Shares of Cisco Systems (CSCO) are climbing in the stock's biggest intraday gain since March of 2020. The company topped its fiscal fourth quarter earnings expectations and announced a 7% cut in its workforce as it shifts priorities. Cisco CFO Scott Herren joins Morning Brief to break down the latest earnings results.

"It was a good quarter. It was a good finish to what's been a pretty challenging year for us as you know, working through some of the supply chain, the digestion of the amount that we cleared out of our supply chain backlog and into our customers' hands. And, you know, as we cleared that bottleneck and moved to them, they had to get all that implemented," Harren explains. "And we had felt all along, based on the data we had, that that would clear during this quarter. And that's what we saw. As they cleared that up, they began the next wave of projects that led to pretty strong demand for us."

He notes that the AI, cybersecurity, cloud, and networking areas of the business are seeing the fastest growth, which Cisco is investing heavily into. To do so, the company had to look for efficiencies and reallocate its resources, which Harren describes as a difficult decision: "It's hard when you have to make these decisions. It's the hardest thing you have to do as a leader is to make a decision to reduce the workforce."

As Cisco evolves, he sees security and networking becoming increasingly intertwined businesses as customers seek secure networks. "We also made some organizational shifts to better align between those two parts of the company, so that what we're selling is one thing to our customers," Harren tells Yahoo Finance. As Cisco continues to invest in this area, Harren expects to see continued growth that will drive value for customers.

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This post was written by Melanie Riehl