Analysis
Qualcomm reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $10.3 billion, down 8% from a year earlier, as sales of smartphone chips fell 26%, according to its earnings release on November 4, 2026. Shares fell 5.9% in extended trading after the company's outlook, MT Newswires reported on Yahoo Finance. CEO Cristiano Amon said fiscal 2027 "marks the start of our non-handset revenue inflection," with non-handset revenue projected to grow more than 60% and a reiterated $5 billion data center revenue target.
What Qualcomm does
Qualcomm, based in San Diego, sells chips through its QCT segment, for phones, cars and connected devices, and collects patent royalties through QTL, its licensing arm. In the quarter it renewed long-term QTL license agreements with Apple, Huawei and Transsion, and it announced a multi-generational product collaboration with Amazon for AI data centers. Pulse covered that Amazon pact in September.
Qualcomm Q4 fiscal 2026 results
- Handsets: $5,137 million, down 26%.
- Automotive: $1,990 million, up 89%, which Qualcomm called its first $2 billion quarter.
- IoT: $1,888 million, up 4%.
- QTL licensing: $1,304 million, down 7%.
- EPS: GAAP $1.17, versus a loss of $2.89 a year earlier; non-GAAP $2.17, down 28% from $3.00.
“Pulse covered that Amazon pact in September.”
Non-GAAP revenue of $10.4 billion, down 7%, landed at the high end of Qualcomm's guidance, Amon said. The segment margins show the pressure underneath: QCT's earnings before taxes fell to 24% of revenue from 29%, while QTL's slipped to 70% from 72%.
Across the full year, automotive revenue rose 52% to $6.0 billion and IoT rose 8% to $7.1 billion, the base that Amon's forecast of more than 60% non-handset growth in fiscal 2027 builds on.
For fiscal 2026, GAAP revenue was $43.1 billion, down 3%. GAAP EPS of $12.70 included a $5.7 billion income tax benefit; non-GAAP EPS was $10.54.
How big is Qualcomm's data center business?
Still small, but guided to grow fast, per Crypto Briefing:
- Fiscal 2026 data center revenue: $476 million.
- December-quarter guidance: above $650 million.
- Run-rate target: $7 billion annualized by the end of fiscal 2027, and more than $15 billion of revenue in fiscal 2029.
- Amazon agreement: up to $60 billion in potential purchases over ten years.
For context, AMD booked $8.5 billion of data center revenue in its September quarter alone, and Arm said its server share at the top hyperscalers passed 50% in 2025. Qualcomm is entering a market where both are already scaled.
The outlook that sank the stock
Qualcomm guided first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue to $10.4 billion to $11.2 billion and non-GAAP EPS to $2.15 to $2.35.
MT Newswires put consensus at $10.49 billion and $2.26, so the guide brackets the Street rather than clearing it. The release also flags a broad rise in chip input costs across wafers, packaging and memory; Qualcomm is raising product prices but expects the full benefit in QCT gross margins only in the second half of fiscal 2027.
Qualcomm returned $11.7 billion to shareholders in fiscal 2026, $7.8 billion through buybacks and $3.9 billion in dividends. The handset business still produced $24.1 billion of the year's chip revenue, down 13%, which is the number the data center pivot has to replace.