Qualcomm stock (NASDAQ: QCOM) went up about 2% in pre-market trading on Tuesday, a day before the leader in the communications semiconductor industry reports its fiscal fourth-quarter results. According to Wall Street experts, Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) will record a profit of $3.13 per share on $11.4 billion in revenue for the quarter ending in September.
During the same period last year, Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) earned $2.55 per share on $9.3 billion in revenue. Even though chip sales to automakers only make up a small part of Qualcomm’s (NASDAQ:QCOM) overall income, this is one of the company’s key growth areas for the near future, so it is likely that this sector will get extra attention.
Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) and other chipmakers saw their stocks go up after Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) announced last week that it would start a new cost-cutting plan that would likely lead to job cuts.
Forecast, Qualcomm Stock, Earnings Expectations
Investors are likely to be optimistic before Q4 results come out, especially since QCOM has a history of beating estimates for the bottom line. For example, over the past 20 quarters, the company has never released non-GAAP EPS numbers that did not meet expectations. On the other hand, QCOM’s topline performance hasn’t always been as strong as its EPS performance; in the previous five years, there have been four different instances of this.
However, for the upcoming Q4, estimated sales are $11.37 billion and the consensus EPS (non-GAAP) is $3.15. Given that they are both still only within the midpoint of the management’s guidance from the previous quarter, there is a chance that QCOM will exceed those numbers once more (not at the upper end). During the Q3 results, QCOM’s management said that Q4 sales would be between $11 billion and $11.8 billion, and non-GAAP earnings per share would be between $3 and $3.3.
Featured Image- Pixabay @ Monoar_CGI_Artist
Author Jowi Kwasu 
