The stock market may not look like a good place to be right now, as the Federal Reserve's hawkish nature has sent equities tumbling in 2022, but this has opened a solid opportunity for savvy investors to buy some great companies at attractive valuations.
Qualcomm (QCOM 0.52%) is one such company that investors may want to buy hand over fist right now, especially after its latest announcement pointing toward a massive acceleration in its automotive business.
Qualcomm's automotive pipeline jumps to $30 billion
On Sept. 22, Qualcomm said in a news release that its design win pipeline in the automotive market has now increased to $30 billion thanks to the growing adoption of its Snapdragon platform in the auto industry. The release specified that the "design win pipeline reflects the current estimated future size of awarded automaker programs, based on forecasts provided directly by automakers and Tier-1 suppliers."
NASDAQ: QCOM
Key Data Points
Put simply, a design win means that Qualcomm's chips have been selected by manufacturers for use in their vehicles or other automotive platforms. Qualcomm will start generating revenue from these design wins once those products or platforms move into the production phase. It is worth noting that Qualcomm's automotive design win pipeline stood at $19 billion at the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2022 for the three months ending on June 26, 2022.
So Qualcomm's potential automotive revenue pipeline has shot up nearly 60% in the space of just one quarter. More importantly, the updated revenue opportunity means that the chipmaker's automotive business could take off big time in the coming quarters and move the needle in a bigger way for the company.
Qualcomm's automotive revenue jumped an impressive 38% year-over-year in fiscal Q3 to $350 million. The segment accounted for just over 3% of the company's top line last quarter. Qualcomm expects to finish fiscal 2022 with automotive revenue of $1.3 billion, which would be an increase of 33% over last year.
More importantly, the company is confident of clocking sustained growth in the automotive business over the long run, thanks to its $30 billion pipeline. Qualcomm expects to generate revenue of more than $4 billion in fiscal 2026 and over $9 billion in fiscal 2031 from the automotive business. The company currently forecasts a 10x jump in its annual automotive revenue over the next decade.
But it wouldn't be surprising if the automotive business became much bigger in the long run than what Qualcomm is anticipating now, as its pipeline could grow further. That's because Qualcomm has created a vast ecosystem of automakers, component manufacturers, telecom companies, smartphone manufacturers, and e-commerce providers, among others, that are working with it to deploy automotive solutions.
These partnerships could help Qualcomm corner a bigger share of the automotive revenue opportunity in the long run. After all, the company sees its automotive total addressable market (TAM) expanding to $100 billion by 2030, driven by an increase in semiconductor content per vehicle. This also means that Qualcomm has cornered a big chunk of its TAM already with a solid design win pipeline, which points toward the company's dominance in this nascent market.
All this indicates that Qualcomm's automotive business is on track to boom big time in the long run and complement the other catalysts that the company is sitting on, including the metaverse.
Buying the stock is a no-brainer
The broader stock market sell-off has weighed heavily on Qualcomm this year, with the company's shares losing a third of their value so far. As a result, Qualcomm is now trading at just 10.7 times trailing earnings.
The chipmaker is expected to finish fiscal 2022 with a 32% year-over-year jump in revenue and a 47% jump in earnings. So Qualcomm stock seems undervalued relative to the impressive growth it is clocking right now.
Even better, the company's current growth drivers, such as the 5G smartphone market, and emerging opportunities such as automotive and the Internet of Things (IoT) mean that this semiconductor stock is built for terrific long-term growth, which is why investors looking for a mix of value and growth may want to buy it before it soars higher and becomes expensive.
