adjacencies, all enabled with the expanding role with the network as the platform with all forms of communication in IT which is at the heart of our core competency at Cisco. So while we are very much aware of the challenges and hopefully we have done a reasonable job of sharing those challenges that we are seeing with you today, I don't think there are any big surprises here. Our opportunities and successes in so many of these new markets are almost unprecedented in our industry. We feel very good about our ability to rapidly move into these markets and lead in many of them. Will we make some mistakes along the way? Of course we will. Otherwise, we are not taking enough good business risk. In simple terms, we believe that this opportunity -- that this is an opportunity of a lifetime for us and candidly we're going to go for it. We are planning on adding over 3,000 people in the next several quarters. Again, this is a very direct message about our come font(應該是comfort吧) level and our strategy and our ability ( to move into new market adjacencies. As we said that, we will follow Cisco's formal conservatism in terms of our business decisions, financial models with a healthy paranoia. We are attempting to be conservative on our guidance in terms of revenue growth as you would expect given the mixed signals in the market. We will at the same time make the investments at this crucial juncture in many of our market adjacencies and opportunities. In summary, in terms of what we can control and influence, we feel really good. At this time I would like to thank the entire Cisco family for their dedication, loyalty, and sacrifices during these challenging economic times. I cannot be more pleased with how we are positioned for the future. As always, I also want to thank our shareholders, customers, and partners for their support and continued confidence in our ability to execute during rapid industry consolidation, market transition, and challenging economic times. ......