Networking firm Cisco has beaten its own and analysts’ financial expectations despite a drop in Q3 revenue and profit.
The California-based company, which projected a decline in revenues of between 6% and 8% in February, said sales for the quarter ending in April dropped 5.5% to $11.5bn from a year earlier, as net profits fell 12% to $2.2bn.
The results topped analysts’ estimates of $11.4bn in sales.
Cisco said a resurgence in demand for its solutions in the US and Northern Europe helped offset sluggish sales in emerging markets Brazil, India and Russia.
In the US, Cisco posted revenue growth of 10% and a rise in product orders of 7% from a year earlier, while demand from Northern Europe grew by 4% in the same period.
"The traction we are seeing with application-centric solutions gives me confidence that we are leading the disruption of SDN," said CEO John Chambers in a statement.
He added that the company has "demonstrated clear progress on returning to growth".
Cisco, which is currently working with AT&T, GE, IBM and Intel on building cloud infrastructure for the Internet of Things (IoT), recently announced Guido Jouret, head of its IoT unit, stepped down after just seven months in the job.
