Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Cisco Systems, Inc Annual Meeting of Stockholders. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Sami Badri. Please go ahead.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Cisco's 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. This is Sami Badri, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined by Chuck Robbins, our Chair and CEO, and Evan Sloves, Secretary of the company. The matters we'll be discussing today include forward-looking statements, which are subject to the risks and uncertainties that we discuss in detail in our documents filed with the SEC, specifically the most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. You'll also find full GAAP-to-non-GAAP reconciliation information in the financial information section of our Investor Relations website. I will now turn the meeting over to Chuck.
Good morning. It is now 8:00 A.M., and the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Stockholders of Cisco Systems, Inc will please come to order. I am Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO, and I will chair this meeting. On behalf of all of us at Cisco, I want to welcome you and thank you for your attendance. We're holding our annual meeting in a virtual format, and copies of the agenda and rules of conduct are available on the virtual meeting site. With that, it is my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Evan to lead the business portion of the meeting.
Thank you, Chuck. I will conduct the formal portion of the meeting. The polls are open and will close after the presentation of our formal business matters. If you previously voted via the internet, phone, or mail, you do not need to take any additional action. If you have not already voted or you wish to change your vote, please do so before the closing of the polls by using the voting buttons on the portal. After the polls close, we will announce the preliminary results of the votes. After the formal portion of the meeting, we will have a business review presented by Chuck, followed by a Q&A session. During the Q&A session, we will be answering previously submitted questions as well as questions submitted online during today's meeting.
Any stockholder who would like to ask a question can do so by typing the question in the Ask a Question box and clicking Submit. If we receive similar written questions, we may group such questions together and provide a single response to avoid repetition. If we are unable to respond to a stockholder's properly submitted question due to time constraints, we will respond directly to that stockholder after the meeting using the contact information provided. I would now like to acknowledge Cisco's officers that are joining us via telephone. Kevin Healy and Amber Price of PwC, the company's independent registered public accounting firm have also called in today. Next, I would like to introduce the rest of the directors that are joining us via phone today: Wesley Bush, Michael Capellas, Mark Garrett, John Harris, Kristina Johnson, Sarah Murphy, Dan Schulman, and Marianna Tessel.
The Board of Directors has fixed the close of business on October 10th, 2024, as the record date for the determination of stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting. We have an affidavit from Broadridge certifying that notice of the meeting was duly given to all stockholders of record commencing on or about October 18th, 2024. American Election Services has been appointed as the inspector of election for this meeting. Mr. Jim Raitt, who is representing American Election Services, has also called into the meeting. Mr. Raitt has informed me that stockholders owning a majority of outstanding shares of common stock are present in person or represented by proxy, and as a result, there is a quorum of stockholders for this meeting. Therefore, this meeting is now open to proceed with its business. We will now proceed to the items of business set forth in the agenda.
The first matter to be considered is the election of directors of the company. The following individuals have been nominated by the Board of Directors upon recommendation of the Nomination and Governance Committee of the Board to serve as directors until the next Annual Meeting of Stockholders and until their successors are elected and qualified: Wesley Bush, Michael Capellas, Mark Garrett, John Harris, Kristina Johnson, Sarah Rae Murphy, Charles Robbins, Daniel Schulman, and Marianna Tessel. No other nominations were received by the deadline of August 18th, 2024. Therefore, the nominations are closed. The Board of Directors recommends that stockholders vote for the election of each of the nominees. Our next item of business is the advisory resolution to approve executive compensation. This is a non-binding advisory resolution that the stockholders approve the compensation of Cisco's main executive officers as disclosed pursuant to the SEC's compensation disclosure rules.
The Board of Directors recommends that stockholders vote for this proposal. Next is the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ended July 26, 2025. The Board of Directors recommends that stockholders vote for this proposal. The business matters for stockholder consideration have been completed, and the polls are now closed. I'll share with you the preliminary voting tabulation. Final vote tallies will be posted in an 8-K filing with the SEC within four business days and available on our Investor Relations website. According to the preliminary report of the inspector of elections, each of the persons nominated as a director has been elected. Each nominee received the support of at least 91% of the shares voted, with approximate 96% average support.
The advisory resolution regarding executive compensation has been approved with support of approximately 77% of the shares voted. The proposal to ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's independent registered public accounting firm has been approved with support of approximately 92% of shares voted. I will now turn the meeting back over to Chuck.
Thank you, Evan. The matters for which this Annual Meeting of the Stockholders was called to consider have been completed. Since we have received no notice of any other business to come before the meeting, the 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders is hereby adjourned. I will now proceed with a business review presentation. The question-and-answer session will follow my presentation.
Eric, if you could please go to the slide titled FY 2024 Year-End Review, please. In fiscal year 2024, while we continued to operate and execute in a challenging environment, we saw momentum as we closed the year and delivered our second-highest revenue year on record. We also delivered strong margins and increased operating leverage. This was the result of having transformed our business to more software and subscriptions, delivering new products and innovation for our customers, with ongoing discipline in managing our business.
To recap our fiscal year 2024 results, our revenue was $53.8 billion, down 6%. Non-GAAP EPS was $3.73, down 4%. Non-GAAP gross margins of 67.5%, non-GAAP operating income of $18.4 billion, down 4% year-over-year, and non-GAAP net income of $15.2 billion, down 5% year-over-year. I'd like to note that fiscal year 2024 continued to be a dynamic environment as our customers remained cautious in terms of macro uncertainty and navigated a period of elevated levels of product inventory as a result of previous supply chain challenges. As we closed the year, we saw a return to more steady demand in Q4, with a period of inventory digestion behind us, and this momentum continued into Q1 of fiscal year 2025. Next slide, please. From a capital allocation perspective, this past year, we continued to drive growth and deliver value to our stockholders.
From fiscal year 2020 through fiscal year 2024, we repurchased 474 million shares, a total of $23.3 billion. And in fiscal year 2024 alone, our annualized dividend per share was $1.60. Next slide, please. Also, from fiscal year 2020 through fiscal year 2024, we returned $54.4 billion of capital, or 76% of free cash flow. For fiscal year 2024 alone, our diluted shares outstanding was $4.1 billion, and we returned $12.1 billion of capital, which was 119% of free cash flow. Next slide, please. Our Q1 fiscal year 2025, we saw a strong start to the fiscal year with revenue, margins, and EPS all at or above the high end of our guidance range. Revenue was $13.8 billion, down 6% year-over-year, but at the high end of our guidance range.
While revenue was down, it's important to remember that Q1 of fiscal year 2024 was when we began to see the elevated product inventory within our customer base, which, again, is now behind us. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.91, down 18% above the high end of our guidance range. As of Q1, subscriptions represent 57% of our total revenue. Non-GAAP gross margins were 69.3%, non-GAAP operating income of $4.7 billion, down 12% year-over-year, and non-GAAP net income of $3.7 billion, down 19% year-over-year. We obviously remain committed to driving operating leverage, and we are confident in the foundational strength of our business and future growth opportunities fueled by AI, core networking, and security. These results also led us to raise our guidance ranges for full-year revenue and non-GAAP EPS. Next slide, please. In Q1, we shared our recurring metrics. Our software and recurring revenue streams continued to grow.
In Q1 of this year, we ended the quarter with ARR of $29.9 billion, up 22% year-over-year, RPO of $40 billion, up 15% year-over-year, and 51% of this will be recognized as revenue over the next 12 months. Our total software revenue in Q1 was $5.5 billion, up 24%, and total subscription revenue was $7.8 billion, an increase of 21%. I'm encouraged by our recurring revenue streams while also remaining focused on disciplined expense management without losing sight of the strategic investments necessary to innovate and capitalize on the growth opportunities. Next slide, please. As we continue to deliver compelling innovation, we're committed to helping our customers do three key things. All of our customers, large and small, want to modernize their infrastructure as they're re-architecting applications in the cloud or on-prem, moving to more software and services, and more cloud-native approaches.
Every customer we have is obviously working hard to improve their cybersecurity perspective to prevent, detect, and respond to threats across increasingly complex environments. And as we all know, they are trying to harness the power of AI and data to increase the productivity of their workforce, unlock new innovation and growth opportunities for the business. And all of them need better data, more insights, and access to highly scalable AI-ready infrastructure, which we provide. Next slide, please. From an AI perspective, we're playing a critical role helping our customers with their deployments and connecting and protecting in the AI era. We're doing this across five major categories: AI infrastructure. It's been estimated that AI-ready data centers will require 20 x more bandwidth. And we're working hard with our customers on the data center and give both hyperscalers and enterprises the solutions they need to build, launch, and scale AI.
From a security perspective, our customers need AI-native security platforms to fight AI-driven attacks. They also need skills. We need to work on regulation, and we need to work on industry collaboration to help provide a comprehensive set of cybersecurity solutions to secure the full AI stack from the infrastructure up. Working on data, obviously, the most important aspect of really having solid AI applications is to have great data. We have a unique breadth and scale of data across our platforms that we will bring to life for our customers, and then our own productivity and our customers' productivity. We're adding AI assistants to our platforms and launching AI-native capabilities across our portfolio. These will help us increase our productivity, our customers' as well, and streamline operations across their organizations.
And then finally, from a services perspective, we will use our powerful CX engine to wrap services around all of this that will help our customers deploy and maximize the value of AI. Next slide, please. From an outcome perspective for our customers, we're focused on three things: powering AI-ready data centers with networking and infrastructure for AI. Secondly, to deliver future-proof workplaces with devices, spaces, campus, branches, security, observability. And all of these are supported by an underlying layer of digital resilience, with security, observability, and obviously, where Splunk plays a very important role. Next slide, please. I'm also very pleased and excited to be celebrating our 40th anniversary this month. I'm absolutely confident we'll continue to bring together the power of our people, technology, and innovation to show up in times of need.
We do all of this while walking in our purpose to power an inclusive future for all. It guides our efforts where we know we can make the most impact. I'm really proud of our progress in a few areas. From a Net Academy perspective, we have served over 24 million students across 191 countries since 1997. And we obviously continue to have a goal of net zero by 2040. There's a huge internal motion to embed sustainability into our products and help our customers meet their own sustainability goals. As I wrap, I am optimistic about the opportunities ahead. The power of our technology will really be a driver of economic growth and productivity. I look forward to the tailwinds across our business that will enable us to deliver for our customers, partners, communities, and stockholders in the remainder of fiscal 2025 and in the future.
It's now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Sami to lead the Q&A session.
Thank you, Chuck. We will now address questions which have been submitted by stockholders. As mentioned earlier, any stockholder who would like to ask a question can do so by typing the question in the Ask a Question box and clicking Submit. If you are unable to respond to a stockholder's question, please give us time due to time constraints, and we will respond directly to that stockholder after the meeting using the contact information provided. I will now move over to the first question. The first question is on capital allocation. Could you provide us with an update on Cisco's approach to capital allocation and if there are any changes to your approach moving forward?
Thanks, Sami. There is no change. We remain committed to returning at least 50% of free cash flow annually, and we remain committed to repurchasing shares as well as remain committed to our dividend.
Great. Moving to the next question in relation to recent company results. In your most recent earnings call, you talked about the impact the U.S. Federal had had on your results. Can you discuss what this means?
Yeah. U.S. Federal has actually been one of the more consistent parts of our business over the last several years. And this past quarter, based on the impact of the Continuing Resolution as well as the Fiscal Responsibility Act, we had a tougher quarter than normal in U.S. Federal. The good news is the rest of the business across the world was generally strong across geographies and segments. And we also believe that there were no deals that were lost, but simply delayed. And we anticipate that that business will recover primarily in the second half of this fiscal year.
The next question is on artificial intelligence. Can you discuss in more detail the opportunities Cisco has regarding AI? Also, you have discussed investing in security, AI, and cloud. How are those efforts progressing?
First of all, I'm very pleased with where we are as this massive AI transition begins to occur. And as I said during the business presentation, we see opportunities in many areas, and I believe they're all tailwinds to us. The first, again, is AI infrastructure. We are seeing success with the hyperscalers and selling network infrastructure underneath their training models, as well as helping them with connectivity layers between the backend networks and the frontend networks. We're also beginning to see emerging use cases in enterprise where we will play a meaningful role in infrastructure for AI workloads in the enterprise. We continue to see an opportunity for driving internal productivity through AI. We believe that security is a very significant aspect here. We need to use AI to actually help our customers with higher levels of security.
And then we also need to build products that provide security for AI applications and AI models, which you'll see us do, and you'll see announcements on that over the next several quarters. We also will obviously deploy AI across our portfolio to help our customers use our technology more effectively. And then we'll apply AI on our data platform, primarily the Splunk platform in particular, where we take insights that they had when they were a standalone company and then pumping greater insights in from the traditional Cisco portfolio and then applying AI there. And obviously, that data will fuel AI, and I think that that's one of the big benefits that we're going to get from the Splunk acquisition.
Good segue into the next question, which is on Splunk. How has the integration of Splunk been going? And can you update us on the progress you have made in terms of synergistic opportunities?
Yeah. I would say that we are very pleased with where the Splunk integration is to date. Obviously, Gary's done a great job of helping spearhead that for us. And I think the latest discussion we had on the last earnings call is that it's actually operating slightly ahead of our financial expectations, so we're very pleased with that. We are continuing to see synergistic opportunities within customers where we've seen some early wins. We're seeing customers, some of our larger customers, where we're rolling the Splunk technology into broad-based enterprise agreements, which we're now seeing that on a fairly consistent basis, quarter in and quarter out. So we're quite pleased with where we are on the integration, and we expect that we'll just continue to make progress.
Thank you, Chuck. That is all the time we have today for questions. Thank you for attending this meeting.
And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's presentation. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your line.