Qualcomm Analyst Day 'Uneventful,' FBR Says

• The share price of QUALCOMM, Inc. QCOM has declined 38.35 percent over the past one year, to a low of $42.96 on February 10.
• FBR’s Christopher Rolland has maintained a Market Perform rating on the company.
• While the company’s analyst day was “generally uneventful,” Rolland mentioned that Qualcomm did address some of the uncertainties associates with its royalty, while highlighting new product initiatives.

According to the FBR report, “Management spent the majority of the day highlighting its (1) RF initiatives, (2) updates on China, (3) 5G road map, (4) 60 GHz/Wilocity, (5) importance of carrier aggregation, and (6) new Snapdragon announcements.”

Analyst Christopher Rolland believes that as the pace of mobile innovation slows down, handset OEMs are likely to shift to creating their own app processors and baseband modems, in order to reduce handset costs.

“Additionally, QCOM’s IP position in 4G LTE is weaker than 3G, as we expect modestly growing QTL pressure over the long run,” Rolland said.

At its analyst day on February 11, Qualcomm provided an update on its efforts in China, announcing that more than 80 companies had accepted the new NDRC terms, including four of the top five OEMs in the country.

Qualcomm also announced that it would demo its 5G mmWave capability, acquired through the Wilocity acquisition, at the Mobile World Congress. The company also gave an update on its progress towards getting to commercial 60GHz launches of 5G by 2020.

The company also unveiled three new Snapdragon chips to be used in mid-tier smartphones, while announcing other new products, such as the new Snapdragon Wear platform and its sixth-generation LTE multimode chipset.