Despite an ongoing pandemic and the U.S. economy barely limping along, the Nasdaq is still trading more than 50% above its March lows. The surge in tech stocks in 2020 has understandably led investors to draw comparisons to the dot-com bubble in 2000.

The Nasdaq ultimately peaked at 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000. Of course, some dot-com bubble stocks have performed much better than others in the 20 years since the bubble burst.

Cisco’s Past 20 Years: Without a doubt, networking technology stock Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) has had major difficulty returning to its dot-com bubble levels.

Cisco went public way back in 1990, about a decade before the dot-com bubble. The company was the top-performing IPO of the 1990s, according to Forbes. Cisco investors likely never could have foreseen the rise of the internet, smartphones, cloud computing and many of the other dynamics that have propelled a major shift in Cisco’s business over the past 20 years.

Cisco has been slowly transitioning its business from networking hardware, such as routers and switches, to high-growth businesses like cloud security and digital collaboration.

Cisco reached a peak dot-com era market cap of $555.4 billion during the height of the dot-com bubble, briefly making Cisco the most valuable company in the world.

Dot-Com Bubble Fallout: Cisco’s high watermark of the dot-com bubble was $146.75 back in 2000 prior to a two-to-one stock split in March of that year. When the bubble burst, Cisco shares tanked, dropping 69.7% in the year following the Nasdaq top compared to a 59.3% overall decline for the index. Unfortunately, when the Nasdaq stabilized, Cisco shares continued to struggle.

Cisco’s share price hit $8.12 in late 2002 before rebounding to $29.39 in early 2004. Cisco hit its pre-financial crisis high of $34.24 in late 2007. During the sell-off in 2009, Cisco shares dropped as low as $13.61 but dropped even lower to $13.30 in 2011. The stock didn’t make it back to $30 again until 2015 and didn’t make it back to $40 until 2017.

Cisco ultimately made it as high as $58.26 in 2019, but has never made it back to its split-adjusted dot-com bubble high of $73.37, even after 20 years.

Cisco fell as low as $32.40 in March 2020 during the COVID-19 sell-off before rebounding to around $40 today.

Cisco will forever be known as one of the quintessential dot-com bubble stocks given its market cap peaked at more than half a trillion dollars. Unfortunately, not even Cisco’s dividend payments have helped dot-com bubble investors get back to even.

In fact, $1,000 invested in Cisco stock at the dot-com bubble peak would be worth about $762 today, assuming reinvested dividends.

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