CSCO · Cisco
Cisco 1990–2000: from IPO to the world's most valuable company
1990–2000 · +100,000%
For scale: buying every US stock breakout from 2018 to 2026 with no selection returned a median −22.6% a year later, measured on the 14,674 with a full twelve months of data. How it was measured
Cisco Systems went public on 16 February 1990 at $18 a share. In its 1990 fiscal year it reported net sales of $69.8 million and net income of $13.9 million, with 254 employees, selling routers that connected computer networks. Through the decade it grew partly by acquisition, starting with Crescendo Communications for $95 million in 1993. In 1996 it paid $4.67 billion for StrataCom, which took it into the network equipment used by telephone carriers. Measured from 1990 to 2000, the stock's run comes to +100,000%.
The top came in March 2000. That month Cisco's stock market value passed Microsoft's, at more than $550 billion, and it became the most valuable company in the world. The end of the dot-com era followed, and the share price fell with it. Cisco's shares did not close above their March 2000 high again until December 2025, more than 25 years later.
This run is one of the free replays in the library: every bar, with the catalysts pinned to the day they landed. The library is opened by email.
Free: six classic runs
Sources: begintoinvest, 16 February · Company Histories, Cisco Systems · Deseret News, 2 Apr 2000 · CNBC, 10 Dec 2025. Price figures are split-adjusted, not dividend-adjusted.
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