** Cisco Systems CSCO.O raised its annual revenue forecast on Wednesday, betting on higher demand for its cloud networking gear amid an artificial intelligence boom
** Shares of CSCO up 6.21% at $66.4 in premarket trading
AI-POWERED DATA CENTER HUB
** J.P. Morgan ("overweight," PT: $73) expects that the increasing use of AI by enterprises and the growth of large cloud service providers (hyperscalers) will significantly boost demand for Cisco's portfolio
** Piper Sandler ("neutral," PT: $72) says CSCO is in a good position due to data center upgrades and growth in AI with big cloud providers
** Morningstar (fair value: $54) expects integrating Splunk will improve CSCO's security growth over the next five years, making it more comparable to its competitors like Fortinet Inc FTNT.O and Palo Alto Networks Inc PANW.O
** Morgan Stanley ("overweight," PT: $68) sees CSCO's growth in orders related to large-scale web infrastructure (webscale) and improvements in networking capabilities within campus networks, not just in data centers
(Reporting by Akriti Shah in Bengaluru)
((akriti.shah@thomsonreuters.com))
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