How much a stock's price changes over time is important for most investors, since price performance can both impact your investment portfolio and help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.

The fear of missing out, or FOMO, also plays a factor in investing, especially with particular tech giants, as well as popular consumer-facing stocks.

What if you'd invested in Cisco Systems (CSCO Quick QuoteCSCO - Free Report) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to CSCO for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?

Cisco Systems' Business In-Depth

With that in mind, let's take a look at Cisco Systems' main business drivers.

Cisco enables enterprises and service providers to deliver highly secure connectivity from workplaces to data centers worldwide. The company delivers a unified architecture with integrated, end-to-end solutions that help customers in simplifying complex challenges. CSCO is incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into its product portfolios across Networking (68% of product revenues), Security (19.5%), Collaboration (10%) and Observability (2.5%).

Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Cisco reported revenues of $56.65 billion in fiscal 2025. Product and Services segments contributed 73.4% and 26.6%, respectively, to revenues. Americas, EMEA and APJC generated 59.4%, 26.2% and 14.4% of total revenues in fiscal 2025, respectively.

Networking category comprises core networking technologies of switching, routing, wireless, and servers. The switching portfolio encompasses campus switching as well as data center switching offerings. Campus switching offerings includes Catalyst 9000 family of switches, Meraki cloud-managed switches, as well as smart switches – Cisco 9350 and Cisco 9610 – built on Cisco Silicon One. Data center switching offerings include the Nexus 9000 series and the newly introduced Cisco N9300 series smart switches that embeds Cisco Hypershield, the company’s cloud native and AI-powered approach to highly distributed security for AI-scale data centers.

Security category consists of Network Security, Identity and Access Management, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Threat Intelligence, Detection, and Response (TIDR) solutions. Addition of Splunk platform and security offerings significantly strengthened CSCO’s TIDR capabilities.

Collaboration category comprises of Webex Suite, Collaboration Devices, Contact Center and CPaaS. It offers end-to-end collaboration solutions that can be delivered on-premises, from the cloud, or within hybrid cloud environments. Observability category comprises of network assurance (ThousandEyes), monitoring and analytics and observability suites (including Splunk Observability and AppDynamics).

Cisco competes with companies like Amazon Web Services, Arista Networks, Broadcom, Ciena, CrowdStrike Holdings, Dell, Fortinet, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Huawei, Microsoft, Nokia, Nvidia, Palo Alto Networks, RingCentral, Zoom Video Communications, and Zscaler, to name a few.

Bottom Line

Anyone can invest, but building a successful investment portfolio requires research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in Cisco Systems, ten years ago, you're likely feeling pretty good about your investment today.

According to our calculations, a $1000 investment made in May 2016 would be worth $3,597.86, or a gain of 259.79%, as of May 6, 2026, and this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.

Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 254.00% and gold's return of 239.56% over the same time frame.

Going forward, analysts are expecting more upside for CSCO.

Cisco's business model is benefiting from strong product orders from hyperscalers, enterprises, public sector, service provider, and cloud customers. Splunk's acquisition enhances CSCO's recurring revenue base. The buyout significantly expands Cisco's portfolio of software-based solutions. The launch of AI-powered Hypershield, which combines security and networking, strengthens its security portfolio. Networking sales benefits from strong demand for AI infrastructure and campus networking solutions. Product orders from service provider and cloud customers were strong driven by high double-digit order growth in hyperscalers. Cisco expects to take AI orders in excess of $5 billion and to recognize more than $3 billion in AI infrastructure revenue from hyperscalers in fiscal 2026.However, stiffening competition is a headwind.

Over the past four weeks, shares have rallied 16.88%, and there have been 1 higher earnings estimate revisions in the past two months for fiscal 2026 compared to none lower. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.