Qualcomm upbeat on revenue, profit and forecast

Qualcomm Inc. yesterday reported that revenue and profit in its fiscal second quarter were both up more than 20 percent over the year-ago quarter and raised its forecast for third-quarter revenue.
The San Diego-based chipmaker and technology-licensing firm posted revenue of $2.22 billion, an increase of 21 percent over the year-ago quarter. Net income was $726 million, up 22 percent over the year-ago quarter.
In the earnings release, CEO Paul Jacobs said that the sale of CDMA-based 3G products grew rapidly. Demand for chipsets across the vendor’s portfolio and higher-than-expected shipments of handsets using CDMA2000 chips led Qualcomm to raise its fiscal third-quarter revenue forecast to $2.2 billion to $2.3 billion, Jacobs said.
Qualcomm’s stock price edged up more than 2 percent yesterday on the news.
Albert Lin, financial analyst with American Technology Research, said he forecasts Qualcomm to exceed its own guidance, driven by several factors, including faster adoption of 3G chips at Motorola Inc. and LG Electronics Co., faster integration of Qualcomm’s GPS/cellular technologies by new customers, better-than-expected multi-mode chip sales by Sprint Nextel Corp.-iDEN and CDMA-and Verizon Wireless-GSM and CDMA-and other factors. Upside to traditional and new businesses give bulls reason to invest, given the company’s current stock price, Lin wrote in a note to investors. Bears may remain skeptical, given the unknowns surrounding the unresolved-and largely opaque-issues between Qualcomm and Nokia Corp.
The vendor said that it would not be able to record royalty revenue attributable to Nokia Corp.’s sales starting in the fiscal fourth quarter, “until an arbitrator (or court) awards damages or the disputes are otherwise resolved by agreement with Nokia.”