Ellis Investment Partners LLC Has $431,000 Stock Holdings in Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)

Ellis Investment Partners LLC cut its position in Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) by 3.3% during the 4th quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm owned 7,275 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock after selling 245 shares during the quarter. Ellis Investment Partners LLC’s holdings in Cisco Systems were worth $431,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other hedge funds also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Highline Wealth Partners LLC raised its holdings in shares of Cisco Systems by 76.7% during the fourth quarter. Highline Wealth Partners LLC now owns 599 shares of the network equipment provider’s stock worth $35,000 after acquiring an additional 260 shares during the period. RPg Family Wealth Advisory LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Cisco Systems during the third quarter worth $40,000. Decker Retirement Planning Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of Cisco Systems during the fourth quarter worth $49,000. Capital Performance Advisors LLP acquired a new stake in shares of Cisco Systems during the third quarter worth $51,000. Finally, FSA Wealth Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Cisco Systems during the third quarter worth $56,000. 73.33% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of equities research analysts recently commented on the stock. Melius upgraded shares of Cisco Systems from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their price objective for the stock from $66.00 to $73.00 in a report on Monday, January 6th. StockNews.com raised shares of Cisco Systems from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday. Rosenblatt Securities raised shares of Cisco Systems from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their target price for the company from $66.00 to $80.00 in a research report on Thursday. Barclays raised their target price on shares of Cisco Systems from $56.00 to $61.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Thursday. Finally, BNP Paribas raised shares of Cisco Systems from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $72.00 target price for the company in a research report on Tuesday, January 28th. Seven analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, thirteen have assigned a buy rating and three have assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, Cisco Systems presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $66.53.

Cisco Systems Stock Performance

Shares of CSCO stock opened at $64.87 on Monday. The company has a market capitalization of $258.36 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.84, a PEG ratio of 4.63 and a beta of 0.84. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.43, a quick ratio of 0.80 and a current ratio of 0.88. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $60.07 and a 200 day simple moving average of $55.59. Cisco Systems, Inc. has a 52 week low of $44.50 and a 52 week high of $66.50.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, February 12th. The network equipment provider reported $0.77 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.91 by ($0.14). Cisco Systems had a return on equity of 25.70% and a net margin of 17.73%. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Cisco Systems, Inc. will post 2.97 earnings per share for the current year.

Cisco Systems Increases Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, April 23rd. Shareholders of record on Thursday, April 3rd will be paid a $0.41 dividend. This is a boost from Cisco Systems’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.40. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, April 3rd. This represents a $1.64 annualized dividend and a yield of 2.53%. Cisco Systems’s payout ratio is 71.62%.

Cisco Systems declared that its Board of Directors has approved a stock repurchase plan on Wednesday, February 12th that permits the company to repurchase $15.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization permits the network equipment provider to purchase up to 6% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase plans are often a sign that the company’s management believes its shares are undervalued.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, Director Kristina M. Johnson sold 7,500 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, December 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $59.87, for a total value of $449,025.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 65,915 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,946,331.05. The trade was a 10.22 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, SVP Maria Victoria Wong sold 586 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, December 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $58.69, for a total transaction of $34,392.34. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now owns 50,767 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,979,515.23. The trade was a 1.14 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 37,239 shares of company stock worth $2,166,612 in the last quarter. 0.01% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Cisco Systems Company Profile

Cisco Systems, Inc designs, manufactures, and sells Internet Protocol based networking and other products related to the communications and information technology industry in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, Japan, and China. The company also offers switching portfolio encompasses campus switching as well as data center switching; enterprise routing portfolio interconnects public and private wireline and mobile networks, delivering highly secure, and reliable connectivity to campus, data center and branch networks; wireless products include wireless access points and controllers; and compute portfolio including the cisco unified computing system, hyperflex, and software management capabilities, which combine computing, networking, and storage infrastructure management and virtualization.