Cisco Systems' fiscal fourth-quarter profit jumped 25% as the network equipment maker continued to see strong sales of the routers and switches that direct traffic over the Internet and other technologies tied to a boom in multimedia online content, an Associated Press report said.
Shares jumped more than 5% on a boosted financial forecast.
The Associated Press report said Cisco's net income for the period ended July 28 was $1.93 billion, compared with $1.54 billion, during the same quarter a year ago.
Revenue for the period was $9.43 billion, an 18% increase from the $7.98 billion in sales Cisco rung up last year.
The revenue also beat Wall Street's estimate, which was for $9.29 billion in sales.
On a conference call with analysts, Cisco CEO John Chambers was quoted as saying that the company is boosting its revenue forecast to 13% to 16% for 2008. For the current quarter, the company expects revenue of $9.45 billion to $9.55 billion, above the average analyst's estimate of $9.39 billion.
Chambers also announced that CFO Dennis Powell will retire at the end of the second quarter of the current fiscal year. His replacement will be Frank Calderoni, currently a Cisco senior vice president.
San Jose-based Cisco is profiting from widespread network upgrades as Internet service providers and other companies boost capacity to handle increasingly bandwidth-heavy downloads, particularly video.