NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - There isn't likely to be a whole lot of news coming from the world of tech these days...except for an earnings report Tuesday from a little company known as Cisco Systems.

That should be enough to keep Wall Street busy during the dog days of summer (though not me because I'll be sitting on the beach while the conference call is going on. Yes!)

Cisco, which derives an overwhelming majority of its sales from big and mid-sized businesses, is a tech industry bellwether. And given the dearth of potential market-moving events next week, any comments on the state of tech spending will have a major impact on stocks.

Alas, CEO John Chambers probably is not going to bust out the pom-poms and assume the role of tech cheerleader, as he often did during the glory days of the bull market.

"What we'd like to hear from Cisco is that visibility going into the next quarter is better but we probably won't get that because there still isn't much clarity about business spending," said Alan Loewenstein, co-manager of the John Hancock Technology fund. Cisco is a top ten holding in the fund.

Wall Street will scrutinize Cisco's fiscal fourth quarter sales number and hope that guidance for the first quarter improves. Cisco (CSCO: Research, Estimates) is expected to report revenues of $4.7 billion for the fourth quarter and analysts are predicting sales of $4.8 billion for the first quarter of 2004, which ends in October.

As for profits, analysts are predicting earnings of 15 cents a share for both the fourth quarter and first quarter of 2004. But Cisco typically beats estimates on the bottom line, in part because of a tight rein on costs.

That's what happened in the third quarter. Cisco beat earnings by a penny but the stock fell the next day due to an unenthusiastic sales outlook. So a positive earnings surprise probably won't be celebrated this time around either unless there is also encouraging news about sales.

"Wall Street will be looking for more than just margin expansion and earnings growth. This is a top-line growth story now," said Aziz Hamzaogullari, a senior analyst with mutual fund firm Evergreen Investments, which owns Cisco.

Although Cisco is a market leader that will undoubtedly benefit if the economy continues to improve, investors are hoping to hear more about the company's diversification efforts as well. The company has more than $20 billion in cash and investments at its disposal and has been an aggressive acquirer over the past few years, moving into areas such as security, storage and Internet telephony.

Cisco's core businesses of selling routers and switches have started to mature. Routers accounted for 27 percent of total sales in its last quarter and according to a recent report from tech research firm Dell'Oro Group, the router market is expected to grow at about a 6 to 7 percent clip annually over the next few years, well below the double-digit growth rates of the late 1990's.

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In particular, Wall Street will be eager to hear about how well Cisco's acquisition of Linksys, which makes networking equipment for the home and small businesses, is doing. This deal was widely panned when Cisco announced it in March since Linksys's profit margins are lower than Cisco's.

But the criticism of the deal seems a little odd, especially since one of Linksys's major competitors, Netgear, was greeted warmly by investors when it went public Thursday. The company raised the size of its offering before trading and opened at $19.15, a 37 percent premium to its offering price. The stock cooled a bit as of mid-day, to $17.63, but that was still a healthy 26 percent gain.

Simply put, even though selling routers to average Joes like me (I have one in my apartment so two laptops can run off the same DSL connection) is not as lucrative a business as selling them to the GE's, Wal-Mart's and Pfizer's of the world, it is still a growth business as more and more individuals sign on for broadband Internet connections in their home.

And given that Cisco's stock has run up more than 50 percent this year, hitting a new 52-week high on Thursday, it's imperative for the company to convince Wall Street that more robust sales growth may finally be around the corner.

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