By Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis
(Reuters) -Chip designer Arm Holdings gave a fiscal first-quarter revenue forecast on Wednesday that beat Wall Street’s expectations, but its full-year forecast was below expectations.
Shares of Arm fell about 4% in extended trading after the report.
For the current fiscal first quarter, Arm forecast revenue in a range between $875 million and $925 million, with a midpoint of $900 million, compared with an average analyst estimate of $857.5 million, according to LSEG data.
The UK chip designer also said it expects full-year revenue between $3.8 billion and $4.1 billion, with a midpoint of $3.95 billion. That compares with a consensus estimate of $3.99 billion.
Arm’s fourth-quarter revenue rose 47% to $928 million, compared with analyst estimates of $875.6 million.
It reported fourth-quarter earnings of 36 cents per share, adjusted for stock-based compensation, among other things.
Arm generates revenue from licensing fees for its semiconductor designs and collects a royalty for each chip sold that uses its technology.
Bets that Arm will benefit from a surge in artificial-intelligence computing have doubled the chipmaker’s share price since its initial public offer last September, giving it market value of about $110 billion. The shares recently traded at nearly 70 times expected earnings, compared with 35 times earnings for heavyweight chipmaker Nvidia, according to LSEG data.
Arm’s designs power nearly every smartphone in the world, and the company has attempted to make headway in data centers and other markets. Chips with Arm technology generate $200 billion a year of revenue for the many chipmakers that sell them, according to research from TD Cowen.
Though Arm’s designs are found adjacent to chips that power AI applications, the company’s revenue and profit have not benefited from AI to the same degree as Nvidia’s.
(Reporting by Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis in San FranciscoAdditional reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa and Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru, and by Noel Randewich in Oakland, CaliforniaEditing by Matthew Lewis)
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