INSTANT VIEW - Cisco beats forecasts, points to recovery

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO - news) posted better-than-expected revenue and profit as businesses began investing again in network equipment after cutting back on spending in the past year.

Its shares rose.

COMMENTARY:

JIM AWAD, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ZEPHYR MANAGEMENT

"It's better than expected. On first blush, it's very good news, and will be good for the market, but we need to hear what they say about capital spending."

SIMON LEOPOLD, ANALYST, MORGAN KEEGAN

"Last quarter was the bottoming-out quarter to me -- we had good sequential improvement.

"I don't know that this is the turning point. I'm not expecting a major inflection, but I think 2010 is certainly a better year, and bias is positive regarding the January expectations."

BILL CHOI, ANALYST, JEFFERIES & CO

"The $10 billion dollars in share repurchase, this is a beneficial way to use that money.

"Strength is somewhat anticipated. What everyone's waiting for is positive commentary about 2010 and that we have a growth path from here.

"It's fair to say things are strengthening, but I don't know if any CEO is sticking their neck out and talking about a strong 2010 yet. And I'm not sure if even Cisco with its broad base is able to give that color just yet -- you might have to wait another quarter as we get more color on these companies' spending plans."

On recent acquisitions: "These deals are of high-quality companies and they're spending $3 billion, which in the grand scheme of things is not gigantic for Cisco. There is talk that they need to make a big services acquisition.

"Those are big deals the investors would fear, but having announced $6 billion in deals recently, and then allocating $10 billion to share repurchase, alleviates some of that fear that they have to make a big acquisition.

"Cisco's obviously going to give guidance for next quarter. That will show you where the order trends are. And Chamber's comments about the state of IT are very important to investors."

(Reporting by Ian Sherr and Caroline Valetkevitch in New York, compiled by Edwin Chan)