Cisco Systems prints on November 12, thirteen days out from the October 30 morning scan, and on this board that is the longest runway any name carries. The row reads score 73, and the two halves of it pull against each other: the options are charging Cisco a 21.8% five-day move, while the book behind that move has ten ratings on the fence and not a single sell. Cisco's own tape has gone nowhere for three weeks, closing Thursday at $108.59 and standing at $107.10 in the morning scan, 1.37% lower again. What arrives on November 12 is therefore not a reaction to a move. It is the first thing Cisco has said since the tape drifted.
The row, thirteen days out
The whole of it: score 73, rank 39 of the 100 names on the board, sector Technology, print date November 12, earnings sentiment Mixed, short interest 1.5% of float, market capitalization $422.25 billion, implied volatility 69.8%, and a price of $107.10 at the time of the scan, 1.37% below the $108.59 close it printed on Thursday October 29. At $422.25 billion Cisco is by a distance the largest company among the five names in this morning's set, and at 1.5% of float it carries the shortest short of the five.
The 73 is assembled from the same five parts every row on this board uses. Coverage is one point per analyst up to 25, and Cisco's 29 analysts earn the full 25. Buy-side conviction is the share of ratings that are buys or strong buys, scaled to a ceiling of 25, and 19 of 29 ratings lands at 16.4. Every strong buy adds two points up to 20, so the five Cisco has contribute 10. The options-implied move adds the maximum 15, because the five-day move of 21.8% clears the 15% the formula caps at. Earnings sentiment reads Mixed, and Mixed is worth 7 of the 15 available. That is 73.4, rounded to 73.
Two of those five parts sit pinned at their ceiling, and neither of them measures Cisco. Coverage is maxed because Cisco is widely covered by definition. The implied move is maxed because 21.8% runs past the cap. The two parts doing Cisco-specific work are the two carrying the least: 16.4 out of 25 for conviction, and 7 out of 15 for sentiment. Take the two caps away and the number in the row would sit lower than the picture the price is drawing.
Where the price actually is
Cisco's one-month range runs from $104.89 to $118.39. The high is the October 9 close. The low is the October 22 close. Between them the stock fell 11.4%, recovered 5.2% into the October 28 close of $110.29, gave back 1.54% into Thursday's $108.59, and gave back another 1.37% in Friday's opening minutes to $107.10. On the calendar that is a week and a half of nothing: 3.53% over five sessions, 0.89% over the month.
The dates matter more than the range here, because Cisco has not reported. The November 12 print is thirteen days away, so none of that drift is a reaction to a quarter, and the scanner's news feed for Cisco carries a market-wide comparison rather than a company announcement. What pushed Cisco between October 9 and October 22 is not disclosed in this row, and this article does not pretend otherwise. What can be said plainly is that the stock now sits 9.5% below its October 9 close, two tenths of a percent of a percentage point above its own one-month floor, and the implied move attached to its print has not shrunk to match.
What the options are charging
Cisco's at-the-money straddle costs about $4.67 against a $107.10 price. That is 4.4% of the share price, and it is what the scanner carries as the $111.77 post-earnings target. Run the same straddle out to three times its cost and the target becomes $121.11, a 13.1% implied move. Run it to five times and the target is $130.45, a 21.8% implied move. Those three numbers are what the market has paid to own the event, scaled by how long the buyer intends to hold it.
Against the rest of the board, Cisco's implied volatility of 69.8% sits almost exactly on the median: the middle of the 100 names reads 69.0%. NVIDIA, the highest-scoring mega-cap on this board at 96, reads 45.8% and carries a 12.3% five-day implied move. Datadog, top of the board at 98, reads 154.2% with an 85.2% five-day move. Cisco's 21.8% is an unremarkable number in the middle of the pack, on a stock whose score sits in the seventh decile. It is not a price for a violent reaction, and it is not a price for a quiet one either.
Nine days of other people go first
This is the part of the Cisco setup that a date on a calendar hides. Seventy-three of the 100 names on the board print before Cisco does, and eighteen Technology names scoring 70 or better print ahead of it. Palantir at 75, Apple at 81, Grab at 89 and Lumentum at 73 report by November 2. Arista Networks at 93, Shopify at 86 and AMD at 85 go on November 3. Datadog at 98, FICO at 71, Trimble at 70 and Sunrun at 70 report on November 4. November 5 alone carries eight names scoring 70 or more: Atlassian at 87, Cloudflare at 86, JFrog at 86, Paylocity at 78, Microchip at 78, BILL at 73, Lyft at 71 and DraftKings at 71.
Cisco prints on the same day as Bilibili at 91, JD.com at 91, Applied Materials at 86 and Nu Holdings at 76, and it is the lowest-scoring of the five names reporting that day. Nothing prints on November 13, 14 or 15, and the next names arrive on November 16 with Baidu at 87. Cisco is not the first word of its own week. It is the last, and it reports into a set of nine days of other companies' numbers that will already have set the tone for everything that shares its end market.
What to watch
- The $107.10 price in the October 30 morning scan and the $104.89 low from October 22, because a name sitting 2.1% above its own one-month floor with thirteen days still to run is a different setup from one sitting at the $118.39 high.
- The $4.67 straddle and the $130.45 five-times-straddle target, because the implied move is the one number on this row that records what the market has actually paid to own the event.
- Arista Networks on November 3 and Datadog on November 4, because those two prints set the read-through for every networking and infrastructure name that follows, and Cisco is at the back of that queue.
- Whether the ten holds turn into buys or into sells before November 12, because a book with no sell rating and a third of its analysts on the fence has room to swing in either direction on the print.
- The Mixed sentiment reading, worth 7 of 15 points. A flip to Positive lifts Cisco's own score without the price moving at all.
None of this is a call on the quarter. It is a description of what a CSCO pre-earnings setup is: the widest runway on the board, the shortest short in the group, a market charging a middle-of-the-road 21.8% for the reaction, and nine days of other companies' numbers arriving before Cisco opens its mouth. The Cisco-specific information is thin on purpose. The read-through is where the risk sits.
