For a number of days in March 2000, because the dotcom bubble neared bursting level, Cisco was the world’s most useful firm. Now the vendor of networking gear is a cautionary story, even when it is usually a permanent success, with actual earnings per share of four-and-a-half occasions what they had been again then. Buyers grew to become so exuberant in regards to the agency’s prospects 25 years in the past that they valued it at greater than 200 occasions its annual revenue, or round $1trn in in the present day’s cash. Ranging from a valuation that stratospheric, Cisco’s solid-but-unspectacular development was a bitter disappointment. Its market worth is now $280bn.