Qualcomm Q3 FY2026: revenue falls 4.1%, handset sales slide 20%
Qualcomm's fiscal Q3 was a passing grade, not a strong one: revenue of $9.947 billion fell 4.1% and non-GAAP EPS of $2.21 missed the $2.2724 consensus, yet the top line landed at the high end of guidance. Read the quarter as a handset problem wrapped in a cost problem — automotive and IoT growth is real, but it is not yet big enough to offset a shrinking premium phone market.
1 · Expected vs. Actual
Free preview belowGAAP EPS of $1.87 fell 23% from $2.43 and non-GAAP EPS of $2.21 fell 20% from $2.77, and the adjusted number came in below the consensus estimate of $2.2724. Most of the $0.34 gap between the two EPS figures is accounting: share-based compensation cost $0.68 a share, partly offset by $0.57 a share of QSI investment gains that are excluded from the adjusted number. A smaller share count helped, with diluted shares down to 1,069 million from 1,099 million.
Revenue of $9.947 billion was down 4.1% from $10.365 billion a year ago, with the damage concentrated in handsets: QCT handset revenue fell 20% to $5.086 billion. Automotive rose 61% to $1.588 billion and IoT rose 9% to $1.830 billion, so the 28% combined growth in those two lines is genuinely offsetting some of the phone decline. One caution: the segment list in the filing adds up to $18.286 billion because QCT's sub-lines are listed alongside the QCT and QTL totals, not because revenue was that large.
Management guided fiscal Q4 revenue to $9.7 billion–$10.5 billion, a $10.1 billion midpoint that would be down 10.4% from the $11.271 billion reported in the same quarter a year ago. Non-GAAP EPS guidance of $2.05–$2.25 versus GAAP of $1.22–$1.42 shows the same wide spread between reported and adjusted profit. The company also said it is pushing higher prices to reflect input costs and expects that to help gross margins over time rather than immediately.
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Figures on this page come from the company's original SEC filings. The analysis is generated automatically and checked against validation rules, but may still contain errors or omissions. Not investment advice. · Generated 2026-09-17
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