At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon predicted that the automotive industry could be the next computing space that presents the opportunity for the company to achieve an accelerator in providing the core technology for artificial intelligence (AI)-driven and connected devices in this sector, and for other use cases such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0. This prediction appears to have paid off for the company in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, resulting in strong year-over-year revenue growth.
For the quarter ending September 29, 2024, Qualcomm reported total revenue of US$10.244 billion, an increase of 19% compared to the same period in 2023, increasing pre-tax earnings to US$2.597 billion, up 83% on a 2023 basis. annual. Net income virtually doubled in 12 months to $2.92 billion.
Digging into the quarterly results, Qualcomm revealed that for its core QCT semiconductor division, revenue was $8.2 billion, at the high end of its guidance range with combined automotive and IoT revenue totaling $2.6 billion.
The phone business generated $6.1 billion in the fourth quarter, as the company prides itself on strength in design, with successful launches at Xiaomi, Honor, Oppo and Vivo. It is set for additional launches at Samsung, ASUS and others.
IoT revenue reached $1.7 billion, with PC OEMs, including Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Acer and ASUS, introducing devices powered by the 8-core Snapdragon X Plus platform. Qualcomm currently has 58 platforms launched or in development across its X Series portfolio.
Automotive revenue alone was $899 million, and was 68% higher than in the same period in 2023. Leading automakers, including Li Auto, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, have adopted Snapdragon Elite automotive platforms for their future software-defined vehicles.
Qualcomm’s technology licensing division generated revenue of $1.5 billion, also at the high end of previous guidance.
For the fiscal year, Qualcomm saw revenue rise 9% year over year to $38.962 billion, with EBIT rising 39% year over year to $10.336 billion. Net income saw an almost identical strong rise to a total of $10.142 billion.
“We are pleased to conclude the fiscal year with strong fourth-quarter results, where we achieved greater than 30% year-over-year growth in earnings per share,” said Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm. “We are excited about our latest product announcements…as they continue to extend our technology leadership and position us well across phones, PCs, automotive and IIoT.”
At the recent Snapdragon Summit, the company launched Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platformwhich Qualcomm said offers the world’s fastest mobile CPU and is “the world’s most powerful and fastest mobile system-on-a-chip.”
It offers technologies such as the second generation Oryon CPU, Adrenals GPU and improved hexa NPU, which Qualcomm said delivers “game-changing” performance improvements. This includes personalized, multi-modal on-device AI, enabling speech, context and image understanding to enhance use cases such as business productivity.
