Why Qualcomm Stock Is Down Even After Car Chip Sales Jumped 89%

If you hold Qualcomm shares, Wednesday's gain is already gone. Qualcomm stock was down about 11% at $154 in early trading on Thursday, November 5. US trading opened at 8pm in India and 10:30pm in Singapore. That wipes out the 5.3% rise on Wednesday, when Qualcomm announced a deal with SpaceX.

The drop followed results from Qualcomm, the company behind the Snapdragon chips in most premium Android phones, for Q4 FY2026 earnings. They came out on Wednesday evening in the US, which was early Thursday morning in Asia. 

Sales and profit were better than Wall Street expected, and car chip sales almost doubled. But smartphone chip sales fell, and Qualcomm said it will make less profit in the next three months than analysts had expected. 

Here's what Qualcomm reported and why its share price fell.

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Why Is Qualcomm Stock Down After Earnings?

For the next quarter, Qualcomm expects to make $2.15 to $2.35 in profit per share. The middle of that range, $2.25, is below the $2.27 analysts expected, according to LSEG figures cited by CNBC.

The main reason is cost. Qualcomm is paying more for the silicon its chips are made from, for packaging and for memory, so it has raised its own prices. But chief financial officer Akash Palkhiwala said those higher prices won't fully show up in its profit until April to September 2027.

"We are implementing price increases across our products to reflect the higher semiconductor input costs," Palkhiwala said.

Phone chips are also selling less. Qualcomm made $5.14 billion from them, down 26% from a year earlier and below the $5.21 billion analysts expected, according to StreetAccount figures cited by CNBC.

Higher memory prices have made phones more expensive, so fewer people are buying them. Apple is also replacing Qualcomm's modems in iPhones with its own.

By Thursday morning, JPMorgan, UBS and Susquehanna had lowered their price targets, the price they expect the stock to reach, to $200, $180 and $165. All three are still above where Qualcomm shares are trading now.

Qualcomm Q4 FY2026 Earnings: Revenue, Profit and Cars

Qualcomm made $10.44 billion from July to September, down 7% from $11.27 billion a year earlier. Profit per share was $2.17, just above the $2.16 analysts expected but down from $3 a year earlier.

Car chips did best. Qualcomm made $1.99 billion from them, up 89% from a year earlier and ahead of the $1.66 billion analysts expected.

Qualcomm says its car business is now on track to make about $8 billion a year. CEO Cristiano Amon said “Qualcomm is positioned to become one of the largest automotive semiconductor suppliers by revenue in fiscal 2027.”

Qualcomm's AI Data Center Plans and Profit Margins

Qualcomm expects to make more than $650 million from data center chips between October and December. It has started shipping custom AI chips to two large cloud companies, and one of them is Amazon Web Services.

It still expects $5 billion from data centers in the 12 months to September 2027. "We expect to be constrained by supply rather than demand for upsides beyond the $5 billion," Palkhiwala said.