Beta Finch - Qualcomm - QCOM - EN

More earnings analysis: https://betafinch.com
Groups: CHIPS (https://betafinch.com/groups/CHIPS)
──────────
**ALEX:** Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown! Today we're diving into Qualcomm's fourth quarter fiscal 2026 results, reported on November 4th, 2026. This is a big one, folks — licensing renewals, data center ramp-ups, and a huge Starlink partnership. Before we get into it, quick disclaimer: This podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

**JORDAN:** Alright, Alex, let's set the scene. Qualcomm came in with non-GAAP revenue of $10.4 billion and EPS of $2.17 — that hit the high end of their guidance range.

**ALEX:** Right, and for the full fiscal year, revenue landed at $43.2 billion, with their chip division — QCT — bringing in $37.2 billion. But the headline number for me is this: automotive and IoT combined grew 24% year-over-year for the full year.

**JORDAN:** And automotive specifically just crushed it — $2 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time ever, up 89% year-over-year. That's not a typo, Alex, 89%.

**ALEX:** It's wild. CEO Cristiano Amon explained it's really about their fifth-generation Snapdragon Digital Chassis ramping up. He said silicon content per vehicle has jumped 8x compared to their third-gen platform. More compute, more chips per car, more revenue.

**JORDAN:** That's the story of this whole quarter, honestly — diversification. Qualcomm's been the "smartphone chip company" for so long, but now they're telling us non-handset revenue is going to be more than 50% of QCT's total revenue in fiscal 2027. That's a real milestone.

**ALEX:** Let's talk licensing, because this was the big overhang for investors for years. Qualcomm finally locked in long-term renewals with Apple, Huawei, and Transsion. No major handset renewals needed for several years now.

**JORDAN:** And the key phrase from management was that the QTL revenue run rate remains "unchanged" — meaning they held their royalty rates steady through these negotiations. That's a win. When analyst Joe Moore asked directly about it on the call, Qualcomm's Alex Rogers basically confirmed: they held the line on pricing.

**ALEX:** Now let's get into the shiny new toy — data center. This is clearly where management wants the spotlight. They're guiding for data center revenue to exceed $650 million in the December quarter alone, with a full fiscal 2027 target of $5 billion.

**JORDAN:** And they're not stopping there. Akash Palkhiwala, the CFO, said they expect to exit fiscal 2027 at a $7 billion annualized run rate heading into 2028, with a longer-term target of $15 billion by fiscal 2029.

**ALEX:** The AWS deal is the anchor here — custom silicon for AI inference plus optical connectivity, and get this: potential revenue opportunity of up to $60 billion over the next 10 years. That's the number that jumped out at me.

**JORDAN:** It's huge, though we should note — that's a long-term "potential" figure, not locked-in guaranteed revenue. But it shows how big hyperscalers think this relationship could become. There's also a warrant structure tied to that Amazon deal, which management clarified is a one-off exception, not the template for future hyperscaler deals.

**ALEX:** One thing that stood out in the Q&A was their AI250 silicon — their high bandwidth compute chip. Amon said it's actually beating their own Investor Day targets on power efficiency, hitting 0.3 picojoules per bit versus a 0.5 target.

**JORDAN:** And he mentioned the chip is getting particularly strong traction for "decode" workloads in AI inference. That's a technical detail, but basically it means real customers are testing real silicon and liking what they see — which builds confidence heading into the bigger 2029 target.

**ALEX:** Let's not skip

This episode includes AI-generated content.

More earnings analysis: https://betafinch.com
Groups: CHIPS (https://betafinch.com/groups/CHIPS)
──────────
ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. Today we're digging into Qualcomm's fiscal Q3 2026 results — a quarter that's part strong execution, part serious cost headwinds. Before we get into it, quick note: this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: Alright, let's get into the numbers. Qualcomm posted revenue of $9.9 billion, high end of guidance, and non-GAAP EPS of $2.21. QCT — that's their chip business — brought in $8.5 billion, and licensing added $1.3 billion. On the surface, solid. But there's a real story underneath these numbers.

ALEX: Right, and that story is memory prices. CEO Cristiano Amon was upfront that the whole industry is dealing with a spike in memory costs, plus higher manufacturing and packaging costs, and supply shortages tied to data center demand sucking up capacity. That's squeezing QCT gross margins below their historical range this quarter.

JORDAN: Their answer is price increases — double-digit, broad-based across end markets, according to CFO Akash Palkhiwala. But here's the nuance: it phases in gradually because of existing contracts and product cycles. Amon actually made an interesting point on the call — even a double-digit chip price increase is small compared to the magnitude of memory cost inflation hitting device bills of materials.

ALEX: So this isn't really Qualcomm gouging anyone, it's a pass-through of what's happening across the whole supply chain. And notably, they said they expect fiscal 2027 top-line growth despite all this, driven by an inflection in their non-handset businesses.

JORDAN: And that's really the headline of this call — the diversification story. At their recent Investor Day, they raised their fiscal 2029 non-handset revenue target from $22 billion to $40 billion. That includes over $24 billion from automotive and IoT, plus more than $15 billion from data center.

ALEX: Let's talk data center, because this is the new frontier for Qualcomm. They're rolling out four product lines over the next few years — connectivity starting this year, custom silicon and AI accelerators in fiscal 2027, and server-class CPUs by fiscal 2028. They've already got two custom silicon deals with what they describe as global-scale hyperscalers, and revenue from those starts in the December quarter.

JORDAN: They also completed the tape-out of their High Bandwidth Compute chip — HBC Gen 1 — which integrates compute directly with high-density memory. First commercial HBC product is targeted for mid-2027. And they closed the acquisition of Modular, an AI software company, to build out an end-to-end, hardware-agnostic software stack. Worth noting though — Stacy Rasgon from Bernstein asked about margin drag from data center, and Akash confirmed it: expect a 1.5 to 2 percentage point drag on QCT's weighted average gross margin as that early revenue comes online, since it's mostly lower-margin custom chip work initially.

ALEX: Automotive was the clear bright spot this quarter — record revenue of $1.6 billion, up 61% year-over-year. They also signed a landmark expanded deal with BMW to be the lead compute silicon provider for next-gen ADAS and digital cockpit, plus a Stellantis collaboration stretching into the 2030s.

JORDAN: And they raised their automotive run-rate target — previously $6 billion annualized exiting fiscal 2026, now bumped up to about $7 billion. That's a meaningful upward revision in just one quarter.

ALEX: Now let's talk about the elephant in the room — Apple. This was probably the most eyebrow-raising part of the call.

JORDAN: Yeah, Akash disclosed that Qualcomm's share of the upcoming iPhone launch will be materially lower than

This episode includes AI-generated content.

# Beta Finch Podcast Script: Qualcomm Q2 2026 Earnings

**ALEX**: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex, and joining me as always is Jordan. Today we're diving into Qualcomm's second quarter 2026 results, and wow, there's a lot to unpack here.

**JORDAN**: Absolutely, Alex. But before we jump in, let me remind our listeners: This podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

**ALEX**: Thanks, Jordan. Now, let's talk numbers. Qualcomm delivered $10.6 billion in revenue with non-GAAP earnings per share of $2.65, hitting the high end of their guidance. But the real story here isn't just the headline numbers—it's this massive pivot toward what CEO Cristiano Amon calls "agentic AI" and their diversification strategy.

**JORDAN**: Right, and let's break down those business segments because they tell an interesting story. QCT, their chip business, brought in $9.1 billion, while licensing pulled in $1.4 billion. But here's what caught my attention—automotive hit another record at $1.3 billion, up 38% year-over-year. They're now at a $5 billion annualized run rate and expect to exit fiscal 2026 above $6 billion.

**ALEX**: That automotive growth is impressive, but I want to talk about this elephant in the room—the China handset situation. They're dealing with what they call "memory industry dynamics" that are causing handset OEMs, particularly in China, to be super cautious with their build plans.

**JORDAN**: Exactly. CFO Akash Palkhiwala was pretty candid about this. He said their China Android shipments are "meaningfully below the scale of end consumer handset demand" because OEMs are drawing down channel inventory due to memory supply issues and price increases. But here's the key—they believe Q3 will be the bottom, with sequential growth expected after that.

**ALEX**: So basically, people are still buying phones, but manufacturers aren't ordering as many chips because they're worried about memory costs. It's like a supply chain traffic jam. But what really fascinated me was Amon's vision for where AI is heading. He's talking about this shift from basic AI inference to what he calls "agentic AI"—AI that can orchestrate multi-step tasks and run continuously in the background.

**JORDAN**: And this is where Qualcomm thinks they have a competitive advantage. Amon argued that agent orchestration is predominantly CPU-bound, and he claims Qualcomm has "the world's best performing CPU across smartphones, PCs, auto, and soon the data center." That's a bold claim, but they're backing it up with some interesting product launches.

**ALEX**: Speaking of bold claims, let's talk about their data center ambitions. This was probably the biggest surprise in the call. They announced they're starting shipments to a "leading hyperscaler" in December for a custom silicon engagement. When pressed for details, Amon was pretty tight-lipped but called it a "multi-generation engagement."

**JORDAN**: The timing on that is interesting because it suggests they've been working on this longer than many people realized. Remember, they acquired AlphaWave earlier, which gives them custom ASIC capabilities. But Amon mentioned they've been talking to data center customers for several quarters even before that acquisition.

**ALEX**: One analyst asked a great question about the competitive landscape, especially with ARM now trying to vertically integrate and NVIDIA focusing on inference. Amon's response was fascinating—he basically laid out how the AI market is evolving from training-focused to inference-focused to now this new phase of "agentic" experiences.

**JORDAN**: Right, and his argument is that as AI becomes more about generating demand for tokens rather than just generating the tokens themselves, you need different types of

This episode includes AI-generated content.

**Beta Finch Podcast Script: Qualcomm Q1 2026 Earnings**

---

**ALEX**: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown where we turn complex financial reports into conversations you can actually follow. I'm Alex.

**JORDAN**: And I'm Jordan. Today we're diving into Qualcomm's first quarter 2026 results, and wow, this one's a bit of a tale of two cities.

**ALEX**: Before we jump in, I need to mention that this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

**JORDAN**: Absolutely. So Alex, let's start with the headline numbers because they're pretty impressive on the surface.

**ALEX**: They really are. Qualcomm delivered record-breaking results - $12.3 billion in revenue and $3.50 in non-GAAP earnings per share. Both numbers hit records, with EPS coming in at the high end of their guidance range.

**JORDAN**: The breakdown is interesting too. Their chip business, QCT, hit a record $10.6 billion, while their licensing division QTL brought in $1.6 billion. But here's where it gets complicated - they're guiding down significantly for next quarter.

**ALEX**: Right, and that's the big story here. For Q2, they're forecasting total revenue of $10.2 to $11 billion, which at the midpoint represents a pretty substantial sequential decline. The handset business specifically is expected to drop from $7.8 billion to about $6 billion.

**JORDAN**: And the reason? It's all about memory shortages. CEO Cristiano Amon was very clear about this - the AI data center boom is sucking up all the high-bandwidth memory, leaving smartphone makers scrambling for DRAM.

**ALEX**: Let me read you what Amon said because it really captures the situation: "As memory suppliers redirect manufacturing capacity to HBM to meet AI data center demand, the resulting industry-wide memory shortage and price increases are likely to define the overall scale of the handset industry through the fiscal year."

**JORDAN**: It's fascinating how the AI boom is creating these ripple effects. Chinese smartphone makers in particular are being cautious, reducing their chipset inventory because they can't get enough memory to build phones.

**ALEX**: But here's what's interesting - Qualcomm is emphasizing this isn't a demand problem. Consumer appetite for premium smartphones remains strong. It's purely a supply constraint. CFO Akash Palkhiwala mentioned they saw handset units exceeding expectations in December, especially in the premium tier.

**JORDAN**: That's a crucial distinction for investors. If this were a demand issue, you'd be worried about long-term market trends. But supply constraints, while painful in the near term, typically resolve themselves.

**ALEX**: Speaking of the premium tier, Qualcomm dropped some interesting details about their market position. They're expecting about 75% share of Samsung's upcoming premium devices, which is consistent with prior expectations. And they highlighted this interesting "dual flagship" strategy where OEMs are launching multiple premium tiers.

**JORDAN**: The automotive story continues to be a bright spot. They hit another record with $1.1 billion in automotive revenue, up 15% year-over-year, and they're guiding for even stronger growth - greater than 35% year-over-year growth in Q2.

**ALEX**: The Volkswagen Group partnership announcement is huge. This isn't just about infotainment systems - Qualcomm would serve as the primary technology provider for VW's software-defined vehicle architecture, including their joint venture with Rivian. That's Audi, Porsche, the whole VW ecosystem.

**JORDAN**: And they're expanding into new territories. The robotics announcement caught my attention - they're launching a full suite of robotics technologies with the Dragon Wing IQ 10 series. They're already working with companies like

This episode includes AI-generated content.

Stay tuned for AI-powered earnings analysis from Beta Finch.

This episode includes AI-generated content.