Stefan Mileschin

Cisco has decided that the EU is stuffed for a while and decided that the best way to stop shareholders feeling that doom in the old country will harm their portfolios is to give them lots of dividend money.

In announcing its results, Cisco said that it did not think that the dire economic conditions in Europe would come to an end any time soon. However it threw money at investors by giving them a 75 percent dividend hike.

To be fair, Cisco did much better than Wall Street analysts predicted.

Three months ago, Chief Executive John Chambers scared the bejesus out of Wall Street when he warned that macroeconomic conditions in Europe could hurt technology spending.

Chambers told Reuters that Europe would stay challenging for several more quarters and things were going to get tougher before they got better. Public spending in the United States and Europe would be pants for a while.

Chambers said most of Cisco's customers anticipate a challenging year globally and these CEOs will remain conservative both in their IT expenditures but also in their hiring.

Cisco expects revenue growth, excluding items and its acquisition of TV software developer NDS, to range from 2 to 4 percent while earnings per share are seen up 5 to 0 percent at 45 to 47 cents, in line with analysts' expectations.

Cisco's fourth-quarter results were thanks to its cost savings and restructuring program.

Quarterly net income was $2.5 billion. Revenue rose four percent from the year-ago quarter to $11.7 billion, compared with a Street view of $11.61 billion.

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