Cisco's CFO Frank Calderoni On Economic Recovery, Global Investing and CAPEX (CSCO)

Executive Vice President and CFO Frank Calderoni appeared on CNBC's Squawk Box on Thursday morning where he discussed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's comments that the Fed will begin reducing stimulus later in 2013 as the economy gets better, and the company's strategy for dealing with corporate tax code in the United States. According to Calderoni, people must look at Bernanke's comments with both long-term and short-term lenses. One positive that he got from yesterday's press conference is that Bernanke sees improvement in the economy, and that at Cisco, they've seen the same slow and steady recovery for the global economy. Cisco made a public statement saying that would be focusing on investing abroad as they move forward, because the corporate tax code in the United States doesn't make sense in their eyes. Calderoni said that it's key for them and most companies of their size to remain globally competitive on a fair and equal playing field. "We're a global company, and we want to make investment where it's appropriate, where the right investments are all around the world. We also want to make sure that we don't get penalized for making certain investments in areas where there's high taxes…We have most of our cash, we have $48 billion dollars in cash, $48 billion of that is outside of the United States. We would get taxed about a third of that bringing it back to the United States. So with that amount of cash outside, we're going to make investments outside of the United States," said Calderoni. The high taxes in the U.S. are a disincentive for corporations, said Calderoni, going on to call it a major issue that congress recognizes we must address as a country. Calderoni went on to say that capital expenditure is improving globally, and more so in the United States. Various surveys have shown about a seven percent increase in CAPEX spending, "with IT being the primary aspect of that spending" has occurred.