Cisco posts its fastest growth in 15 years with about 8,000 fewer employees than two years ago
Filings show the networking giant's workforce has shrunk by nearly 9% since mid-2024, and a restructuring plan of up to $1 billion is only about half booked.
Cisco Systems reported on Thursday what its CEO called its "strongest top and bottom line growth rates in over 15 years," with first-quarter revenue up 24% to $18.5 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share up 40% to $1.40. Chuck Robbins also made a point of saying how few people it took. "If you just look at our revenue based on the guide we put up today, and you go back two years, we're gonna generate $19 billion in incremental revenue, and we are going to do that with less headcount than we had at the beginning two years ago," Robbins told analysts. "The efficiency that we are seeing is just unprecedented."
Cisco's annual reports show how large that reduction has been. The company had approximately 90,400 employees at the end of fiscal 2024 in July 2024, 86,200 a year later, and 82,400 as of July 25, 2026. That is a decline of about 8,000 people, or nearly 9%, in two years. During those same years Cisco ran three consecutive restructuring programs. Its filings put restructuring and other charges at $789 million in fiscal 2024, $744 million in fiscal 2025 and $693 million in fiscal 2026, or about $2.2 billion in total. Cisco paid out $691 million, $770 million and $365 million in cash against those charges over the three years.
The latest plan is not finished. Cisco announced it in May, and media reports put it at nearly 4,000 jobs, or less than 5% of the workforce. Its annual report says the total pre-tax charges are estimated to be "up to $1 billion," of which $511 million was recorded in fiscal 2026, and that the plan is expected to be substantially completed by the end of fiscal 2027. Cisco booked $28 million in restructuring and other charges in the first quarter, against $147 million a year earlier. That leaves as much as roughly $490 million of the ceiling unrecorded, if the company ends up using all of it.
The balance sheet suggests much of the cash cost is still to come. Cisco's restructuring liability stood at $380 million at the end of fiscal 2026, up from $147 million a year earlier. Of that, $296 million was severance accrued under the new plan and not yet paid. The drop in cash payments in fiscal 2026 reflects the timing of the new plan's severance, which the filing indicates will be paid mostly in fiscal 2027.
On the call, Chief Financial Officer Mark Patterson linked the shrinking workforce to profitability. "Total headcount has declined by a low single-digit percentage, driving an expected revenue per employee increase of approximately 19%, based on our updated FY 2027 guidance," he said. He said Cisco expects its non-GAAP operating margin to rise to 36% in fiscal 2027 from 34.8% in fiscal 2026. The annual report adds a caveat: it says the cost savings from the restructuring plans are "not expected to be material," because Cisco expects to reinvest substantially all of them in silicon, optics, security and AI. Robbins also said that at the start of fiscal 2027 the company "provided an AI agent for every employee," and that Cisco expects "to continue accelerating AI adoption."
None of the 12 analysts who asked questions on the call raised headcount or the layoffs. Their questions focused on hyperscaler orders, which Cisco now expects to produce $9 billion of AI infrastructure revenue in fiscal 2027, on memory costs and on gross margin.
