Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) finished its fiscal year on solid footing, today reporting fourth-quarter revenues 12.5 percent higher than a year ago.

The good news -- and a sunny fiscal 2007 forecast -- could give Cisco stock a much-needed jolt. In early after-hours trading, Cisco shares were up $1.58 (9.1%) at $18.87.

For its fourth quarter, which ended July 29, Cisco reported net income of $1.5 billion, or 25 cents per share, on revenues of $7.98 billion, compared with the previous quarter's net income of $1.4 billion, 22 cents per share, on revenues of $7.3 billion.

For its fourth quarter a year ago, Cisco reported net income of $1.3 billion, 20 cents per share, on revenues of $6.6 billion. Those figures are adjusted to include the expensing of stock options, which wasn't common practice at the time.

Pro forma earnings of 30 cents per share beat the consensus estimate of 28 cents as tallied by Reuters Research.

Cisco's fiscal year revenues of $28.48 billion were 14.5 percent higher than last fiscal year's $24.8 billion -- making good on CEO John Chambers's prediction that Cisco, not including the Scientific-Atlanta acquisition, could enjoy yearly revenue growth of 10 to 15 percent.

Cisco is coming out of fiscal 2006 with a strong start, too, CEO John Chambers told analysts on today's earnings call.

"When you see our ending backlog for fiscal 2006," available in Cisco's upcoming 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) , "we will have increased our Cisco standalone product backlog approximately $700 million over the ending backlog of fiscal 2005," Chambers said. The increase is "due almost entirely to the strong order growth in Q3 and Q4."

Cisco's total backlog is about $3 billion, CFO Dennis Powell added later.

The numbers are consistent with the upbeat mood of Cisco's third-quarter earnings call in May, when Chambers noted Cisco wasn't experiencing the glitches that were affecting competitors' revenues. (See Cisco Q3 Gives It an Edge .)

The company said it expects first-quarter revenues to climb 19 to 21 percent from year-ago results, a prediction of $7.74 billion to $7.87 billion. That's on par, barely, with the $7.86 billion prediction listed by Reuters.

Having completed the Scientific-Atlanta acquisition, Cisco now expects 2007 revenues to best 2006 figures by 15 to 20 percent. Cisco "standalone," without Scientific-Atlanta, should see yearly revenues increase by 10 to 15 percent in 2007, Chambers said.

Scientific-Atlanta represented $582 million of Cisco's fourth-quarter revenues.

During the call, Chambers went out of his way to highlight the CRS-1 core router, noting that orders in the fourth quarter "comfortably blew through" the $100 million mark.

— Craig Matsumoto, Senior Editor, Light Reading