John Chambers To Fox Business: “Government And Business Have To Work Closer Together” (CSCO)

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) CEO John Chambers was on Fox Business Network this morning being interviewed by Stuart Varney to discuss a myriad of topics. Chambers went on to discuss the economic recovery, how it is affecting his company and the future of jobs at Cisco and other corporations.

In the interview, when pressed about whether Cisco would expand in California given its tax and regulatory state, Chambers stated, "We are expanding in the US and in California. We added 3000 incremental jobs, not through acquisitions, in the last two quarters. Last quarter alone we added 2000 people. We are one of the few companies who have been around for 25 years in high tech who still have the majority of our employees in the US. Government and business have to work closer together to create an environment where all of us can add more jobs."

Varney then went on to ask him what he is seeing economically and whether he believes it is going in reverse. Chambers responded by saying, "No I am not. Our growth (in the last quarter) was record growth. A 40 billion dollar company growing at 27 percent when we projected 25-28 percent and setting records on earnings per share, etc. We are very proud of that." He went on to say, "In terms of the market, we have always been very transparent in terms of what we hear from our customers. What we are hearing from customers on a basis now is ‘I still think we are in a very gradual recovery, a little bit slower than I expected.’ When I push them about ‘are they concerned this might go back down?’ They say no."

Shares of Cisco are currently down 9.8% to $21.40 after having reported earnings last night after the bell. The network equipment maker lowered its revenue forecast for the upcoming quarter and also missed revenue estimates for this quarter, hence the reason for the sell off.