By Stephen Nellis and Arsheeya Bajwa
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Chip designer Qualcomm on Wednesday forecast quarterly sales and profit above market expectations as premium smartphone sales rebounded, but a possible loss of business next year from Samsung, a key customer, sent its shares down after hours.
Qualcomm is among the world’s biggest suppliers of modem chips that connect smartphones to wireless data networks. For the current fiscal first quarter ending in December, Qualcomm said it expects sales and adjusted profit with a midpoint of $12.2 billion and $3.40 per share, above analyst estimates of $11.62 billion and $3.31 per share, according to LSEG data.
For Samsung Electronics’ most recent Galaxy S25 models, Qualcomm supplied 100% of modem chips, but Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told Reuters on Wednesday that Qualcomm was prepared for a lower share in Samsung’s next generation.
“When you think about Galaxy S26, we’re planning for 75% – that’s what we expect,” Amon said.
Qualcomm shares fell 2.7% in extended trading on Wednesday. The stock had risen nearly 4% during regular trading.
The company has been expanding into other fields such as laptops and automobiles, as well as data center chips, after longtime customer Apple has planned to substantially transition to its own modems.
Amon told analysts on a conference call on Wednesday that the company was in discussions with a large AI computing company to supply chips.
He told Reuters that the forecast and better-than-expected fourth-quarter results were driven by a wave of consumers upgrading midpriced smartphones to more expensive devices to handle AI apps, with the market beginning to divide between low-end devices and the pricier premium devices.
“You don’t have anything in the middle,” he said. “And that’s kind of a global phenomenon that’s happening in China, that’s happening in India. We continue to see an expansion of the premium tier.”
Investors have been working to understand how Apple’s transition to its own modems will affect Qualcomm’s business. In a note to clients, Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon said Apple is likely using its own chips in its iPhone Air and iPhone 16e models but has remained with Qualcomm chips for iPhone 17 models, softening the blow to Qualcomm.
Apple, Samsung and China’s Xiaomi all still account for more than 10% of Qualcomm’s revenue, Qualcomm said in securities filings on Wednesday.
DISCUSSIONS WITH HYPERSCALER
Qualcomm last month announced a new series of AI data center chips, saying that Humain, an AI firm founded by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, will be a customer. Amon said on the conference call that Qualcomm is in discussions with another large customer.
“We were in discussion with a hyperscaler,” he said, using a tech industry term for large computing companies. “We’re very pleased with the outcome of that conversation.”
Amon said that for the just-ended fiscal year 2025, Qualcomm’s non-Apple revenue across all segments grew at 18%. Within its chip segment, revenue from handsets rose 14% to $6.96 billion, coming in above Visible Alpha estimates of $6.64 billion.
“Phones are slowly seeing apps becoming more capable, and that drives people to buy a more capable device, no different than what we saw right after the pandemic,” Amon told Reuters.
Qualcomm Chief Financial Officer Akash Palkhiwala said Qualcomm’s handset revenue would have a quarter-over-quarter growth rate in the “low teens,” implying at least $7.7 billion in handset chip sales for the fiscal first quarter. That forecast is above the $7.22 billion analysts expect, according to data from Visible Alpha.
For the fiscal fourth quarter ended September 28, Qualcomm reported sales and adjusted profit of $11.27 billion and $3 per share, compared with Wall Street expectations of $10.79 billion and adjusted profit of $2.88 per share.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco and Arsheeya Bajwa in New Delhi; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and Matthew Lewis)
