I skipped breakfast this morning, knowing I wouldn't need it.
That's because I knew I had a big plate of crow waiting for me, thanks to broadband chip-maker Broadcom's (Nasdaq: BRCM) impressive earnings report yesterday. In case you missed it, I had incorrectly assumed that Motorola's (NYSE: MOT) missteps in the wireless phone market would drag on Broadcom's numbers, or at least put a ding in its future outlook.
Not so. Broadcom wowed Wall Street by reporting $1.03 billion in revenue for the quarter, in the upper range of the company's own projections. Earnings doubled over last year, with $90.3 million falling to the bottom line on a GAAP basis. While Broadcom saw some decline in broadband communications revenue as sales of satellite set-top box products were weaker than expected, strength in the enterprise networking and mobile and wireless business lines made for a strong quarter.
The mobile and wireless business -- which would be impacted by Motorola's mistakes -- remained strong, boosted by a $32 million royalty payment from Verizon Wireless (a joint venture between Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD)).
While Motorola painted an even worse picture for the coming quarter, Broadcom projected decent revenue in the range of $975 million to $1.005 billion. This is down from the current level, obviously, but that's mostly due to seasonal factors. For the coming year, Broadcom sees more growth opportunity in products such as Bluetooth headsets and wireless handsets from customers that are performing, such as Samsung.
Broadcom is also looking forward to developing a solid revenue stream from top handset maker Nokia (NYSE: NOK), though design wins won't translate into significant revenue until 2009. On the litigation front, the company is also encouraged about recent court wins against Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) that should bring it more royalties in coming quarters. Broadcom isn't letting up, though -- the company is even contending that one of Qualcomm's workarounds still infringes on one of its patents.
One last bit of good news investors received was that Broadcom would start moderating its expenses going forward. After spending heavily in R&D and watching margins plummet for several quarters, the company will be focused more diligently on converting those investments into revenue. If the company's diverse product and customer base can hold up as well as it did this quarter, investors should be quite pleased.
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