If you bought Cisco Systems on March 27, 2000, you’re finally whole. After nearly 26 years in the wilderness, shares of Cisco have climbed above their dotcom bubble intraday peak, closing a long chapter for what was once the era’s ultimate poster child for internet excess. The stock eclipsed the record close it reached last year. The recovery has been a long one. After peaking in March 2000, Cisco’s shares tanked nearly 90% as the dot-com bubble burst, eventually closing at a split-adjusted $8.60 on Oct. 8, 2002. Today’s Cisco looks little like the hardware-centric growth engine that briefly became the world’s most valuable company at the height of the internet mania. Cisco is now a cash-generative company, increasingly oriented toward software and services and tying itself closely to the artificially intelligence boom. While networking hardware remains its foundation, the company now sells a growing suite of software and services spanning cybersecurity, observability and cloud management. That shift was reinforced by its roughly $28 billion acquisition of Splunk, which Cisco has positioned as a cornerstone of its push into data monitoring and security analytics. Cisco has also been working to embed itself deeper into AI data-center architectures. It recently introduced a new Ethernet switch built on silicon from Nvidia , a move aimed at making its networking gear more integral to large-scale AI systems. In November, Cisco said AI-infrastructure orders from hyperscaler customers reached $1.3 billion, ” reflecting a significant acceleration in growth.” Expensive? Still, some investors are wary of how much optimism is already priced into the stock. “I give the company credit for reasserting itself in the AI era, but I think the stock is expensive,” said Paul Meeks, a veteran technology investor and head of tech research at Freedom Capital Markets. At roughly 20 times this year’s earnings and 18 times next year’s, Meeks said the stock already prices in more growth than Cisco is expected to deliver, with earnings projected to rise about just 8% annually, below the S & P 500’s expected pace. Investors stepping in now are effectively betting on Cisco crushing Wall Street estimates in its next two quarterly reports, starting Feb. 11, he said. To be sure, Cisco’s multiple remains a fraction of the roughly 126 times forward earnings investors were willing to pay when Cisco last hit an all-time high in the first quarter of 2000, according to data compiled by FactSet. ‘Defensive tech’ Analysts at UBS recently named Cisco an “out-of-consensus top pick,” arguing the market still treats the company as an “AI loser” with only mid-single-digit revenue growth. UBS’s supply-chain checks point to more than $4 billion in AI-related orders in fiscal 2026, up from about $2 billion in fiscal 2025. That demand could lead to earnings beats and upward revisions to Cisco’s fiscal-2026 guidance, with revenue growth approaching the high single digits and double-digit EPS growth, UBS said. Evercore ISI upgraded Cisco to outperform last week and lifted its price target to $100 from $80, saying a resurgence in core networking alongside accelerating AI demand should allow the company to sustain high-single-digit revenue growth and low-teens EPS growth over multiple years. The $100 price target represents a 22% upside from the current level around $82. The Wall Street firm called Cisco an attractive “defensive tech,” with the potential for EPS to exceed $5 and the valuation to migrate toward a 20x multiple. — With assistance from CNBC’s Nick Wells.