Despite talking up its “immediate opportunity,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins admitted the joint venture with Ericsson had yet to translate into hard numbers.

Answering a question on the company’s Q2 2016 results call, Robbins said the two partners had begun to close transactions together with clients.

However, he added: “I would not translate that to a significant impact to any of the numbers that we put out there today because we’re literally in the handful stage right now, but we do see that accelerating.”

Robbins will join Hans Vestberg, the Ericsson CEO, for public events at this month’s Mobile World Congress, an example of how the two are teaming up.

Jan Frykhammar, the Swedish vendor’s CFO, last week told Mobile World Live he was “hopeful” the two would unveil some contract wins in Barcelona.

When the two firms unveiled their joint venture in November, they said incremental revenue would start to flow as soon as 2016, and then ramp to $1 billion or more for each firm by 2018.

Cisco and Ericsson both talked up a joint venture as generating more immediate rewards than a full-blown merger, such as Nokia/Alcatel-Lucent, with its lengthy approval process.

Robbins also namechecked another deal during the Q2 call. “Our recently announced acquisition of Jasper combined with our other capabilities is a strong example of how we will play a unique and strategic role in unlocking the value of IoT.”

The company recently announced the $1.4 billion acquisition of Jasper so it can push Internet of Things (IoT) products to its existing customer base.

Overall, Cisco’s Q2 revenue rose by just two per cent to $11.8 billion. Net income rose by 31 per cent to $3.1 billion, which cheered investors who frequently take the US vendor as a bellwether for the wider economy. A factor in the strong profit growth was a fall of $330 million in operating expenses which boosted the bottom line.