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Qualcomm reported its Q4 earnings on November 5. During the earnings call, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said: “The mass adoption and continuous use of AI applications is driving the industry to look for competitive alternatives that prioritize power-efficient performance and cost. We announced our entry into this market and recently unveiled our AI inference-optimized AI200 and AI250 SoCs and associated accelerator cards and racks. We’re very pleased to have HUMAIN as our first customer for these solutions, with a target deployment of 200 megawatts starting in 2026.” Amon also commented on the company’s new architecture dedicated to artificial intelligence inference workloads: Here are the Qualcomm Q4 earnings highlights: Revenue increased 10% to $11.27 billion year over year. Earnings before taxes increased 14% to $2.97 billion YoY. Net loss of $3.12 billion compared to net income of $2.92 billion in Q4 2024. Diluted loss per share of $2.89 compared to earnings per share (EPS) of $2.59 In Q4 2024. The company provided an outlook for Q1 fiscal 2026 : Revenue in the range of $11.8 billion to $12.6 billion Diluted EPS in the range of $2.55 to $2.75 With the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Qualcomm now expects its effective tax rate to generally stay in the 13% to 14% range and anticipates paying less cash taxes in future periods. However, the new tax law resulted in a non-cash charge of $5.7 billion, or $5.29 per share, in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. While Qualcomm provided an explanation for the massive drop in net income and EPS —citing the non-cash $5.7 billion charge due to new U.S. tax legislation — it still panicked some investors. The stock is trading 3% lower, currently near $174, at the time of writing. Bank of America raises Qualcomm stock price target Following the release of the earnings, Bank of America analyst Tal Liani and his team updated their opinions on Qualcomm (QCOM) stock. Analysts noted that revenue growth beat Wall Street expectations, with revenues being up 10% versus Wall Street’s 5.1%. The team increased its estimates to be in line with the company’s guidance. In a research note shared with TheStreet, Liani reiterated a buy rating and raised Qualcomm’s price target from $200 to $215, based on roughly 17 multiple his fiscal year 2027 price-to-earnings ratio estimate. He wrote: “Our multiple is slightly above smartphone semiconductor peers (15x), which we believe is warranted given the stability of Qualcomm’s high-margin royalty business and potential strength of the company’s QCT business beyond smartphones, as well as its high 5G baseband market share and 5G RF front-end content market share.” Liani added that edge AI beneficiary peers trade at roughly 18x, but the evolution from x86 to ARM architectures warrants a premium. Analysts noted downside risks for Qualcomm: Worse-than-expected resolution terms with large Chinese original design manufacturing Low adoption rate of smartphones worldwide due to global economic pressure Pressure on semiconductor pricing or market share as the company grows presence in emerging markets Increased semiconductor competition Ability to maintain the royalty rate when the market expands to different types of devices, such as tablets and other mobile wireless devices, or different technology generations Any future negative trade policies related to China Qualcomm’s recent activity Advantech partnered with Qualcomm and Edge Impulse to combine Advantech’s edge AI platforms with the Dragonwing IQ-9075 processor and the Edge Impulse developer platform. This collaboration aims to enable faster AI development and deployment at the edge. Advantech President of Embedded IoT Group Miller Chang said the partnership will create AI solutions for intelligent edge applications, enhancing performance, scalability, and efficiency. HUMAIN and Qualcomm Technologies will deploy advanced AI infrastructure in Saudi Arabia ahead of the ninth edition of the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference. This initiative will offer global AI inferencing services and is intended to be a fully optimized edge-to-cloud hybrid AI. HUMAIN is aiming for 200 MW of power starting in 2026, based on Qualcomm AI200 and AI250 rack solutions to deliver AI inference services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and globally. Qualcomm announced in October it will acquire Arduino, a manufacturer of development boards. This acquisition will provide Arduino with access to powerful Qualcomm chips, as well as additional resources to support its vision and goals. The companies launched a new Arduino board, UNO Q. The board is equipped with a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 processor and a real-time STM32U585 microcontroller, enabling advanced computing with precise control.
