SAN FRANCISCO'After seeing Cisco Systems Inc.'s market value plunge $50 billion over the past six months, investors were relieved that the networking equipment maker managed to weather U.S. economic turbulence better than expected in its fiscal third quarter.

The company reported third-quarter profit Tuesday that beat analyst forecasts by two cents per share, and it offered fourth-quarter sales guidance in line with Wall Street's projections.

Cisco shares rose eight cents to $26.41 at the open of trade.

But Cisco still has a long way to go to get its stock price back to last fall's levels.

The stock is still down more than 20 percent from its 52-week high of $34.24 on Nov. 6, when the company had a market value of about $207 billion.

Analysts said Cisco continues to feel the effect of the general downturn in technology stocks since then, which was triggered in part by Cisco's troubling assessment in November about the health of U.S. technology spending.

Kenneth Muth, a senior research analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co., said Cisco's fourth-quarter outlook of 9 percent to 10 per cent sales growth likely won't be enough to convince investors to jump back into Cisco's stock.

"You need 100 per cent of the equation for the stock to move up ' you need a good quarter and good guidance," Muth said. "And the guidance was really unchanged. And given how the stock has moved, I don't think that's enough for the stock to move higher from here.''

San Jose-based Cisco is particularly vulnerable to economic downturns because its routers and switches ' which direct traffic over the Internet ' each can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and even millions of dollars. That makes them the kind of big expense that companies try to cut when times get tough.

But a big advantage for Cisco is its worldwide sales base and strong growth in emerging markets where Internet infrastructure is being deployed rapidly, a factor that has helped Cisco as the U.S. economy has faltered.

Cisco's profit was $1.77 billion, or 29 cents per share, during the three months ended April 26. That represents a drop of 5.4 per cent from the $1.87 billion, or 30 cents per share, that Cisco earned during the year-ago period.

Stripping out one-time charges, Cisco earned 38 cents per share, which is two cents per share above the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

Sales came in at $9.79 billion, a 10.4 per cent jump over the year-ago period. Analysts were expecting sales of $9.75 billion.

Wall Street wasn't expecting fireworks from Cisco in the third quarter because the technology bellwether lowered its sales-growth target in February. Cisco blamed weakness in the U.S. economy, which was causing big customers to delay or scuttle big purchases.

"Considering the relatively mixed economic environment we're in, I think it was a really good quarter from a balance perspective and an execution perspective ' we did what we said we were going to do," Jonathan Chadwick, Cisco's corporate controller, said in an interview.

On a conference call with analysts, Cisco's chief executive, John Chambers, said he expects companies in the U.S. to remain cautious about spending until at least the end of 2008.

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