Qualcomm (QCOM) Q4 2026 earnings call transcript

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Today's call will include prepared remarks by Cristiano Amon and Akash Palkawala. In addition, Alex Rogers will join the question and answer session. You can access our earnings release and a slide presentation that accompany this call on our investor relations website. In addition, this call is being webcast on qualcomm. com, and a replay will be available on our website later today. During the call today, we will use non-GAAP financial measures as defined in Regulation G, and you can find the related reconciliations to GAAP on our website. We will also make forward-looking statements, including projections and estimates of future events, business or industry trends, or business or financial results. Actual events or results could differ materially from those projected in our forward-looking statements.

Please refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent 10K, which contain important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. And now to comments from Qualcomm's President and Chief Executive Officer, Cristiano Amon.

Thank you, Brett, and good afternoon, everyone. In fiscal Q4, we deliver non-GAAP revenues of $10.4 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $2.17. QCT revenues of $9 billion, up 6% sequentially, were at the high end of our guidance. Licensing business revenues were $1.3 billion. For fiscal 26, we reported non-GAAP revenues of $43.2 billion and QCT revenues of $37.2 billion, highlighted by year-over-year revenue growth of 24% across combined automotive and IoT.

We closed fiscal 26 with many of the uncertainties that have been weighing on our business now behind us. Specifically, QTL license renewals, the loss of Apple as a customer, and the negative impact of memory pricing on the size of the mobile industry.

Regarding the latter, the June quarter marked the low point for our China Android business, and we have seen sequential growth this quarter. Going forward, our plan assumes global handset units will remain flat to down in calendar 27. The timing and shape of the Apple modern transition is fully incorporated in how we're planning the business and is well understood at this point.

We also renew important QTL licensing agreements, including Apple and Huawei. Now, we enter Fiscal 27 as a broader, more diversified Qualcomm with strong momentum and significant opportunities ahead. First, non-handset revenues in QCT will grow by more than 60% year-over-year.

Second, our data center business begins its ramp with revenues expected to exceed $650 million in the December quarter. Third, automotive revenues reach an $8 billion annualized run rate exiting fiscal 26, $1 billion ahead of expectations.

Fourth, we establish a solid foundation in how agentic AI transforms the edge and leads to new product categories for Qualcomm. And finally, we reach a landmark agreement with SpaceX to power their nationwide terrestrial 5G network in the U. S. Our technology investments are aligned with the direction the industry is moving. We've made key acquisitions to build on our hardware and software capabilities as we evolve into a full-stack semiconductor company. We announced strategic agreements with industry leaders, including Meta, Amazon, BMW, and Stellantis, with more to come. And our design wind pipeline across the company grew 70% year over year. This is the backdrop that positions Qualcomm deliver on our fiscal 29 targets of $40 billion in non-Handset revenues with over $15 billion coming from data center.

Now, I will focus on the areas that are top of mind for investors. Let me start with licensing, where we reached a milestone this quarter. We're extremely pleased with our renewals with Apple, Huawei, and Transient. These agreements provide stability for QTL as we move to the 6G era. They also demonstrate the enduring value of our IP and patent portfolio. And just as in every prior generation, we expect our inventions to be foundational to 6G. Importantly, our QTL revenue run rate remains unchanged. The next renewal cycle begins in fiscal 2030 and runs through fiscal 2033.

Licensing gives Qualcomm durable, highly profitable foundation as we scale our next set of growth opportunities. Data Center is another area where we made considerable progress this quarter. It's one of our top strategic priorities and a major focus of my own time as we build this business around long-term customer relationships, a broad product portfolio, and an open software ecosystem.

AWS is a good example. Our agreement spans multiple product generations across custom silicon for AI inference and optical connectivity. Custom accelerators began shipping in October, and our connectivity solutions with AWS ramped later this month. We also secure a second optical connectivity customer. With Qualcomm High Bandwidth Compute, our AI-250 silicon is exceeding our expectations for power efficiency and bandwidth, and early yields are on track. These results are generating significant entrance from AI customers and memory partners, and we added two major prospects in the quarter.

Our Dragonfly C1000 CPU remains on track to ship to Meta as scheduled, and we engage with a large new potential customer. We are optimistic about the opportunities we have today with our high-speed connectivity solutions such as optical DSPs, and we are investing in bringing optics directly alongside our XPUs and custom silicon as we demonstrated with Lumintin and Corning at ECOG 2026.

In software, our full-stack integration with Modular is progressing well. Modular is delivering impressive performance as an open, multi-vendor stack running on NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, Amazon Trannion, and Google TPU. Optimization for Qualcomm accelerators is also underway. Last month, Modular made the full Mac source code available, and this builds on open sourcing the Mojo language in August. We're also excited that Modular Cloud went live during the September quarter and is already processing tens of trillions of tokens per month.

We'll share more details soon about how our ecosystem partners are using Modular Cloud. Our data center business is off to a strong start. We are reiterating our $5 billion revenue target for fiscal 27 with healthy order coverage supporting continued revenue growth in fiscal 28. In automotive, we exit fiscal 26 at an annualized revenue run rate of approximately $8 billion, well above the $7 billion expectations we provided last quarter. Additionally, fiscal fourth quarter automotive revenue grew nearly 90% year over year.

Commercial shipments of our fifth generation Snapdragon digital chassis began in the September quarter and will continue to ramp in fiscal 2027. As a reminder, this platform is our most advanced to date, delivering a significant increase in performance and represents our largest generation-to-generation content increase in Qualcomm's history. Our products also evolved from SOCs to integrated compute modules. Customer demand remains strong across our portfolio, and Qualcomm positioned to become one of the largest automotive semiconductor suppliers by revenue in fiscal 2027. In robotics, our pre-manteered Dragon Wing IQ10 processor is set to begin its commercial ramp and continues to generate strong customer momentum. During the quarter, ecosystem partners demonstrated AI models of up to 80 billion parameters running directly on IQ10.

In fiscal 2027, we will continue to expand the technologies and capabilities across our robotics platforms. As we anticipated, the proliferation and capability of AI agents is increasing rapidly, and we're seeing growing consumer adoption as a result. A prime example is Meta Muse, which reached over 10 million downloads in just 40 days. We're also seeing more companies designing experiences and devices around agents. This includes agentic smartphones, smart glasses, and other new personal AI form factors. Meta's Audio AI Glasses, Muse Charm, Gemini Eyewear, and Alibaba's Squint AI Glasses are recent examples of intelligent wearables with more to come over the next year.

The smartphone is an essential device for agentic experiences as it's the device that knows people best. It's always with them and has their contacts, preferences, and permissions. The device is also evolving to simultaneously support what the user is doing and what agents are doing on the user's behalf. Delivering these experiences will require greater computing performance, power efficiency, and connectivity, which play directly to Qualcomm's strengths.

More of our customers are already building agentic features into their flagship devices, and we're pleased to share that the world's first agentic smartphones were launched on Snapdragon. Heading into fiscal 2027, we're pleased with our premium tier Android share position and we expect it to strengthen as the transition to agentic smartphones drive an increase in computing content per device. For perspective, leading AI companies are targeting smartphones by 2028 capable of running 100 billion power meter models locally with an all-day battery life. Reaching this goal will require a step function change in on compute performance Finally I very proud to share that SpaceX selected Qualcomm power Starlink mobile nationwide terrestrial 5G network in the U. S. Starlink is building one of the most ambitious new cellular networks in the country, and our Dragon Wing infrastructure platforms will bring together advanced massive MIMO of MIMO purpose-built RAN processing and commercial-grade Layer 1 software.

Under a multi-year agreement, deployment begins in 2027, and it is expected to be one of the largest 5G deployments in the United States. Together, we have an opportunity to advance United States wireless leadership, starting with 5G and the convergence of satellite and terrestrial connectivity. This new architecture establishes a foundation for next-generation connectivity and network intelligence. This is a significant win for our infrastructure business in the beginning of a strategic relationship with tremendous potential.

Before I close, I would like to briefly address our litigation with ARM. We're gratified that the jury found ARM breached its longstanding architecture license agreement, ALA, with Qualcomm, failed to honor its commitments. intentionally acted to disrupt Qualcomm's business and engage in unfair competition, both as a supplier and a competitor. Together with Qualcomm's prior court victory, this outcome further exposes ARM's intentions to harm Qualcomm and its ecosystem. This outcome is a victory for innovation and competition, and we remain focused on developing and delivering industry-leading semiconductor products, including our Orion CPUs, to customers and consumers worldwide, from mobile to data center.

In summary, we enter fiscal 2027, having made important progress against the ambitious growth plan we outlined at Investor Day. Since then, we've signed major strategic agreements and positioned our data center business to ramp at scale. We remain focused on execution as we build the next chapter for Qualcomm and we're confident in delivering on our fiscal 2029 targets.

With that, I will turn it over to Akash.

Thank you, Cristiano, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me begin with our results for the fourth fiscal quarter. We delivered non-GAAP revenues of $10.4 billion and EPS of $2.17 with revenues at the high end of our guidance. QTL revenues of $1.3 billion and EBT margin of 70% were in line with our expectations. QCT revenues of $9 billion were at the high end of our guidance, and EBT margin of 24% was in line with expectations.

QCT handset revenues of $5.1 billion reflected the impact of industry-wide memory dynamics on the global smartphone market. In QCT Automotive, we delivered our first $2 billion revenue quarter with 89% year-over-year growth, driven by the growing adoption of integrated module products for our fifth-generation compute platforms. QCT IoT revenues of $1.9 billion were up 4% year-over-year, led by our industrial, networking, and robotics category of products, which grew 20% versus the year-ago period, offset by the impact of memory constraints on consumer products. Total non-Handset revenues in QCT, including automotive and IoT, grew 36% year-over-year, underscoring the continued execution of our growth initiatives.

Lastly, we returned $2 billion to stockholders, including $1 billion each in share repurchases and dividends. Before turning to guidance, I'd like to provide an update on a couple factors reflected in our financial performance.

First, in QTL, we have now completed long-term license agreements with Apple, Huawei, and Transient and do not have any upcoming license renewals with major handset OEMs for the next several years. Following these agreements, QTL revenue run rate and long-term revenue forecast remains unchanged.

Second, as we outlined last quarter, we're implementing price increases across our products to reflect the higher semiconductor input costs. We expect the full benefit of these actions to be reflected in QCD gross margins in the second half of fiscal 27.

Finally, we're excited that fiscal 27 marks an important milestone for our data center business as we transition from customer engagements to revenue generation. Our first fiscal quarter guidance reflects the commencement of shipments to two hyperscaler customers for custom silicon engagement. As we've discussed previously, we expect these custom silicon engagements to be accretive to QCT operating margins, but dilutive to gross margins. These factors are reflected in our fourth quarter performance and first quarter outlook. I'll now provide our guidance for the first fiscal quarter. We are forecasting revenues of $10.4 to $11.2 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $2.15 to $2.35.

In QTL, we estimate revenues of $1.3 to $1.5 billion and EBT margins of 72 to 76 percent, reflecting normal seasonal trends. In QCT, we expect revenues of $9 to $9.6 billion and EBT margins of 20 to 22 percent. Please note that QCT-EBT margin guidance includes an impact of three percentage points due to the addition of data center in the QCT segment starting in fiscal 27 and reflects investments for AI accelerator and CPU platform ahead of revenue ramp.

Importantly, this segmentation change has no impact on total company guidance or on our long-term QCT-EBT margin target of 30%. We forecast QCT handset revenues to decline by a mid-single-digit percentage sequentially, as growth in Android revenues is offset by the continued ramp-down in Apple product revenue. In QCT data center, we expect revenues of greater than $650 million, driven by commencements of shipments to custom silicon customers.

We expect combined QCT automotive and IoT revenues to be approximately flat sequentially. Lastly, we anticipate non-cap operating expenses to be approximately $2.8 billion in the quarter. Before I conclude my prepared remarks, I'd like to outline the progress in the execution of our growth strategy. In fiscal 27, we expect to achieve two key milestones for revenue diversification.

First, non-ehands-out revenues in QCT across automotive IoT and data center will grow by greater than 60% on a year-over-year basis starting in the first fiscal quarter. Second, non-HANDSAT revenues will represent more than 50% of QCT revenues in the fiscal year. In data center, we're executing to the revenue targets we outlined at Investor Day, including $5 billion in fiscal 27 and $15 billion in fiscal 29. We expect data center revenues to scale throughout fiscal 27, exiting the year at a $7 billion run rate.

We're also expanding our customer engagement pipeline across additional global hyperscalers, including the long-term strategic agreement with Amazon Web Services, with a potential revenue opportunity of up to $60 billion over the next 10 years. During the quarter, we also successfully validated our high-bandwidth compute technology in lab trials, marking a key milestone in delivering an innovative AI inference accelerator solution designed to address the memory bandwidth challenge in data centers. We are also well-positioned to lead other key industry trends, including the transition to agentic AI in consumer devices and the adoption of physical AI across automotive, industrial, and robotics.

Finally, we would like to thank our employees for their exceptional execution and innovation throughout fiscal 26. Their commitment enables us to deliver industry-leading products to customers around the world. This concludes our prepared remarks. Back to you, Brett.

Thank you, Akash. Operator, we are now ready for questions.

Hi, Josh. It's Akash. So let me kind of frame the overall gross margin framework for the company. As you know, we mentioned this last quarter, we are implementing price increases to reflect the higher semiconductor cost across the industry. And so we start realizing the benefit of that in our second fiscal quarter. And we'll see the full benefit of that show up in second half of 27. So the way it plays out is as these price increases come into effect, our baseline gross margin goes back to our historical range of 48% to 50% at the low end of that range. And then separately on your question on data center, as we said previously, we expect that to be something that is accretive to our operating margins but dilutive to gross margins.

And so that calibrates the gross margin down from the framework I just outlined. So that's no different than what we told you last quarter and we're executing on the plan.

Thanks, Josh. This is Cristiano. Look, we're very happy with the progress we're making at HPC. We're actually doing better than what we said on Invest today. We had a target under design to about 0.5 picogiles per bit. We're doing better in the lab. We're doing about 0.3. Yield is exceeding our expectations. So we're very happy with the technology progress. The main workload that we're getting a lot of traction, it's incredibly efficient for decode.

So decode, it's where we're getting a lot of the positive feedback. We are engaged with customers. It changes the conversation when you have a PowerPoint to where you have silicon. And I think that continues to build confidence in the projections we have, not only for our custom agent for merchant solutions coming up as we think about 2029 targets. What is also interesting is now became part of the conversation of custom silicon with HBC, combining our HBC with some of our customer accelerators. So I would just say customer engagement is very positive.

Okay. Joseph, this is Akash. So let me address the financials, and then Christiana will comment on top on customer ramp. So for fiscal 27, we are looking at $5 billion revenue forecast that we've previously provided. We're guiding greater than $650 million in the first quarter, and we expect this revenue to ramp throughout the year as we go through the quarters.

And we'll exit the year at approximately a $7 billion exit rate going into 28. And so very happy with that. we're very well positioned from a supply perspective to execute on the $5 billion target. And really we expect to be constrained by supply rather than demand for upsides beyond the $5 billion. When you look at fiscal 28, we are looking at a $7 billion starting point. And then the customers that we have in 27 will extend to 28 as well, and it gives us really strong design win coverage. to deliver a very strong year-over-year growth in fiscal 28 as well.

And then, as you know, we have set a target of $15 billion for 29, which the customer engagements that Kushana will outline right after this will position us very well to have a very high coverage of that number as well.

Just real quick, Joseph, on the customer. The majority of the $5 billion in fiscal 27 come from the two hyperscaler customers, so one of them being Amazon. I think the details of those were made public on the custom silicon plus connectivity. We do have another customer on the accelerator and an advanced discussion also on subsequent custom silicon. That is part of the ramp towards, you know, 28 and 29. And we had said in the script, I think we have new prospects, especially on the CPU as well, I think beyond meta, and we're working with the customers.

Yeah, Joseph, when you look at the overall handset market, 25 to 26, like other industry analysts, we are projecting a low teens to mid teens decline in the market. And then as we go into 27, we're thinking flat to slightly down for the handset market. And that's how we've always projected our business based on that assumption, and it's playing out consistent with expectations.

Specifically for QCT handset revenue in Android, as you'll recall, we call the June quarter the bottom for QCT answer revenues and Android in China. What has happened since is we've seen revenue grow into September and December quarter. And so we are encouraged to see that. We've been conservative in our planning, and it's playing out exactly as we'd expected.

Yeah, Joe, you should – we obviously don't specifically talk about the details of the contract. They're confidential, but we're indicating that the revenue run rate remains the same, which you should take it as we were able to hold the rates and the royalties as we renewed the contracts.

Well, if you look at our general set of engagements across data center, the engagements are very traditional, normal kind of customer engagements in the semiconductor industry. The Amazon warrant structure is the exception. And as you know, the warrants that we issued were at the money warrants. So that's the only exception that we have at this point. And I think as we consider data center engagements going forward, we'll look at other structures on a deal-by-deal basis, but you should think of our framework as being aligned with the traditional semiconductor model.

Yeah. Tim, you're right. We're not guiding March at this point. But let me make a few comments on the year that I hope are helpful. The first is, you know, typically in previous years, December has been our strongest quarter in the year. Now with Apple product revenue ramped down, we do not expect December to be the high quarter for us.

When you look at data center revenue, we've talked about kind of greater than $650 million in the first quarter, but we expect that to ramp as we go through the year. So that kind of defines our quarterly profile to some extent. The third is when you look at 26 to 27, we expect auto IoT plus data center, kind of non-Hansett revenue, to grow by greater than 60%. So this revenue would more than offset the decline in Apple product revenue.

And then finally, I think if you look at the fiscal 27, we expect handset now to be less than 50% of our total revenue. And so obviously that's a key milestone for our diversification plan, and so we are happy to achieve that this year.

Yeah, I think it's the reasonable framework that I think the way people have been looking at the business is a reasonable way of looking at it.

Thank you.

Sure, Stacey. So let me break it down into two parts. Let's talk about the market and then separately talk about QCT product revenue within Android. Overall market, as I said earlier, our view is that 25 to 26, it's down low to mid-teens. And then 26 to 27, we are projecting flat to down for the total market. So we think that's a prudent assumption as we plan given the uncertainty overall in the environment.

Specifically on QCT revenue, as you'll recall, the impact we saw in 26 was not just from the change in the market, but also channel inventory drawdown by OEMs. And we don't expect that impact in 27 because we've been following channel inventory. As you know, we get QTL information as well that we can check against. And so the channel inventory continues to be thin. and so we expect kind of QCT revenue really to be aligned with the overall market, and that's how we are projecting it going forward.

Maybe, Stacey, Christiana, just to add another thing, one of the things we had said before, and that's kind of because of our long-term partnerships that we have with our customers, a lot of the price increases, the reason that they have a delta versus the cost increase, and we talk about prices become more effective in the numbers the second half, We've kind of been pricing newer platforms, new phones, so less subject to pre-buying effect.

And as I said, I think based on the data we're seeing in the market, June remains, I think, the bottom, I think, for China Android.

Yeah, absolutely. So here's how we think about the Samsung business, and here's a simple way to do it. If you think about our business in the past, the baseline was 50%. This baseline is no longer 50%. It's north of 70%, as we have been doing. When you think about future generations of Galaxy, this is how we plan our business, and I encourage all of you to plan the same way. That's the new baseline with Samsung.

The other thing with Samsung is we're expanding the business. So traditionally, we were not the main supplier of all of their wearables and other devices, and you started to see that associated with the premium Galaxy design as well.

No, very good. Thank you for the question. Look, we have been saying, I believe we have said that in the last quarter about the transition for fifth-generation platform. Just to give an idea, for cars that you see now on the road with our third-generation platform, the silicon content increase versus the fifth-generation, at 8x. There's a lot more compute content into the automotive, and most of our automotive growth is really share where the design when pipeline translates into revenue. That's where we started to see step function increases on our SOC revenue, and that will continue.

Yeah, Ben, so maybe it's a good opportunity to clarify that one of the changes we've made in the way we segment the business is QCT now includes data center. In 26, it was outside the QCT segment. And just that change kind of reduces QCT gross margin, operating margin by 3%, as of course we're investing ahead of revenue in a couple product lines. It doesn't change the overall Qualcomm numbers. It's just a change within segments that is included now in the QCT numbers. We are, of course, not guiding specific quarters or years for operating margins, but you should think of it as our operating margin target for QCT doesn't change. We're still looking at a target of 30 percent, and as revenue starts scaling across the next two through three years, we're confident in our ability to achieve it.

Very good. Actually, thank you so much for the question. I really appreciate that. So we're not breaking that down, but you should assume that there is interconnect connectivity revenue within the $15 billion that we talk about it and some of the $5 billion that we talk about in data center, $5 billion, $27 billion, $15 billion, $29 billion.

We have been very optimistic about this. We have been investing. This asset came to Qualcomm support of the Alpha Wave acquisition. I think Qualcomm probably a natural place for comms, and we have been investing into this. We have very interesting technology demonstration or progress with Optico and co-package optics in the quarter, in the 2026 ECOC in Europe. We actually did the demonstration with Lumentum. And you bring a good point. I think the structure of the industry is going to change. My analogy is what happened on RF front end, and that creates opportunities. So we have been engaged in very interesting conversations with some of the laser companies, especially as different forms of partnerships and strategic partnerships are going to be formed.

This is actually a very exciting opportunity for Qualcomm, and you're going to see over time a lot more products from Qualcomm optics. And we have been working on the roadmap that we outline in 400 gig, 800, and 1.6 tera.

So let me break that question into no implications on our CPU roadmap. I think we've been very clear about where we are with the ARM trial. We're actually very happy with our ability to continue to develop in SHIP or IRON products. I will look at that as probably upside in the projections that we made on 5 and 15. We just had meta as a customer. Any new customer above that is an upside to their revenue target.

Yeah, you should think of two of those customers at a very significant scale, making up that $5 billion, and they will extend into fiscal 28 and then 29 as well. So think of it as a long-term multi-generation, multi-product relationship, and both the relationships are at scale.

Yeah, I think you should just think of our OPEX approach as consistent over the last year. We're guiding $2.8 billion for the September quarter, and the focus on OPEX is really kind of bringing in new skills that don't exist in the company as we diversify, especially within data center, and that will continue to be the focus area for us going forward.

Just maybe one timing thing is just we typically have calendar year or employee-related expenses reset when we get to January, so that will happen, but that's kind of consistent with previous years that you've seen.

Yes, thanks for the question, Chris. So timing, I think we're talking about 27. You should think about from a financial standpoint, it will start to appear as we exit fiscal 27. is more of a fiscal 28 from a revenue standpoint. Magnitude, I think what we can say at this point, and I think it's probably how we both articulated into the announcement, is a nationwide network in the United States and probably one of the largest build-outs of a network. It's a terrestrial network. We provide silicon content for radio, including massive MIMO, as well as the accelerator. for the digital unit, and we provide software on the layer one.

It's a great partnership with SpaceX for next generation, I think, infrastructure. The industry has been running on dedicated equipment. I think, you know, we have seen a lot of trends of technology ranging from open RAN to AI native. It's an opportunity to innovate in this space. And as we talk about it, it's a multi-year agreement, including how we're going to be thinking about the next generation of wireless as well. We're very proud of this announcement. I think it's great. Also from the United States technology leadership standpoint, and we're going to be executing on it.

Chris, so for the $5 billion in 27, most of that revenue is actually custom silicon engagement for the main AI accelerator at our two hyperscaler customers. The next category that's material in the $5 billion in fiscal 27 is the connectivity revenue. So you should think of those as driving the FY27 revenue ramp. When you think about the $15 billion revenue in 29, that will be inclusive of the custom silicon engagement, expansion in connectivity, but then we'll also have CPU and AI accelerator both coming in. And that's why we feel confident about achieving the $15 billion and really going beyond that as we execute on the product roadmap, given how good our technology is looking and the interest that we're seeing from various hyperscalers.

Thank you.

No. I just wanted to thank our employees and our partners. As I said in my prepared remarks, this is an important, I think, close of a fiscal year for Qualcomm. and it really positioned us to start FISCO 27 with all of the things that are within our control and focus on growing in a much more diversified company. We're very excited about that. We have a lot of things we're doing in parallel, but I guess we develop that capability as we diversify the company, and we're excited about our future. Thank you.