San Francisco, Feb 15 (IANS): Global networking giant Cisco has announced that it plans to lay off 5 per cent of its global workforce, amounting to thousands of employees, as part of a restructuring exercise.

According to Cisco's most recent annual report, the company employs about 85,000 people, meaning that the latest job cuts are expected to affect more than 4,000 employees, reports CNN.

In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company announced a restructuring plan in order to "realign the organisation and enable further investment in key priority areas".

The networking giant mentioned that the layoffs would begin this year and continue till next year, with severance and other termination benefits costing the company approximately $800 million.

"We continue to align our investments to future growth opportunities. Our innovation sits at the centre of an increasingly connected ecosystem and will play a critical role as our customers adopt AI and secure their organisations," Chuck Robbins, chair and CEO of Cisco, said in the company’s second-quarter earnings release.

The purge follows Cisco's late 2022 cutbacks, which resulted in 5,000 layoffs, and comes ahead of the $28 billion acquisition of Splunk, which management is expecting to close by April 30.

The company also announced that its revenue dropped 6 per cent (year-over-year) in its fiscal second quarter and its earnings-per-share dipped 3 per cent over the same period.

In September last year, Cisco laid off 350 employees in the Silicon Valley in the US in its latest job cut round.