Brian Acker, CA Cisco CSCO-Q TOP PICK Aug 30, 2018

Likes it, but this part of the economy is bleeding now. A tough call and is reluctant to endorse it. A fine company, but it's not the right moment.

A cornerstone company in tech, but there's huge competition in tech and Cisco remain one step behind. Are better companies.

King of the networking stocks. Hit their stride, mainly because of NVDA selling out of Blackwell and H20 and so on. Started beating on top and bottom, raising guidance (even during the tariff time). Pretty fully priced, with a $70.75 price target within 12 months.

Is like Oracle 3 years ago when it was still a database company, building the cloud infrastructure. This is already happening to Cisco. Trades at 16x forward PE, and pays a 3% dividend. Buys back a lot of shares. Is enjoying AI and cybersecurity tailwinds.

Was upgraded today. Trades at 16x PE and a 6% free cash flow yield. Earnings should grow 5-9%. It's been flat for a while, but so was MSFT. Stocks need time to consolidate.

Technically, it looks strong and it breaking to new highs. Likes it a lot. But recently it's been consolidating after a big move up. Wait for a pullback.

Another play in Edge AI. Kinetic for Cities is Edge AI that you can put on sensors around a city for water, traffic, air, everything. Poster child for this application is Singapore. King of routers and switches, but Edge AI will be very intriguing for them. His 12-month price target is $75.50. Yield is 2.44%.

Historically, is a good allocator of capital (dividends, buybacks), but lacks growth. They partly returned to growth on the $30 billion purchase of Splunk to drive their cybersecurity business. In turn, this drives earnings and margins. Are a free cash flow machine.

12-month price target of $75, pretty darn close. Reports tonight. Unless they really surprise, especially on the guidance side, doesn't expect it to get much higher. At $71 you could write a 1-2 week call with a strike price of $77.50.

Stock's been performing decently. Technical structure looks OK. Price is above 200-day MA, which is moving higher. 17x forward PE for only 8% earnings growth, where typically in tech you want 10-20%. Not pricey, but not cheap. For growth, you want an NVDA or AMZN.