U.K. fabless (chip design specialist) Arm announced results for the second quarter of its own fiscal year (July–September) and issued guidance for the next quarter that topped market expectations.
Arm said on the 5th (local time) that second-quarter revenue rose 34% from a year earlier to $1.14 billion (about 1.6 trillion won) and earnings per share came in at 39 cents. A doubling of sales of the "Neoverse" products used in data centers drove the improvement.
For next-quarter guidance, Arm projected revenue of about $1.23 billion (about 1.778 trillion won) and earnings per share of 41 cents. That beats analysts' estimates (revenue of $1.1 billion and earnings per share of 35 cents). Rene Haas, Arm chief executive officer (CEO), said, "Strong demand continues across technology, especially in data centers." Haas also said the company plans to acquire "DreamBig Semiconductor," which makes chips used in networking.
Arm is regarded as a powerhouse in intellectual property (IP), the backbone of chip design. More than 90% of the world's semiconductors are designed based on the corporation's IP. Arm in particular designs chips specialized for battery-powered environments that consume little power, effectively monopolizing the IP market for application processors (AP), known as the "brains" of smartphones. Low-power chip design is also considered essential in the artificial intelligence (AI) data center field. Bloomberg said of Arm's outlook that "the results reflect investments in new technology to cement its position in the AI data center market."