Qualcomm car chips jump 89% as phone chips sink 26%

Qualcomm said on Wednesday that revenue from automotive chips jumped 89% to a record $1.99 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 27.

Handset chip revenue dropped 26% to $5.14 billion in the same quarter.

Automotive revenue beats the $1.66 billion forecast

Qualcomm’s fiscal fourth-quarter results indicate car chip sales were up from $1.05 billion a year earlier. Full year automotive revenues grew 52% to $6 billion.

The quarter beat analyst expectations of $1.66 billion.

Handsets stay Qualcomm’s largest business. Phone chip sales fell to $5.14 billion, down from $6.96 billion a year earlier and below estimates of $5.21 billion.

Full-year handset revenue fell 13% to $24.07 billion. Rising memory prices have pushed up costs for phone makers, harming demand.

Android shipments in the Chinese market have dropped, Qualcomm said. The company still anticipates the handset market to remain flat in 2027.

The Internet of things (IoT) yielded $1.89 billion in revenue, up 4% for the quarter. The QCT chip unit posted $9.02 billion, down 8%.

GAAP revenue was $10.32 billion for the quarter and $43.12 billion for fiscal 2026. Licensing revenue from QTL fell 7% to $1.3 billion.

Qualcomm shares fell 7% in after-hours trading on Wednesday. They were down about 9% in early trading on Thursday.

Quarterly GAAP net income was $1.25 billion compared to a loss of $3.12 billion a year ago. GAAP EPS for the full year was $12.70, which includes an income tax benefit of $5.7 billion related to the release of a valuation allowance.

Amon repeats a $5 billion data center target for fiscal 2027

“Fiscal 2027 marks the start of our non-handset revenue inflection, including the ramp of our Data Center business,” CEO Cristiano Amon said in the release. Non-handset revenues are expected to rise more than 60% year-over-year, he said, and he reiterated a fiscal 2027 data center revenue target of $5 billion.

Customization and connectivity work made up the bulk of the company’s $650 million in data center revenue for the quarter, Amon said. Qualcomm announced a multi-generational product agreement with Amazon for AI data centers.

The company renewed long-term QTL license agreements with Apple, Huawei and Transsion. It returned ~$2 billion to stockholders in the quarter via $1.01 billion of buybacks and $987 million of dividends.

Guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2027 is revenue of $10.4 billion to $11.2 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $2.15 to $2.35. The range includes data center sales for the first time.

Qualcomm said input costs are mounting across wafer fabrication, assembly, test, advanced packaging and memory. The company is raising its product prices.

The full benefit will be realized in QCT gross margins only in the second half of fiscal 2027.

According to Cryptopolitan, SK Hynix has sold out of HBM and DRAM chips until 2029 and the company expects demand for memory to outstrip supply until 2030.

Another big HBM supplier, Samsung, forecast in October a record quarterly operating profit of about 107.4 trillion won, ~$80.2 billion. AI is demanding more memory chips than suppliers can produce.