Dividend Investing

Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) is one of the largest networking hardware and software provider in the world. It also started giving out dividends in 2011. I wanted to analyze the safety of the CSCO dividend and look at its future prospects. We will do an overview of what Cisco Systems does and then look at its financials.

Overview of Cisco Systems Inc.

Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) is large cap American multinational company that focuses on building hardware/software related to computer networking, security, applications & collaboration in cloud and on-premise environments. Think of them as someone in business of building infrastructure to help world of internet function & grow. They mostly build these tools and services for enterprise customers. You might go and buy a Wi-Fi router or modem to allow you to tap into internet connection provided by your ISP. Most big business need to do this but, at a much larger scale. Most companies have their own data center. They usually setup their own private internet which employees work on. This needs to be done across multiple sites across multiple countries. They need to make sure connection is secure and only legitimate employees can connect. Employees use various devices. Companies need to make sure employees can connect using these devices from workplace or while travelling etc. The complexity involved with so many factors is huge. Cisco essentially provides their own proprietary hardware/software to help business manage their users, devices etc. connect to their own network and the global internet in a secure manner.

CSCO in Cloud Era

However, times are changing. Cloud is the new jargon. Nearly every big company on earth is looking at implementing or has implemented some or the other cloud-based applications/solutions. Most big cloud providers like Amazon, Google & Microsoft do not use Cisco switches or hardware in their data centers. They prefer to use white box(open source) cheaper alternatives to do networking. Companies today are preferring to outsource infrastructure/networking/storage related tasks to these cloud providers. This gives them even more money/effort to focus on their core competency. So, this can represent a challenge to Cisco for future growth.

Software Defined Networking (SDN)

What is making it possible for public cloud providers to use white box hardware instead of Cisco’s hardware? A new software based approach to manage networks. Traditionally the data plane (responsible for moving data across hardware) & control plane (responsible for controlling flow) used to reside within the hardware itself. Changes in config had to be done physically at the device and by a human. However SDN separates the logic from data flow. You can now make any changes using software. The actual hardware switch/router will act on them. So, this leads to easy reconfiguration of hardware using software. Now the hardware can be by any company and the software is what matters. This is a big shift in networking industry.

I work on the IT programming side for a big company. I can safely say that not all applications are going to be moving to cloud anytime soon. Hence, you have a situation where 15-20% of the applications are in a public cloud, some in private cloud and rest are still on their own on-premise data centers. Moreover, cloud applications are also distributed among various providers like AWS, Azure, Google etc. I can already see we work with AWS, Azure, Oracle cloud products on top of managing our own data center. We now have requirements to make sure one application residing in one cloud can communicate with some other application in our private data center or some other cloud. This type of setup is known as a multi-cloud environment.

An Exciting Opportunity

Imagine the amount of challenges this will have across multiple applications/platforms/users for networking and providing a seamless user experience. Cisco is already positioning itself as the leader in this multi-cloud space. They are now creating more software to manage networking and communications between multiple cloud environments. Here are some examples of their products:

I am sure I have probably missed many other Cisco applications in the above table. But Cisco has some or the other cloud feature for each of the above apps/hardware.

They can either be found on app stores of biggest cloud providers or can be used as SaaS solution from Cisco themselves. Cisco is aggressively converting many of their hardware contracts by providing some cloud software to manage the underlying hardware. Again, this has been possible after moving logic and hardware into different layers in first diagram. Software to manage networking hardware and security is becoming more important. Then bundling this as subscription-based solution instead of customers buying the hardware & paying a one-time fee. Historically, Cisco has been a bit cyclical and there is some drop off revenues after every few years. But by moving into subscription style sales, they will address this in few years.

Cisco Systems seems to be on right path

Cisco provides application/hardware over most networking sub-categories. They do not have to be the best at everything or even one thing. Most of their products are in top 3-4 in every category. That is all they need. For any business looking for their networking needs for multi-cloud, Cisco can probably cater to everything. Provide support for everything under one roof. That is a big usp for most of their customers. Being in similar position at my job, I realize support is very important. If one company can provide me support for multiple solutions, I would like that instead of chasing customer support for 2-3 different vendors. Its not just me saying this, check out a post from reddit where multiple system and network admins talk how important support is in big companies:

Point is, it seems like Cisco is again trying to become one stop shop for everything you would need to manage multi-cloud environment at any enterprise. Cloud is immense opportunity to grow, has lots of challenges and Cisco Systems seems to be well equipped in all fronts.

Cisco Silicon One

On 12th Dec 2019, Cisco Systems announced it was getting into the business of selling chips. Historically, Cisco has been making and designing its own chips that go into its routers and switches. However, only way to get them was by using Cisco’s own hardware. As I mentioned above with increasing adoption of cloud, Cisco had not been able to sell its hardware to Google, Microsoft, Amazon or any big cloud provider. However, white box chips/hardware needs a lot of R&D and investment. Cisco Systems is now starting to sell these chips to any customer who wants them separately. They will do the R&D and make chips that will work in any white box router, switch or other networking hardware and design it to be more efficient. This move really helps them to start selling to these big cloud providers I mentioned above. Its a completely new business line for Cisco Systems and brings them in competition with Broadcom, Juniper which used to have their chips in this white box hardware so far.

Financials (Cisco Systems)

Here is a financial snapshot from Valueline with last 15 year results:

Revenues

It is important to note that CSCO’s fiscal year lasts from Aug-July of every year. Keeping that in mind, in recently concluded Year 2019 in July, CSCO made about 51.9 billion in revenues. This was 5% growth as compared to fiscal 2018. Services grew by 2% and products revenue by about 6%.

If we look at revenues by different segments Cisco operates in:

Security is going to be massive in the multi-cloud world. So Cisco growing 16% in that and another 15% in cloud applications segment is great to see. Switching and Router products come under the infrastructure platforms which also grew by 7%.  This segment is most challenged by SDN and good to see that Cisco grew revenues in this segment. I think this is where they are probably bundling some controller UI or software to manage routers and switches. So Cisco is already on the offensive to make sure they remain relevant in multi-cloud world.

However, in Q1 2020 ending in Oct 2019, CSCO only had a 1% increase in revenue and guided down to -4% revenues in Q2 2020. They attributed this to the weak macro environment. With Brexit and trade war between US and China still unresolved, its possible many of its customers are holding back on investing in networking equipment. Additionally, most telecoms are currently only using 4g equipment to demo 5g networks. So, less revenue on that side as well. Another reason might also be them converting one-time payments customers made, into deferred revenue subscription model. So, upfront revenue would be less as compared to previous years. But, it will be realized over the life of the contracts (multiple years).

Dividend Yield & Safety of CSCO Dividend

Cisco Systems pays a 1.4$ dividend annually at 3.12% yield as of Nov 2019. Moreover, the payout ratio based on eps and free cash flow both seem relatively safe as compared to other tech companies. I think Cisco has some wiggle room during this period of transiting their business to cloud and subscription base. Looking at the latest dividend increase of 6% and the 9-year average of 23%, it looks like CSCO has tempered down their raises a bit. Although, I am still expecting mid to high single digit raises going forward. 3% starting yield with 6-9% yearly increases can still help return about 10% return on dividend income every year which is great!

Ability to Service Debt and continue paying dividend

Cisco’s competitors have a lower d/e ratio. JNPR is at 40, ANET is at 3% & HPE is at 59%. Cisco is a highly acquisitive company. Here is a list of about 200+ acquisitions they have made since 1984. I think they’re just being very opportunistic in such a low interest rate environment. Making smart acquisitions and with a huge history, making those work. Having a interest coverage ratio of 16 means they have enough earnings to pay interests and service their debt. Cisco generates a lot of cash even after dividends and can pay debt down if it wanted to within 3 years. Thus, having debt/equity ratio a bit on the high side shouldn’t be much of a problem for a cash cow like Cisco Systems.

Trends

There is a very popular reversion to mean theory.  It says that most stock metrics tend to hover around the mean of its lifetime average. So if the PE of a stock increases to very over-valued, over time it will fall back to its mean PE ratio. Hence, I also like to look at average PE ratio and dividend yield of stock I am looking to purchase as compared to its historical values. This plays a small part in my decision-making process. Cisco only started paying dividends 8 years back in 2011. Using Macrotrends, we can see the current yield of 3.12% is higher than the overall average yield of 2.67% over 9 years.

The fwd pe ratio as of Nov 2019 is 13.77. Average annual PE over last 11 years is about 13.37. Ignore the spike in 2018, its from tax reforms and them paying taxes to bring cash back into USA.

As you can see both pe ratio and dividend yield seem higher or close to the average in last 9-11 years.

Risks

Cloud

As mentioned earlier, Cisco faces threat to its core hardware business which made more than 50% of it revenue in 2019. With more enterprises looking to move applications to cloud to reduce operational costs, less Cisco hardware gets purchased. But with Cisco trying to move to more subscription based business and getting into chip selling business, I think they are moving in right direction. Move to cloud is definitely happening but it will take time and till then we will be in a multi cloud environment for which Cisco seems well prepared.

Trade War

Cisco’s sales in China fell a whopping 26% from the 2018. Just as US is trying to eliminate Huawei equipment from its upcoming 5G network, Chinese government is making sure it avoids equipment from US based vendors. Although Chinese sales only comprise of about 3% of overall revenues for Cisco. However this could be a long term trend. Secondly impact of tariffs on Chinese goods also increases price of Cisco hardware coming into the US. So at least a resolution in trade war could help Cisco on one of these issues.

In Conclusion

Cisco in its most recent fiscal Q1 2020 guided revenues to be down in its fiscal Q2 by about 3-5%. They attribute it to their slowdown of sales in China, general macroeconomic environment and less investment in buying products by cable & telecom companies. With 5g standards still being finalized, slowdown in cable and telecom industries can be explained. Trade war can explain slowdown in sales in China and rest of the world as many customers seem to be delaying investments in technology improvements. They want to wait and watch because of the uncertainties. Eventually, 5g will be here. Companies won’t be able to keep delaying investments in upgrading their networking and cloud infrastructures. ANET & JNPR have both given lower guidance between SEP-NOV 2019. So, it does look like this is a broad industry issue and not just CSCO doing something wrong.  The macro economic weakness may go on for a few quarters. But, Cisco Systems CEO Robbins did mention they expect fiscal Q1 2021 to be better.

In the meanwhile, we get a cash cow paying 3+% safe yield and maybe even growing it mid-high single digits every year. This could be a good time to at least start a position for the long term in a tech stock that pays dividends. I am long CSCO.

Please check out my complete dividend portfolio and analysis of other dividend stocks.

I am by no means an expert on networking technology. So, I will also love to hear your opinion on the analysis in the comments below. Is Cisco Systems on the right path on the way to Cloud future?

References:

SDN Explaination

Cisco investor relations

Forbes article on CSCO

Disclaimer: The above are just my opinions expressed in the article. I am not your fiduciary or an investment advisor. Do not consider this as investment advice to you. This article is just for informational and entertainment purposes. Also please note that this article was published on Nov 26th. Many numbers would have changed when you are reading it. 

 

Since many of you know dividend investing is one of my fav styles of investing. I wanted to start a new series of articles on dividend stocks. I plan to discuss fundamentals of the business I am buying, some very basic technical metrics to judge safety of dividend over long term. My plan on dividend investing is mostly to buy high quality companies at decent or undervalued prices. Focus more on the income that is being generated using dividends, re-invest and hold for the long term. These articles will also help me to revisit my theory on buying the stock in first place in future when deciding if ever to sell.

So without any other delays, a stock I have been looking at recently is BlackRock Inc.

Overview of BlackRock Inc (BLK)

BlackRock is one of the largest asset management firms in the world. Basically, they are responsible for managing over 6 trillion dollars in various types of assets like fixed income, stocks etc. World’s biggest universities hand over the keys to their endowment funds to BlackRock to manage it and grow. World’s biggest companies ask Blackrock to manage their pensions funds and grow them. Some of the world’s biggest wealth funds, tax exempt institutions, charities etc. engage in services of BlackRock to manage their money. Blackrock in turn charges them fees to do it. Apart from this, they also own the iShares brand of etfs. If you want to do index investing but want more liquidity in selling and buying your shares, you would look towards ETFs. ETFs like IEMG (emerging markets), ITOT(Total US stock market), IVV(US S&P 500) are products of the Blackrock family. These cost almost nothing to make, all they do is package different individual stocks and sell them together as 1 security and collect some fees every year on it. They already have country specific, industry specific, dividends specific ETFs. ETFs inherently reduce risk since it allows you to diversify. and provide liquidity. They are very popular among all type of investors retail/institutional or individual. Blackrock is the largest ETF provider in the world!

Tollbooth in the investment world

All this makes Blackrock analogous to Visa and Mastercard in payments world. Just like Visa/Mastercard charge fee on any transaction done across the world using their cards, BlackRock charges fee to people holding their investment assets. They charge it every year! So its not like a one time transaction fee either. It’s like a toll booth on the superhighway of investing. Lots of people/institutions/retail clients invest in assets and some/most of them will use assets packaged by BlackRock and pay fees to hold them.

Best part is as the total assets under management grows for BlackRock, the more fee discounts they can offer to their clients thereby growing even more. The services Blackrock offers are also very sticky. An institutional client or a retail investor with significant portion of their wealth invested and managed by BlackRock is not going to sell everything and switch to a new provider just because someone else offered lower fee. I think BlackRock has excellent moat in form of its size and brand. They are one of the absolute go to places for big institutional clients looking to manage their money.

Dividend Yield

As of Oct 25 2018 is 3.31% with 12.52$ payout per share per year

Dividend history & Growth

BlackRock has a pretty good history of increasing and growing dividends every year since 2003 except for 2009 when they froze it. For 2009 I think companies can be excused if they had a pause in dividend growth because of the worldwide scenario going on at that time. They could have just cut the dividend in 09 but they decided to just freeze it. This seems to suggest me that the management is invested in growing and increasing dividends year over year.  The dividend over last 5 years has grown around at 13.18%. Such growth rate is just great! What is there to not like about this history and growth rate?

Payout Ratio & Dividend Safety

Looking at the past 15 years of data from Valueline, we can identify the following about dividend safety:

So with payout ratio in 40’s it seems like BLK makes enough money to cover dividends. This also allows BLK to withstand competition in race to 0 over commission fees. BLK has the scale and the money to innovate and take market share from other companies in its field.

.18 or 18% debt to equity ratio tells us, Blackrock has not used much debt to finance its assets and growth. Its competitors like State Street is at .53 or 53% Northern Trust is at .34 or 34%.  Interest coverage ratio of 31 suggests that BLK should have no problems paying its interest obligations every year. It generates enough money to cover them 31 times! This is a good spot to be in. In case of a crisis, BLK should be able to support its debt obligations which will allow it to ensure dividend is also paid there after.

Trends

There is a very popular reversion to mean theory.  It says that most stock metrics tend to hover around the mean of its lifetime average. So if the PE of a stock increases to very over-valued, over time it will fall back to its mean PE ratio. Hence, I also like to look at average PE ratio and dividend yield of stock I am looking to purchase as compared to its historical values. This plays a small part in my decision-making process. Looking at BLK historical PE, it’s been around 13-17. This chart below doesn’t include the latest price decline in month of October and including that, fwd pe today is around 12-13 PE. I think this is below the average in last 12 years.

Next coming up to the dividend yield, historically seems to range between 1.5 to 2.5%. Again, today the yield is close to 3.1%. Kind of the highest its been in last 12 years!

Looking at revenues and net income over the last 10 years from Morningstar shows us the following(in millions):

As you can see both revenue and net income have gone up in the correct direction over last 10 years. This just means management is great at growing the business and making it more efficient.

Positive trends tell us that BlackRock is just a great company that has reduced to reasonable levels in the last few months.

In Conclusion

BlackRock seems to be a fundamentally strong company with great dividend starting yield at around 3% at present. I usually only care about my dividend income and safety of that dividend. The dividend growth and payout ratio with BLK seems very good at current levels. I like to keep the whole process of picking dividend stocks simple and easy. Even if the stock drops more good for me since that means my DRIP will get more of BLK stock. If it goes up again good for me. I would just let the stock DRIP and reinvest all dividends. Usually I buy in lots and bought my first lot here. I will slowly buy more lots and build BLK into a full position for me over the next year or so.

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Disclaimer: The above are just my opinions expressed in the article. I am not your fiduciary and not a financial advisor. Do not consider this as investment advice to you. This article is just for informational and entertainment purposes only. Please do your own research before making investment decisions or talk to a fiduciary.