4 . Supply Chain Struggles, Record Backlog Impact Cisco’s 2022 Earnings 

The tech giant during its Q3 2022 earnings call in May revealed a record-breaking customer software and product order backlog to the tune of more than $15 billion, which was up 10 percent sequentially and up 130 percent year over year. That figure didn’t get much better when Cisco in August reported its earnings for final fiscal quarter of the year. While the company didn’t disclose numbers for this quarter, it once again said it had triple-digit backlog growth that fueled the backlog to the highest level ever recorded in the company’s history.

Robbins said that Cisco was working to mitigating supply challenges by working closely with the company’s key suppliers and contract manufacturers and paying significantly higher logistics costs to get the components where they’re most needed.

The record-breaking backlog began to ease during the company’s first fiscal quarter of 2023, announced in November, when Cisco began reporting an easing of supply chain constraints and component shortages.

“We are constantly evaluating our global supply chain,” said Robbins last summer. “It’s not about one country, it’s about resilience. And the way we’ve designed supply chains over the last 15-20 years as an industry -- I think we all realize we’re evolving that now at the same time that we’re triaging all of the current issues that we have.”