What happened
Shares of IonQ (IONQ -3.22%) climbed 42% in the month of July, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, extending its momentum despite an analyst downgrade after the quantum computing leader secured encouraging new partnerships and raised its full-year outlook.
As it stands, the leading quantum computing stock is now up over 400% year to date as of this writing.
So what
The gains came after IonQ unleashed a bevy of encouraging press releases throughout the month of June that likely contributed to its sustained momentum last month. On June 1, IonQ successfully demonstrated the world's first quantum cognition models in a new research paper, showing that basic human decision-making tasks can be run on quantum computers as circuits. Then on June 22, the company not only launched its most powerful quantum system, IonQ Forte, for commercial use worldwide, but also unveiled a new partnership with fellow industry leader QuantumBasel to jointly establish a European quantum data center with two systems focused on Europe's industry, government entities, and research institutes. IonQ simultaneously credited the latter development for increasing its full-year 2023 booking expectations to a range of $45 million to $55 million (up from $38 million to $42 million previously).
On June 29, IonQ followed with a new agreement with South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT focused on building a local quantum ecosystem in the region.
Now what
To be clear, there were no new significant company-specific announcements that appear to have sparked last month's gains. Rather, with IonQ's quantum computing technology perfectly poised to capitalize on the burgeoning market for generative AI, the stock has simply continued to rally along with other AI-centric tech names this year.
In fact, IonQ's gains came even as one prominent analyst downgraded the stock; on July 13, Westpark Capital lowered its rating on IONQ shares from "buy" to "hold," arguing that the quantum artificial intelligence "hype" was already priced in.
As it stands, IonQ is set to report second-quarter 2023 results on Aug. 10, 2023 after the markets close -- and it's worth noting the business is still in its earliest stages of commercialization. For perspective, most analysts anticipate the company will report a roughly 67% increase in revenue, to $4.35 million, translating to a net loss of $0.13 per share. Suffice to say it will be quite interesting to see how the market reacts to IonQ's results after its enormous year-to-date rally.
