Qualcomm reported strong first quarter results as its Snapdragon platform saw traction across smartphones, automotive, PCs and Internet of things devices.
The company reported first quarter net income of $2.77 billion, or $2.46 a share, on revenue of $9.93 billion, up 5% from a year ago. Wall Street was expecting Qualcomm to report first quarter earnings of $2.37 a share on revenue of $9.52 billion.
As for the outlook, Qualcomm projected second-quarter revenue of $8.9 billion to $97 billion with earnings of $1.73 a share to $1.93 a share. Non-GAAP earnings will be $2.20 a share to $2.40 a share.
For the second quarter, analysts were expecting Qualcomm to report earnings of $2.25 a share on revenue of $9.28 billion.
Qualcomm is betting that on-device generative AI processing and features will drive demand. Qualcomm is embedded in AI-heavy smartphones from Samsung and others and is looking toward more generative AI workloads moving to edge devices.
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By device, Qualcomm said handset revenue in the first quarter was $6.69 billion, up 16% from a year ago. Automotive revenue was $598 million, up 31%. IoT sales were $1.14 billion, down 32% from a year ago.
Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm, said on the earnings conference call that generative AI processing on the edge will move well beyond smartphones into enterprise use cases. Amon said:
"We continue to believe that industrial edge devices with connectivity, high-performance computing and on device AI will become one of our largest addressable opportunities fueled by the secular trends of digital transformation. As such, we're accelerating our investments in solutions, ecosystem and broad channel enablement to position ourselves for growth while we navigate the industry-wide inventory draw down."
