Piper ups Cisco target but ‘more concerned’ about valuation

Piper Sandler raised the firm’s price target on Cisco (CSCO) to $57 from $53 and keeps a Neutral rating on the shares after analyzing whether management should be more aggressive with acquisitions or follow other peers in “shrinking, to grow” via spinoffs. With increasing product synergies of AppExperiences and Security and Piper’s sum-of-the-parts analysis near the current price, a spinoff near-term is unlikely, with a collaboration making the most strategic sense, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm raised the price target to reflect multiple expansion, but the analysis leaves it “incrementally more concerned” with Cisco’s valuation. Piper sees “endless possibilities” if Cisco were to pursue an acquisition. However, the seven public options of most interest to it include CyberArk (CYBR), Splunk (SPLK), HashiCorp (HCP), Nutanix (NTNX), SentinelOne (S), PagerDuty (PD), and Five9 (FIVN).