Broadcom CEO Hock Tan.
Lucas Jackson | Reuters
Broadcom reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday and said artificial intelligence revenue for the year more than tripled.
The chipmaker’s stock jumped after Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said the company is developing custom AI chips with three large cloud customers. The shares were up 13% in extended trading.
Here’s how Broadcom did versus LSEG consensus estimates for the quarter ending Nov. 3:
- Earnings per share: $1.42, adjusted vs. $1.38 expected
- Revenue: $14.05 billion vs. $14.09 billion expected
Broadcom said it expects first-quarter revenue of about $14.6 billion, just ahead of the $14.57 billion average analyst estimate. For the fourth quarter, year-over-year revenue increased 51% from $9.3 billion.
Net income in the fourth quarter came in at $4.32 billion, or 90 cents per share, up 23% from $3.52 billion, or 83 cents per share, in the same quarter a year earlier.
In its semiconductor solutions group, which includes the company’s artificial intelligence chips, revenue increased 12% to $8.23 billion from $8.03 billion a year ago.
Broadcom is seeing soaring demand from the boom in generative AI infrastructure. For the year, the company said AI revenue jumped 220% to $12.2 billion. Some of that growth is from ethernet networking parts, which are used to tie together thousands of AI chips.
“We see an opportunity over the next three years in AI,” Tan told investors on the earnings call. “Massive specific hyperscalers have begun their respective journeys to develop their own custom AI accelerators.”
Tan said Broadcom is currently developing AI chips with three very large customers, and he expects each of them them to deploy 1 million AI chips in networked clusters by 2027. Tan said the total market opportunity for its AI chips, which it calls XPUs, as well as parts for AI networking could be between $60 billion and $90 billion by 2027.
Broadcom said its infrastructure software division generated $5.82 billion in revenue for the quarter, nearly tripling from last year’s $1.96 billion. That includes a boost from the $69 billion acquisition of VMware, which was completed after the year-ago quarter.
Broadcom said it would increase its quarterly dividend by 11% in fiscal 2025 to 59 cents per share.
