San Diego, April 24, 2026, 06:57 (PDT)
Qualcomm shot up roughly 9.7% to $146.97 in early U.S. trade Friday, a brisk rally that doesn’t settle the bigger question hanging over the stock—next week’s earnings will have to prove the chipmaker isn’t just tied to smartphone swings. Adobe barely budged at $238.76, its shares unmoved even after a hefty buyback, as skepticism around the AI-heavy tech name persisted.
What sets Qualcomm apart here is the timing. The company plans to release its fiscal second-quarter numbers after the bell on April 29, with executives set to speak to investors at 1:45 p.m. Pacific Time. That puts them in the spotlight as chip stocks push to build on a robust April bounce.
Bloomberg noted earlier this week that Qualcomm was heading for a 10-day rally—something it hasn’t pulled off since 2018. Shares climbed about 11% during the streak, the stock’s top stretch in half a year, but that gain only chipped away at earlier losses.
Qualcomm isn’t sounding bullish. For the fiscal second quarter, the company is guiding for revenue between $10.2 billion and $11 billion, with adjusted EPS in a $2.45 to $2.65 range. Handset chip revenue should land close to $6 billion — management points to memory supply limitations. Memory chips, used for storing and moving data in phones and servers, remain tight; that’s enough to hold back production, even as processor demand stays steady.
Concentration remains the sticking point. In the previous quarter, Barchart noted, handset chip sales made up 73% of Qualcomm’s chip-division revenue. Automotive pulled in $1.1 billion; Internet of Things, which captures connected devices and industrial hardware, brought in $1.7 billion. Those segments are posting gains, but their scale still can’t offset softness in phones.
Chief Executive Cristiano Amon didn’t mince words after the last report. “I just wish we had more memory,” he told Reuters. According to Amon, phone makers—China’s in particular—are working down inventories to cope with memory supply constraints. Bob O’Donnell, chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research, also told Reuters that the shortage might hang over Qualcomm “for the next several quarters.” Reuters
Wall Street’s patience with Qualcomm is wearing thin. JPMorgan’s Samik Chatterjee pulled his rating down to Neutral from Overweight and slashed the price target to $140, down from $185. He pointed to a tougher data-center chip market and short-term headwinds in smartphones. Chatterjee also flagged a lack of evidence that Qualcomm can deliver in data centers—a space where Nvidia and Arm are already gaining ground.
Qualcomm isn’t the only one making moves. As of Thursday, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index had strung together 17 consecutive gains, Reuters reported Friday. A busy slate of tech earnings from Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Apple now looms, posing the question: will investors keep bidding up stocks tied to AI growth? Reuters
Adobe is seeing similar pressures in software. Shares have dropped roughly 30% this year, as investors worry that fresh AI design tools might bite into demand. The Photoshop maker responded, authorizing a $25 billion buyback plan running through April 30, 2030. CFO Dan Durn described the move as “a direct expression of confidence” in both Adobe’s cash flow and the company’s ability to create long-term value for investors. Reuters
Adobe isn’t just leaning on capital returns to sell its AI push—it’s rolling out new products, too. At its Summit, the company introduced CX Enterprise, a so-called agentic AI platform built to handle multi-step tasks under human supervision. Adobe says the software will run on platforms from Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Google Cloud, IBM, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI. “We’re looking to move teams beyond AI experiments, to real business outcomes,” said Anil Chakravarthy, president of Adobe’s customer experience group. Adobe Newsroom
Leadership is also in flux. In March, Adobe announced that Shantanu Narayen, who’s been CEO for 18 years, will step down after a successor is named and stay on as board chair. Investors now have two things to track: the AI strategy and who takes the top job next.
The risk is straightforward. Qualcomm’s rally could easily lose steam if guidance on April 29 points to a prolonged memory crunch, continued sluggishness in China smartphone demand, or if its data-center push doesn’t ramp up fast enough. Adobe? Similar dilemma. Buybacks might help EPS, but they don’t address the bigger question: whether competition from AI upstarts like Anthropic and Figma ends up shifting what customers are willing to spend.
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