SAN JOSE, Calif., November 16, 2007 - Cisco announced that at a regularly scheduled meeting of its board of directors on November 15th, the board authorized up to $10 billion in additional repurchases of its common stock, increasing the total authorized amount under the program to $62 billion. There is no fixed termination date for the repurchase program.
"We have consistently generated strong cash from operations," said Dennis Powell, chief financial officer, Cisco. "This allows us to return a significant amount of cash to our shareholders in the form of stock repurchases while at the same time continue to make strategic internal investments and acquisitions to drive future growth."
Since the inception of the repurchase program in September 2001 through the close of Cisco's first quarter of fiscal year 2008 on October 27, 2007, the company had repurchased and retired 2.3 billion shares at an average price of $19.89 per share for an aggregate purchase price of $46.2 billion, with a remaining authorized amount of $5.8 billion.