Shares of U.S. semiconductor corporations Broadcom fell 4.5% in after-hours trading on the 11th local time. Broadcom drew attention as the corporations that developed the tensor processing unit (TPU) with Google, but the stock is seen to have fallen after it issued a revenue outlook that missed market expectations. The TPU is expected to be an artificial intelligence (AI) chip that could replace Nvidia's graphics processing unit (GPU).
Broadcom said in its fiscal 2025 fourth-quarter (August–October) earnings release that adjusted earnings per share came to $1.95. That beat the market consensus of $1.86. Revenue for the period rose 28% from a year earlier to $18.02 billion (about 26.54 trillion won). The company said the increase was due to AI chip revenue jumping 74% from a year earlier. Revenue in the semiconductor solutions institutional sector also rose 22% from a year earlier. Net income also rose 97% to $8.51 billion (about 12.5352 trillion won) from $4.32 billion a year earlier.
Bloomberg said the decline in the share price despite solid results appeared to be due to the announcement by Broadcom Chief Executive Officer Hock Tan. After the earnings release, Tan said on a conference call that the backlog of AI products to be shipped over the next six quarters was $73 billion (about 107.551 trillion won). Tan said the figure was "a minimum," adding, "We expect more shipment orders within the next six quarters." Still, investors were disappointed by the figure, dragging down the share price, according to the analysis.
Tan also said in the fourth quarter the company won an order worth $11 billion (about 16.2118 trillion won) from Anthropic, the developer of the AI chatbot "Claude." However, he also said overall margins are shrinking due to AI product sales.
Citing market uncertainty, Broadcom also held off on issuing a fiscal 2026 AI revenue outlook. On the outlook for next year, Tan said it was "a moving target."