Qualcomm posted fiscal second quarter 2021 revenue that was up 52% year-over-year from the fiscal second quarter of 2020, and net income that leaped 276% over the same period, as the company drew much of its growth from handsets, but also saw sharp revenue increases in its IoT, automotive and RF front end segments.
The big quarter comes as Qualcomm is set to make a transition in the C-level suite, with current Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon due to take over as CEO in June with the retirement of current CEO and longtime Qualcomm executive Steve Mollenkopf.
Mollenkopf said on the earnings call that solid growth across all segments, but especially in the 5G smartphone sector, helped Qualcomm weather the challenges posed over the past year, and put the company in a strong position for the rest of this fiscal year. “We are on track to deliver results better than what we expected when we started the fiscal year,” he said on Wednesday’s earnings call, according to the Seeking Alpha transcript.
Overall, Qualcomm posted revenue for $7.935 billion for the quarter under GAAP guidelines, boosting net income for the quarter to $1.762 billion and earnings per share of $1.53. Handset-related revenue was $4.065 billion and the IoT segment contributed $1.073 billion. The company’s budding business for RF front ends, used in a wide variety of products, was worth $903 million in revenue and the automotive segment earned $240 million in revenue
While Qualcomm is known for its cornerstone business in mobile device chips, it demonstrated during the fiscal second quarter that it is poised to grow across many segments of products and applications. Though the automotive business is the smallest one now, it’s not to be taken lightly. Amon, joining Mollenkopf on the earnings call, said Qualcomm is growing “across telematics, CV2X, digital cockpit, ADAS and autonomy, and we’re also well positioned for upcoming general computing in car-to-cloud platforms. We expect to lead in the segments as cloud connected business models evolve and electrification of the car accelerates.”
He added, according to the transcript, “Along with auto, IoT is becoming a significant growth engine with better than anticipated performance across all categories, namely consumer, networking and industrial. We achieved our second consecutive quarter of over $1 billion in revenue.” That growth has been driven by pandemic-related trends, such as broadband expansion, mobile computing, “the enterprise transformation of the home,” and “the intersection of physical and virtual spaces,” among other factors.
Qualcomm executives also said the company completed its $1.4 billion acquisition of Nuvia, a start-up focused on creating CPUs for data centers, during the quarter.