By Peace Longe
Publication Date: 2026-05-19 20:50:00
Cisco Systems (CSCO) just got the kind of analyst note that doesn’t often appear on a dividend-paying megacap.
On the evening of Thursday, May 14, HSBC analyst Stephen Bersey upgraded Cisco to Buy from Hold and raised his price target to $137 from $77, according to a note carried by Investing.com via Yahoo Finance.
That is a 78% target jump in one move on a $466 billion company, one of the largest single-day price target raises on a megacap dividend stock in years.
The trigger was Cisco’s fiscal third-quarter results, released the night before, where management said it now expects roughly $9 billion in AI infrastructure orders for fiscal 2026, nearly double the prior $5 billion target.
For readers, the question is simple. Is HSBC late to a story Wall Street has already priced in, or is this the moment a “boring” networking stock officially became an AI play?