Cisco Systems CEO Chuck Robbins to add title of executive chairman, ending Chambers’ more than two decade run at the networking company.
SAN FRANCISCO — John Chambers helped build Cisco Systems into one of Silicon Valley’s go-go success stories in the 1990s and early 2000s — briefly making it the world’s most valuable company. On Monday, he retired.
Chambers, 68, will not be up for re-election as executive chairman in December, the networking company said Monday, ending his two-decade-plus reign at the company. Chambers joined Cisco in 1991 as head of sales.
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, 51, will add executive chairman to his title.
« It is time for Cisco to move on to its next generation of leadership including at the board and Chairman level and to position this seamlessly for the future, » Chambers wrote in a Sept. 13 letter to Cisco’s board of directors. « It is also time for me to move on to the next chapter of my life, on both a personal and business level. »
Shares of Cisco, which have gained 7% this year, are flat at $32.53 in mid-morning trading.
Under Chambers as CEO, Cisco’s annual sales rocketed from $1.2 billion in 1995 to nearly $50 billion in 2015. But its double-digit growth stalled amid wrenching industry changes as smaller, nimbler rivals found ways to design and manage computer networks.
During its fiscal fourth quarter, the San Jose-based company last month reported $12.1 billion in revenue, down 4% from the same quarter a year earlier. It earnings were 48 cents per share, or 61 cents on a non-GAAP basis.
In 2000, the company ( CSCO) was briefly the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of $557 billion. But it scuffled after the Internet-stock bubble burst, and it has never regained its lofty standing. Its current market cap is about $160.6 billion.
Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates in Boston, deemed Chambers’ tenure a « mixed legacy » after the early glory years that established Cisco as the dominant networking company.
« (Chambers) presided over a troubled time for Cisco as the markets quickly passed them by and Cisco was mired in legacy products, » Gold says. « That said, he also was instrumental in turning the ship around, although it took longer than everyone expected — it’s a pretty massive ship to steer a new course. »
The avuncular Chambers, who was Silicon Valley’s longest-serving CEO, transitioned to executive chairman in July 2015. At the time, he took on a role similar to Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Alibaba’s Jack Ma who, before Chambers, took on new, non-CEO roles at their companies.
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