By Max A. Cherney, Deborah Mary Sophia
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Chip designer Arm Holdings on Wednesday forecast revenue consistent with Wall Street targets, sparking a 4.5% drop in shares that some analysts attributed to dashed hopes for stronger, AI-fueled growth.
Bets that Arm, which licenses its designs, will profit from a surge in AI computing have greater than doubled the chip designer’s share price since its initial public offer last September, giving it a market value of about $144 billion. Its forecast, nevertheless, didn’t live as much as expectations set by firms like AMD and Nvidia that directly design AI chips.
“Arm’s done an excellent job of associating themselves with a few of these AI semiconductor trends and the challenge is because they’ve done that, they’ve created expectations perhaps that aren’t quite being met yet,” said Bob O’Donnell, president and chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research. “They’re several steps faraway from the ultimate chips,” he added.
Arm results topped revenue and profit expectations for the second quarter on Wednesday, partly because customers like Apple are using a more profitable version of its next-generation technology.
Nonetheless, for the present fiscal third quarter, Arm forecast revenue in a variety between $920 million and $970 million, with a midpoint of $945 million, compared with a median analyst estimate of $944.3 million, in keeping with LSEG data.
The corporate said it expects fiscal third-quarter earnings of between 32 cents and 36 cents per share. Analysts had expected a third-quarter profit of 34 cents a share.
“Investors wish to see the present AI boom in its results,” said Kinngai Chan, senior research analyst at Summit Insights Group.
“This quarter is all concerning the validation of the strategies we have been talking about,” Chief Executive Rene Haas told Reuters in an interview. “We have some real proof points.”
Arm derives revenue from licensing fees for its chip designs and collects a royalty for every chip sold that uses its technology. The corporate is within the midst of introducing its v9 architecture, which is predicted to generate higher royalty payments.
Arm’s designs power nearly every smartphone on this planet, and it has attempted to make headway in data centers and other markets. It has developed various pre-built designs that enable customers to construct chips more quickly and has doubled the variety of pre-built design licenses this fiscal yr, the corporate said.
Haas said the corporate has signed up its first smartphone chip customer for its premade blueprints. Arm has previously sold those designs to server chip designers.