Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) shares slid 11% on Oct. 30 to close at $164.79. The company didn’t release any news of its own that day. Instead, it was caught in a broad chip sell-off after Intel forecast less revenue in the fourth quarter than in the third and warned the PC slowdown might last until at least mid-2027.
The PHLX Semiconductor Index lost about 7% in the same session.
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Shares sit near $167 as I write, about a third under the $251.02 record close they set on May 29. That peak came after the stock more than doubled from its early-April low, so shares have swung a lot in a short time.
Now Qualcomm releases fiscal fourth-quarter results after the close on Wednesday, Nov. 4. Is the stock worth buying before the report? I’d say the September quarter matters less than what management says about the December quarter.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Phones are still shrinking
Qualcomm’s handset business has been slipping all year. Handset chip revenue was still up 3% year over year in the three months ending Dec. 28, 2025, Qualcomm’s fiscal first quarter of 2026. Then it dropped 13% in the March quarter and 20% in the June quarter, to $5.1 billion.
Memory is the biggest issue. Qualcomm’s latest quarterly filing says it expects tight memory supply, and the price hikes that went with it, to hit demand from several phone makers.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is the other drag. Qualcomm now expects its share of new iPhone launches to come in well below its earlier 20% estimate, a gap management linked partly to its own supply constraints. And it forecast Apple revenue dropping around 50% from the September quarter to the December quarter.
PCs are a smaller part, but Intel‘s warning still matters. Qualcomm’s PC chips are in its internet of things (IoT) category, where revenue rose 9% year over year in the June quarter. A softer PC market might slow one of the chipmaker’s growing businesses.
In all, Qualcomm guided for $9.7 billion to $10.5 billion in fiscal fourth-quarter revenue and $2.05 to $2.25 in non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings per share. At the midpoints, that’s around 10% and 28% under the year-ago quarter.
Revenue from two data center deals is nearly here
The more interesting piece of Wednesday’s report will probably be the outlook. Qualcomm has custom chip deals with two very big cloud computing companies.
