Cisco’s latest earnings were greatly overshadowed by what has become a common theme amongst global network equipment vendors: COVID-19 related supply chain issues in China and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Those two issues backed strong headwinds against Cisco during its latest fiscal quarter, limiting the networking giant’s top-line revenues. Those results came in at $12.8 billion for the quarter, which was flat year over year, but well below the 6% growth it reported in the previous quarter or the 7% growth it reported during the same quarter in 2021.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins explained to investors during its earnings call that the flat results were directly related to those issues. The Russian invasion was the easiest to suss out as Cisco reported a $200 million impact from exiting Russia.

The more complex challenge came from ongoing supply chain issues tied to various citywide COVID-19 lockdowns in China. Robbins specifically cited issues with getting power supply equipment out of the country.

“These lockdowns resulted in an even more severe shortage of certain critical components,” Robbins said. “This in turn prevented us from shipping products to customers at the levels we originally anticipated. … So even though these top line numbers don't look good, it’s a very simple explanation as to what occurred.”

Robbins cited strong traction for the vendor’s 400-gig products, including its 8000-series routers that he said was Cisco’s fastest growing service provider routing platform in the company’s history. Other products deemed to be performing “well” included Cisco’s Silicon One portfolio, its Acacia optical networking products, security, and its SD-WAN portfolio.

“Our performance in these areas reflect the ongoing investments that our customers are making to rapidly digitize their organizations to deliver differentiated experiences,” Robbins said.

Highlighting that odd dynamic is the fact Cisco was sitting on $15 billion in back orders at the end of the quarter, which was a 10% sequential increase. Robbins explained that this showed customers were not backing down from their technology spend.

“I think COVID changed everything about how our customers think about technology,” Robbins said. “I think that pre-COVID, a lot of customers, when they went to slow spending, they would stop spending on technology. And I think COVID had them feel the impact of those decisions.”

Cisco has also benefited from recent price increases that have resulted in improved margin gains.

More concerning to investors was Cisco’s forecast of continued supply chain uncertainty over the next couple of quarters, a sentiment that has been echoed by a number of Cisco’s rivals like Juniper Networks and Arista.

“We believe that our revenue performance in the upcoming quarters is less dependent on demand and more dependent on the supply availability in this increasingly complex environment,” Robbins said.

The vendor said it’s working off of China’s plan to re-open Shanghai on June 1, though there is still uncertainty as to what parts of that city will take precedent. However, once manufacturing facilities are opened up, the supply chain will then have to deal with logistical bottlenecks in getting those needed parts to where they need to go.

“We believe that there's going to be lots of competition for ports, capacity, airport capacity,” Robbins warned. “And we just believe that that combined with the inbound efforts, trying to get raw materials back into the country, etc., we just believe that it's going to be impossible for us to catch up on this issue,” within the next quarter. … “We need to get through the next 90 days.”

Cisco’s muted guidance of continued flat revenues sank its stock price, which was trading down more than 10% in pre-market trading Thursday.