Broadcom (AVGO) Stock: Wall Street Hikes Price Targets as AI Boom Faces Q4 2025 Earnings Test

December 8, 2025

Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) heads into a pivotal week trading just below record highs, powered by an AI-chip boom, the VMware acquisition, and a wave of bullish analyst upgrades ahead of fourth‑quarter and full‑year 2025 earnings on December 11. ^[1]

In the last few days, UBS, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Susquehanna, Oppenheimer and others have raised their 12‑month price targets into the mid‑$400s, with UBS now at $472 and Bank of America at $460, all with bullish ratings. ^[2] At the same time, options markets are pricing in roughly an 8% swing in either direction after Thursday’s earnings release, highlighting how much is riding on Broadcom’s AI narrative and guidance. ^[3]

Layer on top of that a Federal Reserve rate decision this week – with investors expecting another cut – and Broadcom has become one of the key tickers to watch for both AI and macro sentiment. ^[4]

Where Broadcom stock stands on 8 December 2025

Broadcom shares opened Monday around $390 and were trading up roughly 2.4%, giving the company a market capitalization near $1.84 trillion. Over the past 12 months, AVGO has traded between about $138 and an all‑time high around $403, set in late November. ^[5]

Depending on which yardstick you use, Broadcom has been on a tear:

A recent hedge‑fund letter cited a 52‑week gain of about 112% for AVGO. ^[6]
Other analyses put the 1‑year total return closer to 130%, reflecting both price appreciation and dividends. ^[7]
TipRanks notes that the stock is up more than 68% year‑to‑date in 2025, driven by AI partnerships and networking demand. ^[8]

That move hasn’t come cheap. MarketBeat data show a trailing price‑to‑earnings ratio around 100 and a PEG (price/earnings‑to‑growth) ratio near 1.3, placing Broadcom firmly in “premium AI multiple” territory. ^[9]

Institutional investors are leaning in rather than backing away. As of the latest filings, roughly three‑quarters of the float is in institutional hands, and on December 8, MarketBeat reported that Baker Avenue Asset Management more than doubled its AVGO position in the second quarter, pushing its stake to nearly 59,000 shares. ^[10]

Short‑term trading has been choppy. Last week, Broadcom briefly dipped after a report suggested Microsoft was dialing back AI sales targets, which spooked AI‑linked names before Microsoft publicly denied lowering AI quotas. AVGO’s drop was modest, but the episode showed how sensitive the stock is to any hint that AI spending may cool. ^[11]

AI chips, TPUs and VMware: the engine behind Broadcom’s rally

The reason Broadcom commands that lofty multiple is simple: AI infrastructure.

In its most recent reported quarter (Q3 fiscal 2025), Broadcom delivered about $15.95–16 billion in revenue, up 22% year‑over‑year, with AI semiconductor sales alone at roughly $5.2 billion, growing 63% from a year earlier. Free cash flow for the quarter reached roughly $7 billion. ^[12]

A few themes dominate the growth story:

Custom AI accelerators (XPUs) – Broadcom designs application‑specific chips for hyperscalers that don’t want to depend entirely on off‑the‑shelf GPUs.
Google TPUs – Broadcom is a key design and manufacturing partner for Google’s Tensor Processing Units, including the latest TPUv6 platforms used in Gemini 3 and other AI workloads. ^[13]
Massive new orders – In Q3, Broadcom secured a roughly $10 billion order for custom AI chips from a new hyperscale customer, widely speculated to be Anthropic. Those shipments are slated to ramp in 2026 and helped management project AI revenue growth above 60% in fiscal 2026. ^[14]

On top of that, broader analyses of Broadcom’s AI business suggest:

Fiscal 2024 AI semiconductor revenues reached about $12.2 billion, up 220% year‑on‑year, contributing to a semiconductor revenue run‑rate above $30 billion. ^[15]
AI revenue is projected to reach roughly $19.9 billion in 2025, around 31% of total sales, if current growth trends hold. ^[16]

In other words, Broadcom has rapidly shifted from being “just” a diversified chip and software company to being one of the core suppliers of the plumbing of large‑scale AI data centers: custom accelerators, Ethernet switches, optical links and connectivity for AI clusters.

VMware: the software pillar

Then there’s VMware, the $69 billion acquisition that closed in 2023. Analysts now view the VMware integration as the second engine in Broadcom’s story:

VMware’s infrastructure software revenue has pushed total company sales to fresh records and given Broadcom a significant subscription and recurring‑revenue base. ^[17]
Broadcom has been aggressively moving VMware customers toward VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and subscription licensing, boosting margins but also generating pushback from some partners and smaller customers. ^[18]

The combined narrative is powerful: Broadcom sells both the hardware that runs modern AI workloads and the software that underpins enterprise and private‑cloud infrastructure. That dual positioning is a big part of why Wall Street keeps lining up behind the stock. ^[19]

Q4 2025 earnings on December 11: what the market expects

Broadcom will report fourth‑quarter and full‑year fiscal 2025 results on Thursday, December 11, after the market close, with a conference call scheduled for 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time. ^[20]

Analysts and derivatives markets are treating this as a potential inflection point:

Options pricing implies a post‑earnings move of around $30 per share, or roughly ±8%, by Friday’s close. ^[21]
TipRanks and Investing.com data show consensus Q4 EPS expectations around $1.8–1.9 and revenue in the $17.4–17.5 billion range, representing year‑over‑year growth of roughly 25–32% depending on the estimate. ^[22]
Management has already guided to approximately $17.4 billion in Q4 revenue, slightly above many earlier Street forecasts, raising the bar for Thursday’s print. ^[23]

AI will again be the headline metric. A widely cited analysis of Broadcom’s own commentary suggests the company is targeting about $6.2 billion in Q4 AI chip revenue. Hitting or beating that number – and mapping it into 2026 guidance – is likely to be one of the biggest stock‑moving datapoints of the quarter. ^[24]

Macro doesn’t help calm the waters. The same week, the Federal Reserve is expected to cut rates again, and tech heavyweights from Oracle to Adobe are also reporting. Broadcom has effectively become part of a “macro + AI” trade where Fed decisions and AI spending headlines collide in the same few trading sessions. ^[25]

How Wall Street sees Broadcom now: upgrades, targets and ratings

Even after the run‑up, the Street is, on balance, still very bullish.

Data from StockAnalysis show 28 covering analysts with an overall “Strong Buy” rating. Their older, blended average price target of about $371 actually sits slightly below the current share price, but the range stretches from $210 on the low end to $472 at the high end. ^[26]

More recent aggregators point higher. Finbold, citing TipRanks data, notes that the average 12‑month target has moved to roughly $425, implying high‑single‑digit upside, with 23 Buy ratings, 2 Holds and no Sells. ^[27]

Recent December moves include: ^[28]

UBS: target raised from $415 to $472, rating Buy, citing Broadcom’s leadership in custom AI silicon for Google TPUs and partnerships with OpenAI.
Bank of America: target lifted to $460, also with a Buy rating, pointing to rising leverage from Google’s TPUs into 2026–27.
Morgan Stanley: target increased to $443 and Overweight, arguing Broadcom’s AI processor revenue could actually outpace Nvidia’s by 2026.
Susquehanna: target raised from $400 to $450, “Positive” rating, highlighting a deal to supply AI racks (10 GW worth) to OpenAI.
Oppenheimer: target boosted to $435, Outperform, citing AI and networking strength.
Mizuho (Vijay Rakesh): reiterates Outperform with a $435 target and calls Broadcom a “Top Pick for 2026” in AI hardware, pointing to strong demand from Google’s Gemini 3, Meta, Apple and Anthropic.

TipRanks’ latest breakdown shows a Strong Buy consensus with an average target just above $425, implying about 9–12% upside depending on the reference price. ^[29]

Not everyone is purely euphoric. A recent analysis on Seeking Alpha, titled “Broadcom: Expecting Strong Earnings But Remain On Hold,” notes that AVGO trades around 45× forward earnings, leading the author to argue that much of the AI upside may already be priced in. ^[30]

Long‑term forecasts to 2030: AI infrastructure, optical links and cash flow

Looking beyond this week’s volatility, several deep‑dive pieces have attempted to sketch out what Broadcom could look like over the rest of the decade.

A November forecast from 24/7 Wall St. emphasizes Broadcom’s role as a central supplier of AI‑related semiconductors and networking rather than a consumer‑facing brand. Key points from that analysis: ^[31]

Broadcom has leaned hard into optical connectivity for AI data centers, including co‑packaged optics (CPO), high‑speed SerDes, DSPs and PCIe Gen 6 over optics – all the wiring and signaling that keep AI clusters fed with data.
Q3 results showed record revenue driven by AI accelerators, networking and VMware, reinforcing the idea that Broadcom is now a “picks and shovels” play on AI.
The company reportedly secured more than $10 billion in AI infrastructure orders from OpenAI, adding to its existing deals with Alphabet and other hyperscalers.
Free cash flow nearly doubled between FY 2019 and FY 2023, from about $9.3 billion to around $17.6 billion, giving Broadcom a formidable war chest for R&D, acquisitions and shareholder returns.

Other AI‑focused analyses forecast continued 30%+ annual AI revenue growth through at least 2027, assuming sustained hyperscaler investment, VMware cross‑selling and Broadcom’s ability to win custom chip designs against rivals. ^[32]

Dividend investors won’t live off the yield, but they do get a steadily rising payment. Recent data show: ^[33]

Annual dividend: about $2.36 per share,
Yield: roughly 0.6% at current prices,
Payout frequency: quarterly, with the latest ex‑dividend date on September 22, 2025,
Around 15 consecutive years of dividend growth.

Broadcom isn’t trying to be a classic high‑yield stock; the dividend is more of a signal of cash‑flow strength layered on top of an aggressive growth story.

Valuation, risks and what could go wrong

Of course, when a stock doubles (or more) in a year and trades near 100× trailing earnings, the downside scenarios start to matter just as much as the bull case.

1. Valuation and expectations

Depending on which measure you look at:

Trailing P/E is around 99–100. ^[34]
Some AI revenue outlooks put Broadcom’s effective P/E near 97× on current earnings. ^[35]
Forward multiples around 45× still screen rich versus Broadcom’s own history and many semiconductor peers. ^[36]

AInvest and other analysts warn that at this valuation, execution has to be nearly flawless. Missing Q4 guidance (around $17.4 billion in revenue and $6.2 billion in AI chip sales) could trigger a sharp re‑rating, even if absolute numbers remain strong. ^[37]

2. AI cycle, competition and customer behavior

The AI infrastructure boom is real, but it may not be a straight line. Recent reports about Microsoft’s internal AI sales targets – even after being disputed – were enough to knock AI stocks around for a day, showing how fragile sentiment can be. ^[38]

Broadcom faces competition on multiple fronts:

Nvidia still dominates general‑purpose AI GPUs.
Marvell and others are pushing their own custom AI accelerators. ^[39]
Hyperscalers are designing more in‑house chips, which could eventually compress margins or reduce dependence on Broadcom. ^[40]

Bullish firms like Morgan Stanley argue that Broadcom’s custom AI processor revenue could outpace Nvidia’s by 2026, but that’s a forecast, not a guarantee. ^[41]

3. Geopolitics and regulation

Analysts also flag China trade restrictions and broader geopolitical risk as meaningful headwinds. AI‑related export controls can limit Broadcom’s addressable market and complicate supply chains, especially as Chinese chipmakers and data‑center players work to localize more of their technology stacks. ^[42]

4. VMware integration and customer pushback

While VMware has boosted revenue and margins, analysts note ongoing customer churn and dissatisfaction with new licensing models and pricing. That creates openings for rivals like Microsoft’s Hyper‑V, Nutanix and even open‑source alternatives, especially among smaller enterprises. ^[43]

If VMware’s recurring revenue engine sputters – or if enterprises rebel more loudly against Broadcom’s pricing – it could dent the “AI + software” thesis that currently supports the premium multiple.

5. Macro risk

Finally, interest rates still matter. High‑multiple tech, including Broadcom, is particularly sensitive to expectations for future Fed policy. This week’s rate decision and Jerome Powell’s commentary could either reinforce the current appetite for growth stocks or remind investors that discounted‑cash‑flow math can turn brutal if rates stay higher for longer. ^[44]

Bottom line: how to think about Broadcom stock right now

Put all of this together and Broadcom sits at a fascinating crossroads on December 8, 2025:

On the bull side, you have: explosive AI chip growth, a deepening role in Google’s TPU roadmap and OpenAI‑linked infrastructure, a massive new XPU order for 2026, the VMware software engine, strong free cash flow, and a who’s‑who of Wall Street assigning Buy ratings and lifting targets. ^[45]
On the bear or cautious side, you have: some of the richest valuation multiples in the chip sector, dependence on a still‑young AI spending cycle, integration risks around VMware, regulatory overhangs, and a very real possibility that even “good” earnings might not be “good enough” for a market priced for perfection. ^[46]

For long‑term investors who believe AI infrastructure spending will keep compounding for years and who are comfortable riding out volatility, Broadcom offers a rare combination of entrenched customer relationships, hardware and software breadth, and cash‑flow power – with a modest but growing dividend on top.

For short‑term traders or more valuation‑sensitive investors, the setup around the December 11 earnings report – plus this week’s Fed decision – may look more like a coin toss with large stakes on both sides. A strong beat and confident AI guidance could push AVGO to new highs; a miss or lukewarm outlook could finally give skeptics the correction they’ve been waiting for. ^[47]