Watching
QCOM · QUALCOMM Incorporated
Updated ·
Against its published line
Above its line on the last close.
How to read this
The red mark is the published kill line — the price that would prove the thesis wrong. The dot is where the name closed on 9 October 2026; a dot left of the mark has closed through its line.
Distance is drawn on a square-root scale, so close calls get the room. Past 8% a row reads well clear, with a hollow dot to show the figure is off the drawn scale. Rows run tightest first.
Kill line
A weekly close below $164, under the mid-July 2026 lows that followed the Investor Day sell-off; or the 11 November 2026 report delaying first data-center revenue past the December 2026 quarter or cutting the roughly $5 billion fiscal 2027 data-center target.
Not a pickResearch coverage at low conviction. A medium-or-higher call would open a pick on the scoreboard.
How picks are graded →The thesis
Qualcomm's case is still a data-center pivot with Amazon as its named partner, set against a handset business that is losing most of its Apple modem revenue. Two October events sit in front of the 11 November 2026 report: a Delaware jury trial against Arm Holdings over royalties, and a registration that lets Amazon resell up to 25,000,000 Qualcomm shares. The November report decides the case. It has to show first data-center revenue in the December 2026 quarter and keep the roughly $5 billion fiscal 2027 data-center target intact.
The shares have kept sliding since the late-September reversal. Adjusted daily closes show $184.04 on 30 September 2026 and $176.01 on 8 October 2026. The 8 October 2026 close sits 29.2% below the 52-week high of $248.74, with a three-month change of -3.8% and a 14-day relative strength index (RSI) of 48.7.
The narrative is maturing: the Amazon deal (8 September 2026) and the Apple licence renewal (24 September 2026) are well known, and the shares fell from $184.04 to $176.01 between 30 September 2026 and 8 October 2026 despite the Huawei licence and the start of the Arm trial. The evidence does not show the shares leading the S&P 500 before the November report.
Bullish and bearish views on QUALCOMM Incorporated
The bull case on QUALCOMM Incorporated (QCOM), in brief: Amazon has tied itself to the data-center plan. The bear case: Total revenue is still shrinking.
Bull case
- Amazon has tied itself to the data-center plan. Qualcomm announced a multi-generation collaboration with Amazon on custom data-center silicon and optical connectivity on 8 September 2026. That gives Amazon an equity stake in the partnership's success. Form S-3
- Licensing revenue gained two large agreements. On 5 October 2026 Huawei and Qualcomm announced a multi-year cross-licence covering 5G, compute, AI and networking, plus Qualcomm's purchase of certain Huawei U.S. patents; closing awaits regulatory approval. Light Reading That follows the Apple patent licence renewal of 24 September 2026, which runs from 1 April 2027.
- The Arm trial could cut a cost line. A five-day jury trial opened in Delaware federal court on 5 October 2026. Qualcomm is seeking to stop paying Arm royalties for up to five years, and Reuters-sourced coverage puts the claimed hit to a Meta deal at $170 million. Qualcomm won the earlier December 2024 jury verdict in the NUVIA dispute. The Star
- The valuation sits under the market's. A Benzinga screen on 7 October 2026 listed Qualcomm among four chip stocks trading below the S&P 500's forward price-to-earnings ratio of 20.3.
Bear case
- Total revenue is still shrinking. Fiscal third-quarter revenue was $9,947 million, down 4% year on year, as reported on 29 July 2026. Automotive and internet-of-things (IoT) growth of 28% has not yet lifted the total. Filed quarterly release
- The Apple modem step-down lands in December. On the 29 July 2026 call, management described a sequential Apple revenue decline of roughly 50% from the September quarter to the December quarter. The 11 November 2026 guidance will show the full size of that hole.
- The Arm case can cut either way. Arm denies breaching the contract and argues that Qualcomm itself leaked details of antitrust probes, according to coverage on 5 October 2026. An adverse verdict would leave royalty costs in place and the Arm relationship more strained just as Qualcomm builds Arm-based server chips.
- Memory costs squeeze handset margins. Qualcomm buys DRAM and NAND as inputs, so memory price inflation shows up as a cost in its handset chip segment (QCT).
Price setup
The adjusted close of $176.01 on 8 October 2026 is below both the 30 September 2026 close of $184.04 and the 25 September 2026 post-Summit close of $201.97. The September gain from the Amazon deal, the Snapdragon Summit and the Apple renewal has been fully given back. The 14-day RSI of 48.7 is neutral, so the shares are neither stretched nor oversold.
The next reference level below is $164, the area of the mid-July 2026 lows that followed the Investor Day sell-off. Above, $201.97 (25 September 2026) is the level that would show buyers returning. Crowding signals are mixed. No earnings date falls inside 30 days, and the only new share supply is the Amazon resale registration, which arrived as the price fell.
Catalysts, next 30 days
- ~13 October 2026 (est.) — Qualcomm v. Arm jury verdict. The five-day trial opened on 5 October 2026 before Judge Maryellen Noreika; a separate bench proceeding covers whether Arm negotiated in good faith over its next architecture version. A Qualcomm win would lower its royalty cost; a loss keeps it.
- 11 November 2026 — Fiscal Q4 2026 results and December-quarter guidance, after the close (listed as confirmed by TipRanks). This falls just outside the 30-day window, but the case turns on it: first data-center revenue, the roughly $5 billion fiscal 2027 target and the size of the Apple decline.
What would change the view
The case breaks if the 11 November 2026 report pushes first data-center revenue past the December 2026 quarter or cuts the roughly $5 billion fiscal 2027 data-center target. It also weakens if December-quarter guidance implies an Apple decline worse than the roughly 50% sequential drop described on 29 July 2026. On price, a weekly close below $164 would put the shares under the mid-July 2026 lows.
The case would strengthen with a clean Arm verdict for Qualcomm, followed by a December-quarter guide that includes data-center revenue. A close back above $201.97 would show the market pricing that in.
What it trades with
Qualcomm traded with Arm, Intel and AMD on 28 September 2026, when Benzinga described Meta's Muse launch lifting CPU stocks as a group. The Arm trial pairs the two in opposite directions: Benzinga tied Arm's premarket drop of more than 3% on 8 October 2026 to pressure from the Qualcomm lawsuit. AMD, up more than 200% in 2026 according to Benzinga on 7 October 2026, shows that buying in AI chip stocks has not spread to Qualcomm. Memory-price moves at Micron and other DRAM suppliers reach Qualcomm as an input cost.
Notes
- Fiscal year ends in late September; fiscal Q4 results are typically reported in early-to-mid November, so no scheduled revenue report falls in October.
- An Amazon affiliate holds a warrant issued 3 September 2026 for up to 25,000,000 Qualcomm shares that vests over time; resale is registered on a Form S-3 and Qualcomm receives no proceeds.
- Insider sales run under pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plans (the CFO's plan was adopted 8 December 2025), so a single Form 4 reflects a schedule rather than a discretionary decision.
- Qualcomm buys DRAM and NAND as inputs rather than selling memory, so memory price inflation reaches its results as a margin headwind rather than a revenue tailwind.
- QCT and QTL margins cited are earnings-before-tax margins as the company defines them in its earnings slides, and EPS figures are non-GAAP.
- Revenue is concentrated among a small number of customers and licensees, with a significant share in China, named as a risk factor in the Q3 FY26 release.
Related · shared themes
AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Advanced Micro Devices says AI chip demand exceeds its supply and is lining up Samsung memory to meet it, but reports on 8 October 2026 that OpenAI's revenue is lower than believed hit the shares. The 3 November 2026 third-quarter report tests revenue against the $13.0 billion guide and OpenAI's fourth-quarter Helios start.
MU
Micron Technology, Inc.
Micron Technology's fiscal Q1 2027 guide of $61.5 billion in revenue, about $5 billion above consensus and backed by roughly $150 billion of contracts, still carries the case despite this week's memory selloff and Taiwan strike vote. The ~17 December 2026 report shows whether revenue and an 86.25% gross margin hold.
NVDA
NVIDIA Corporation
NVIDIA's data-center demand has to carry October-quarter revenue to its $108.0 billion outlook as doubts grow over how AI buyers fund their purchases; NVIDIA's 17 November 2026 fiscal third-quarter report settles the case.
SNDK
Sandisk Corporation
Sandisk's contract-backed AI storage recovery still has rising NAND prices behind it, but memory shares now fall even on record peer results. Sandisk's 29 October 2026 fiscal Q1 2027 report settles the case if revenue reaches $10.3 billion and non-GAAP gross margin 83%.