> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.sharespective.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Exactly On Script - URL: https://www.sharespective.com/sharespective-2026-08-13/ - Published: 2026-08-12T22:00:05.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-12T22:00:05.000Z - Description: Cisco, of all companies, is having the best year of its modern life. - Author: Shaun Botha - Tags: Daily | ![Sharespective](https://storage.ghost.io/c/02/71/0271df32-cec6-421f-9f13-b06ab90e54c1/content/images/2026/08/mark-light-3.png) | SharespectiveWall street, before your first coffee | Thu 13 Aug 2026Issue 226 | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------ | | ![Today's edition](https://storage.ghost.io/c/02/71/0271df32-cec6-421f-9f13-b06ab90e54c1/content/images/2026/08/kicker-1.png)Exactly On ScriptPlus: Cisco, of all companies, is having the best year of its modern life. | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | **Good morning, and welcome to Thursday.** The most anticipated number of the month arrived at 8:30 on Wednesday morning in New York, and it did something economic data almost never does. It matched the forecast — headline inflation, core inflation, monthly and annual, all four lined up with what Wall Street had written down in advance. Shares responded with the enthusiasm you would expect from a room told nothing had changed. The S&P 500 added a quarter of a percent, the Nasdaq did better on some good tech results, and the Dow finished a rounding error below where it started. Underneath, the argument about whether the Federal Reserve raises rates next month lost most of its heat. ### Market snapshot | S&P 5007,748.50▲ 0.26% | ​ | NASDAQ26,588.49▲ 0.54% | ​ | NZX 5013,737.66▼ 0.89% | | ---------------------- | - | ---------------------- | - | ---------------------- | | ​ | | | | | | ASX 2009,209.40▼ 0.45% | ​ | USD/NZD1.7076▲ 0.40% | ​ | USD/AUD1.4159▼ 0.02% | US levels are Wednesday's official 4​pm New York close. The NZX 50 and ASX 200 are Wednesday's local closes, hours before New York opened, and the currency levels were taken late in Wednesday's New York session. | ​ | ECONOMY | | - | ------- | ## July's inflation report landed on forecast, and the case for a Fed hike quietly deflated Consumer prices rose 0.1% in July and 3.4% over the year, easing from 3.5% in June. Core inflation — the same basket with food and energy taken out, because both jump around for reasons that have nothing to do with monetary policy — rose 0.2% in the month and 2.5% over the year. All of it matched consensus, and the 10-year Treasury yield barely moved, sitting just under 4.70%. **Where the number came from.** Shelter did about two-thirds of the work in the monthly rise, and shelter is roughly a third of the whole index, so it tends to decide these things on its own. The energy index fell 1.5% over the month, taking the sting out of the headline. That is the fragile bit: energy is still 14.7% dearer than a year ago, and July's fall reflects a lull in crude prices that has since reversed. The reaction in the futures market was the real story. Traders cut the odds of a rate rise in September to around 38%, from close to half the day before, having already pared them back after July payrolls fell by 23,000 against expectations of a gain. The Fed has held at 3.50% to 3.75% for four straight meetings while its own members openly disagree about which way the next move goes. | What to watchthe Strait of Hormuz, not the CPI print. Brent is back near $90 a barrel, up roughly a quarter since the conflict with Iran began in late February, and attacks on shipping this week dented hopes the waterway reopens soon. Energy is the one line in the inflation report no central bank can do anything about, and the one most likely to make September awkward. | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | ​ | NETWORKING | | - | ---------- | ## Cisco is having the best year in its modern history, and it took an AI boom to do it The networking company reported fourth-quarter revenue of US$17.3 billion after Wednesday's close, up 18% on a year earlier, with adjusted earnings of US$1.22 a share and statutory earnings of US$0.97 against the US$0.87 expected. Full-year revenue was US$63.3 billion, up 12%. Shares rose about 2.5% in extended trading, on top of a stock already up roughly 60% this year. **What Cisco actually sells into an AI build.** Not the chips. Cisco makes the plumbing between the racks — switches, routers and the optical gear that moves data around a data centre fast enough that the expensive silicon isn't left waiting. It booked US$4 billion of AI infrastructure orders in the quarter and US$9.3 billion for the year, against a target of US$5 billion set earlier, and now expects about US$7.5 billion of AI revenue in the coming financial year. The guidance is what made people sit up. Cisco pointed to first-quarter revenue of US$18.0 billion to US$18.2 billion, well clear of the US$16.8 billion analysts had modelled. Product orders grew 35%, and still grew 25% with the giant cloud customers stripped out, which suggests ordinary corporate buyers are spending too. | The catcha large slice of that order book comes from a handful of enormous customers, and hyperscaler spending arrives in lumps rather than a steady stream. The 25% growth excluding those buyers is the figure that tells you whether this is a real upgrade cycle across corporate networks or one very good customer list having a moment. | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | ​ | RESTAURANTS | | - | ----------- | ## Cava's customers came back faster than anyone expected after a food safety scare Shares in the Mediterranean fast-casual chain closed at US$70.50 on Wednesday, up 15.95% and the best day the stock has had in five months, adding about US$1.13 billion of market value. Same-restaurant sales rose 9% against the 7.1% analysts expected, revenue grew 31.3%, and the company opened 17 net new restaurants to reach 476. **The cyclospora problem.** A parasite outbreak in the United States in July knocked demand across the fast-casual category, and Cava was caught in it even though its own ingredients were never implicated. Comparable sales started that month flat to marginally higher, then recovered to mid-single-digit growth. The composition of the growth is what got the attention. Of the 9% rise, 5.3 percentage points came from more people walking in, the rest from menu prices and what they ordered. Margins at restaurant level slipped 60 basis points — 0.6 of a percentage point — to 25.7%, as dearer salmon, higher wages and more third-party delivery ate into the gain. | The telltraffic. Plenty of restaurant chains have posted healthy-looking sales growth over the past two years that turned out to be price rises wearing a disguise, and those numbers stop working the moment customers notice. Cava's growth is mostly more visits, which is harder to fake and harder to lose. | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ### Newsworthy numbers | ​ | ​ | ​ | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | - | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | A$356 millionSeek's write-down on its stake in Chinese jobs site Zhaopin, which turned a 28% rise in adjusted profit into a statutory loss and knocked 14% off the shares on Wednesday. | ​ | NZ$9.25Fonterra's forecast farmgate milk price for 2026/27, cut by 50 cents as global dairy prices slid. Every 10-cent move is worth about NZ$150 million to the economy, so that is three-quarters of a billion dollars of rural income gone. | | ​ | | | | ​ | ​ | ​ | | US$4.06the average price of a gallon of regular petrol in the United States in early August, up from US$3.80 a month earlier. American drivers express their opinions about this at elections. | ​ | 67%the drop in the likelihood of a deer-vehicle collision on Washington's Olympic Peninsula where pumas are present, in a five-year study. Deer avoid roads when something is hunting them. | ### Worth a read | ​ | | | -- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 01 | **[Prices are rising twice as fast as wages](https://www.interest.co.nz/personal-finance/139683/wot-about-workers-wage-increases-well-below-inflation-putting-households?ref=sharespective.com)** — New Zealand pay rises are running well below inflation, the quiet arithmetic behind a lot of household budget pain. | | ​ | | | 02 | **[Extreme mortgage stress is spreading down the income scale](https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/10298-mortgage-stress-increases-august-2026?ref=sharespective.com)** — Roy Morgan has 19.8% of Australian mortgage holders now "extremely at risk", above the 2024 peak. The relief of 2024 and 2025 never reached the two lowest income quintiles at all. | | ​ | | | 03 | **[A once-in-a-generation change to Australian super](https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/warning-over-once-in-a-generation-superannuation-change-coming-in-months-as-ato-seeks-earlier-visibility-000957400.html?ref=sharespective.com)** — payday super started on 1 July, giving employers seven days from payday to get contributions into a fund. It exists because billions goes unpaid every year. | | ​ | | | 04 | **[Electronic Arts built a platform to put more ads in its games](https://sherwood.news/business/electronic-arts-launches-a-platform-to-put-more-ads-in-its-games/?ref=sharespective.com)** — stadium hoardings and in-game placements, sold properly for the first time. The timing, just before a US$55 billion buyout closes, is not a coincidence. | | ​ | | | 05 | **[A tattoo startup is paying artists royalties](https://thehustle.co/news/this-tattoo-startup-is-paying-artists-royalties-and-attracting-brands?ref=sharespective.com)** — an industry that has run on cash and handshakes for a century is being handed a licensing model, and brands are turning up. | | ​ | | | 06 | **[Connecticut picked a pizza fight with New York and won](https://thehustle.co/news/connecticut-picked-a-pizza-fight-with-new-york-and-won?ref=sharespective.com)** — a small state built a food reputation out of stubbornness and coal-fired ovens. | | ​ | | | 07 | **[Scientists turned Starlink into a scanner for the upper atmosphere](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260812015212.htm?ref=sharespective.com)** — Kyoto University researchers used the orbits of 1,200 satellites to map air density 500km up, borrowing a technique from medical imaging. | | ​ | | | 08 | **[3,500-year-old skeletons complicate the story of syphilis](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260811011143.htm?ref=sharespective.com)** — three children from prehistoric Vietnam show signs of a disease passed from mother to child, long treated as proof of venereal syphilis. It may have been yaws instead. | | ​ | | | 09 | **[Divers found a 162-year-old bottle of Guinness in a shipwreck](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/shipwreck-divers-discovered-a-162-year-old-bottle-of-guinness-brewed-during-the-reign-of-queen-victoria-and-they-want-to-take-a-swig-180989320/?ref=sharespective.com)** — brewed under Queen Victoria, well preserved, and the finders would very much like to drink it. | | ​ | | | 10 | **[NASA pulled off a repair on Voyager 2 from interstellar space](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nasa-completes-daring-big-bang-fix-on-the-voyager-2-probe-allowing-it-to-keep-studying-interstellar-space-180989312/?ref=sharespective.com)** — engineers swapped which heater the probe relies on, buying a spacecraft launched in 1977 more time on the job. | ### Wrapping up The Federal Reserve next meets on 15 and 16 September, with the decision at 2​pm New York time on the 16th — 6​am on the 17th here. Before then, July producer prices land on Thursday morning US time and July retail sales on Friday, both feeding the same argument about whether inflation is genuinely settling. Applied Materials reports after Thursday's US close, where the line to watch is orders rather than revenue, since equipment bookings move a quarter or two ahead of chip demand. Walmart follows on 20 August with the best read anyone gets on the American consumer. Closer to home, Australia's July labour force numbers are out at 11.30​am AEST today, Telstra hands down its full-year result this morning, and the wage price index lands on 19 August. The RBNZ's next Monetary Policy Statement is on 2 September, the RBA meets on 28 and 29 September. The New Zealand dollar slipped about 0.4% against the greenback, with USD/NZD at 1.7076, while the Australian dollar was unchanged at 1.4159 and holding near an eight-week high. The kiwi gave ground as the US dollar firmed after the inflation report, while the Aussie has been supported by the RBA keeping a rate rise explicitly on the table. Enjoy your Thursday, and we'll see you tomorrow. ​ This newsletter is general information and commentary only. It is not financial advice, and it does not take account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. It reflects the author's own reading of public information at the time of writing and may be wrong. Do your own research and speak to a licensed financial adviser before making any investment decision.