Qualcomm

QCOM on Nasdaq. Qualcomm sells chips and wireless technology to phone, car, and device makers. Market value $189.8bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to September 2025.

Should I look at this?

Worth a closer look

Read what could go wrong

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

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Cash yield
past 12 months to June 2026
5.5%fair

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $5.49 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to June 2026
19.4×full

You pay 19.4 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to September 2025
32.0%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 32 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 100 of 100. Price score: 77 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$180.79 a share, 48% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $121.99 to $259.92.

Dividend: 2.0% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Prices from Monday’s close (5 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

8.6
6.8
9.8
11.2
12.8
10.4
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26
Revenue
$33.6bn$44.2bn$35.8bn$39.0bn$44.3bn
Operating margin
29.2%35.9%21.7%25.8%27.9%
Debt to equity
1.530.830.710.560.70
Shares outstanding
1.12bn1.12bn1.11bn1.08bn1.05bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive5 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)7 of 9
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)No
  • Debt0.70× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 13.5% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesYes, 7% fewer since 2021

The quarter to June 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $9.9 billion last quarter, down 4% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $2 billion, down 25% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 23 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, down from 28 cents a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $10.4 billion, down from $11.6 billion.
  • 3% fewer shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit more of the company.
  • Debt is $8.7 billion more than cash, down from $9.3 billion a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in 2 of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$10.2bn
December 2024$11.7bn
March 2025$11.0bn
June 2025$10.4bn
September 2025$11.3bn
December 2025$12.3bn
March 2026$10.6bn
June 2026$9.9bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$2.9bn
December 2024$3.2bn
March 2025$2.8bn
June 2025$2.7bn
September 2025-$3.1bn
December 2025$3.0bn
March 2026$7.4bn
June 2026$2.0bn

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
29 October 2026
Last annual report (10-K)
5 November 2025
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
28 October 2026

Who owns it

21 long-term investors we follow own it, down from 22 last quarter. 3,018 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26
Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

2 investors own more than 5%.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

No insider bought shares on the open market in the last 12 months. 6 sold $22m, $22m of it under preset trading plans.

  • Grech Patricia Y
    SVP, Chief Accounting Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    2 October 2026
    Shares
    98
    Price
    $186.55
    Value
    $18,282
  • AMON CRISTIANO R
    President & CEO, Director
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    25 September 2026
    Shares
    10,000
    Price
    $200.00
    Value
    $2m
  • AMON CRISTIANO R
    President & CEO, Director
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    21 September 2026
    Shares
    10,000
    Price
    $195.00
    Value
    $2m
  • Palkhiwala Akash J.
    EVP, CFO & COO
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    11 September 2026
    Shares
    2,500
    Price
    $182.85
    Value
    $457,129
  • Grech Patricia Y
    SVP, Chief Accounting Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    31 August 2026
    Shares
    208
    Price
    $170.00
    Value
    $35,360
  • Grech Patricia Y
    SVP, Chief Accounting Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    21 August 2026
    Shares
    625
    Price
    $162.85
    Value
    $101,781
  • Palkhiwala Akash J.
    EVP, CFO & COO
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    12 August 2026
    Shares
    2,500
    Price
    $163.26
    Value
    $408,143
  • ACE HEATHER S
    EVP, Chief HR Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    3 August 2026
    Shares
    3,200
    Price
    $147.04
    Value
    $470,528
  • Palkhiwala Akash J.
    EVP, CFO & COO
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    14 July 2026
    Shares
    2,500
    Price
    $180.81
    Value
    $452,030
  • Palkhiwala Akash J.
    EVP, CFO & COO
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    11 June 2026
    Shares
    2,500
    Price
    $197.35
    Value
    $493,380

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

None of the warning signs we check for were found.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 5 Nov 2025, plus the 10-Q filed 29 Jul 2026 and 10 later 8-Ks.

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

Cheap for a reason is the question the numbers cannot answer.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

What changed in the risks this year

Companies must list what could hurt them each year. These are the parts that changed since last year’s report.

  • The enforcement and protection of our intellectual property may be expensive, could fail to prevent misappropriation or unauthorized use of our intellectual property, could result in the loss of our ability to enforce one or more patents, and could be adversely affected by changes in patent laws, by laws in certain foreign jurisdictions that may not effectively protect our intellectual property and by ineffective enforcement of laws in such jurisdictions.

    Could happen
    Finally, the intellectual property ownership and license rights, including copyrights and patents, surrounding AI technologies, which we are increasingly building into our product offerings, have not been fully addressed by U.S. or foreign courts, laws or regulations, and the use of AI in the development of our products and services could result in our loss of, or failure to obtain, intellectual property rights, as well as subject us to risks related to intellectual property infringement or misappropriation.
    Read more

Read it in the annual report

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.