It’s time for Cisco to cough up shareholder cash
What is it that Cisco CEO John Chambers and his executive corps don’t get about their patient, loyal shareholders? It is called an appreciation of shareholder value.
As the owner of 18,000 Cisco shares, I’ve recently taken a closer, vested interest in the company’s remarkable lack of understanding of what Cisco’s owner-investors want from their very well-paid management.
In 2000, Cisco shares reached a peak of about $82 a share. Since then it has been downhill for the share price, notwithstanding the company’s continued growth, diversification and profits. The very much larger Cisco is now selling for around $19 a share — with no intervening stock splits. The first paltry quarterly dividend of 6 cents a share just started in 2010.
The consistent upward trajectory of Cisco’s economic indicators has given loyal shareholders a sustained hope that has gone unrequited. In the past decade, thanks to Chambers’ penchant for stock buybacks, these have totaled $60 billion, leaving shareholders with nothing to show for them but a low and stagnant stock price. Still, Cisco presently has liquid assets of about $45 billion, growing at almost $3 billion a quarter.
In the past year, I and other shareholders have stepped up our demand for an increase in dividends to 50 cents a year plus a $1 special dividend. That is the least Cisco’s officers should do for their shareholders, many of whom trusted Cisco for over a decade and relied on management to reverse the tiny rate of return that they received for their loyalty. To no avail.
China’s Web filtering starts in the West
– Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –
The Chinese government has backed away from mandating filtering software on all personal computers in China, in a move that averts a dangerous escalation in its censorship powers.
But however controversial and unworkable China’s plan to require Internet filters on PCs proved to be, Western firms have largely themselves to blame for creating and selling such filters in the first place.
The danger rears its head whenever technology created to solve some specific security problem is put to new and unintended use, not just in repressive regimes like China, Iran or Saudi Arabia, but professed freedom-loving countries in Europe or the USA.
“What is good and what is evil?” asks Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Finnish anti-virus software company F-Secure Corp. “It is really a very basic problem that security people face.”
A computer password cracker in the wrong hands is considered malicious, of course. But corporate network administrators rely on the same tools to recover lost documents when employees forget computer passwords. Voice recognition software used in corporate call centres to automate and improve customer service can be used by police to wiretap suspects on a grand scale.
On Tuesday, China’s official news agency reported that a government ministry had abruptly backed down from requiring that every PC sold in China include a censorship program called “Green Dam-Youth Escort”.
So… because the Internet exists, so does the security censoring software tools required to censor the porn and malicious code… therefore, the Internet shouldn’t have been built…. right? It’s all our (the West’s ) fault. What a ridiculous article. Anybody with a brain knows that with great power comes great responsibility — just ask Spiderman. The real issue here is the cowardly Chinese government who can’t be faced with their own corruption and power-hungry dweebs, so they do whatever they can to “save face” and stop any possible route for political progress or taking responsibility. The “porn” blocking is merely a front they hoped the rest of the world would accept as reasonable — that’s why they stole the code — they didn’t write that part, they wrote the part which spies on their own people in order to squash anything threatening their comfortable nation-robbing lifestyles.
I have owned Cisco for years. It is the best company in the world. I recommend buy up all of the shares you can at these bargain prices. Cisco is in the heart of the computer technology business especially with UCS. It will only continue to grow and prosper. Nader must see this and is bewildered that Mr. Chambers and company are not feeling that loyal shareholders like himself (15,000 shares) are entitled to a sizable dividend increase commensurate with the company’s vast free cash flow and improved business conditions. If Ralph Nader is making such recommendations, Cisco ought to capitalize on accepting his very prestigious opinion. In recent months and years, Cisco has been the victim of a lot of negative publicity from Wall Street analysts; it’s now time for them to rise to the occasion – a boost in the dividend would most certainly result in an enhanced business climate and do much to keep Cisco at the forefront of the networking industry.