Qualcomm heads into Wednesday’s earnings report under pressure. The stock is down 10% over the past month and flat year-to-date, with analysts expecting another tough quarter.
Wall Street forecasts Q3 FY26 revenue of $9.69 billion, a 6.5% drop year-on-year. That’s a sharp reversal from the 10.4% growth Qualcomm posted in the same quarter a year ago. EPS is expected to come in at $2.24, down 19% from last year. QCOM is currently trading at $170.08.
Higher memory costs have weighed on smartphone demand, Qualcomm’s core end market. That headwind is the main reason analysts are cautious heading into the print.
Options traders are bracing for a big reaction. According to TipRanks’ Options Tool, the implied move for QCOM post-earnings is 9.34% in either direction. That’s above the stock’s average post-earnings move of 8.74% over the last four quarters.
Benchmark analyst Cody Acree kept his Buy rating and $300 price target heading into earnings. He expects results to roughly meet expectations, with adjusted EPS of $2.23 on revenue of $9.675 billion. Acree sees slight upside in automotive, IoT, and QTL offsetting weakness in handsets.
Acree thinks the market will focus more on Q4 guidance than Q3 results. He models Q4 FY26 EPS of $2.36 on revenue of $10.202 billion, slightly above the Street’s $10.035 billion revenue forecast.
Cantor Fitzgerald’s C.J. Muse is more cautious. He cut his price target from $220 to $200 and kept a Hold rating. Muse says the move reflects the broader sell-off in chip stocks rather than company-specific issues.
Muse expects Q3 FY26 to mark the low point for Qualcomm’s China Android business. He sees 2026 handset revenue declining around 22% to $21.9 billion. He also expects 2027 estimates to be nudged slightly lower.
That said, Muse flagged one potential bright spot: Qualcomm’s new DragonFly Data Center portfolio. He sees the stock as modestly undervalued at 16x his below-consensus CY27 EPS estimate.
Semiconductor stocks as a group have struggled lately, falling 17.1% on average over the past month. Qualcomm’s 9.9% decline over that period is actually better than the sector average.
Peers have had mixed results. Intel beat estimates by 11.7% and posted 25.4% revenue growth, but the stock fell 12.2% post-earnings. Penguin Solutions topped estimates by 17.5% and rose 25.1%.
Qualcomm has a track record of beating Wall Street expectations, which could matter if guidance comes in better than feared.
The average analyst price target on QCOM sits at $221.23, implying roughly 30% upside from current levels. The overall Wall Street consensus is Hold, based on 17 Holds, 10 Buys, and 3 Sells. The average price target from TipRanks data puts it at $222.46, implying 31% upside.
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