The company made $2.33 per share compared with the $2.25 Wall Street expected. Its revenue was $9.39 billion against $9.22 billion expected
Net income during the quarter was $2.13 billion compared to $1.8 billion in the same period last year.
Qualcomm expects sales between $9.5 billion and $10.3 billion in the current quarter, compared to Wall Street expectations of $9.71 billion. Analysts were looking for per share earnings guidance of $2.45 versus the company’s forecast of between $2.38 and $2.58.
Summer months are traditionally a slower part of the annual cycle for Qualcomm, as most new models launch in the autumn.
Handset sales rose 12 per cent from the same period last year to $5.9 billion in revenue, in line with analyst estimates from StreetAccount, suggesting that a deep slump in smartphone sales over the past two years is easing.
Qualcomm is also positioning its most advanced Snapdragon chips as essential for “AI smartphones,” such as recent Samsung models, which can run some generative AI tasks like creating images.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said on the earnings call. “ “AI has expanded the size of the premium tier. So even in a market which is kind of flattish to low single digits in growth, the premium tier is actually growing faster and we’ve seen that.”
Automotive chips remain a small part of Qualcomm’s total revenue stream, but the company sees placing more software and semiconductors into cars as one of its best opportunities for future growth and diversification. Automotive revenues rose 87 per cent year over year to $811 million. Analysts polled by StreetAccount were looking for $641.7 million.
The company sells chips for lower-cost devices as well as Meta’s Quest headsets in a business it calls “Internet of Things.” This line also includes revenues from the company’s new PC chip for Windows laptops, called Snapdragon X Elite, which it launched alongside Microsoft during the quarter.
Amon hailed the Snapdragon X launch as a “milestone” in Qualcomm’s efforts to diversify. Still, Qualcomm said IoT revenue fell eight per cent year over year to $1.4 billion. But that surpassed StreetAccount expectations of $641.7 million.
These three hardware lines are reported together as QCT, the company’s chip business, which in total reported $8.1 billion in sales, up 12 per cent year over year.
Qualcomm collects licensing fees from companies that integrate 5G or other cellular technologies into their products, reported as QTL sales. Licensing revenue rose three per cent to $1.3 billion.
Qualcomm said that it previously had a US licence to export its products to Huawei, but that the licence was revoked, and that it would hurt the company’s revenue.
The company said it paid $949 million in dividends and repurchased seven million shares of stock for $1.3 billion during the quarter.
