Cisco said the timing of the announcement was not related to its quarterly earnings report, scheduled for May 13, and it did not alter its financial outlook.
Chambers, a prominent Republican backer who was a co-chair for Senator John McCain’s 2008 bid for president, did not indicate any plans to go into politics.
“I will probably support people (for) political office but probably not get involved myself,” he told reporters.
Chambers said he started thinking about retiring as CEO about three years ago. He seemed relaxed and joked with longtime colleague Robbins during the call.
“Chuck is just an execution machine,” said Chambers, using business jargon for someone who gets things done.
Robbins joined Cisco in 1997 and became a board member on Friday.
His latest role has been senior vice president of worldwide operations, running global sales for the company. Analysts hope Robbins’ elevation will mean a renewed focus on sales.
“We like that Cisco is appointing someone as CEO that has a strong sales background, and we expect the employee base to be very supportive of the appointment,” said Tim Long, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets.
Cisco has been looking for a new CEO for the past 16 months, board member Roderick McGeary wrote in a company blog post detailing the hiring process. (bit.ly/1JLIPup)
Some industry watchers were surprised at the choice. Rob Lloyd, Cisco’s director of development and sales, was more visible to investors, JMP Securities analyst Erik Suppiger said in an interview.
Chambers declined to name other potential candidates, or whether any such as Lloyd would stay at the company. Lloyd did not immediately return a request for comment.
Chambers is the second high-profile U.S. technology executive to step aside from the top job in the past eight months. In September, database software maker Oracle Corp’s CEO, Larry Ellison, announced his plan to become executive chairman.
Chambers has increased Cisco sales to about $48 billion from $1.2 billion since he became CEO in 1995.
(Reporting by Bill Rigby in Seattle- Additional reporting by Supantha Mukherjee and Sai Sachin R in Bengaluru and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York- Editing by Maju Samuel, Ted Kerr and Jonathan Oatis)
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