Rosenblatt raises Qualcomm stock price target to $265 on data center growth

Rosenblatt raised Qualcomm’s price target to $265 from $190 while keeping a Buy rating, implying about 34% upside from the current $197.41 share price. The bullish call follows Qualcomm’s Investor Day, where management lifted its fiscal 2029 non-handset QCT revenue target to $40 billion from $22 billion and set a data center revenue ramp from $5 billion in FY2027 to more than $15 billion in FY2029. Qualcomm also introduced an FY2029 EPS target above $18 versus the $14.55 FactSet consensus, reinforcing a more constructive long-term outlook for the stock.

Analysis

The market is starting to re-rate Qualcomm as a platform reset rather than a handset cycle story, and that matters because the multiple expansion can outrun near-term fundamentals. If management can credibly convert AI/data center into a real revenue line, the stock’s ceiling is no longer set by Android unit growth; it becomes a semi-diversified compute/security/IP compounder with a much wider investor base. The first-order winner is QCOM, but the second-order winner may be the ecosystem of silicon, packaging, and networking vendors that get pulled into a broader edge-to-cloud Qualcomm narrative.

The key risk is that the new targets are back-end loaded and easy to underwrite in slides but harder to prove in shipments. A $5B to $15B data center ramp over two years implies a steep execution curve: design wins, reference architecture adoption, and customer concentration could create lumpy revenue and margin volatility before the market grants full credibility. If the ramp slips even one year, the valuation could compress quickly because the stock is now trading on 2027–2029 expectations, not next quarter’s EPS.

The contrarian view is that the market may be underappreciating how much of this story is already embedded in analyst target resets. When multiple firms quickly mark up targets after a single event, forward returns often depend on a second catalyst, not the presentation itself. The real tell will be whether partner announcements and customer wins appear inside the next 1–2 quarters; absent that, this risks becoming a narrative trade that fades as investors rotate back to names with more visible AI revenue today.

Apple is a subtle loser only in the sense that the market’s bear case for QCOM has been diluted; that removes a long-standing overhang from QCOM’s valuation and may force some relative-value reallocations away from AAPL as investors price a more durable QCOM royalty and modem stream. The broader semi supply chain could also benefit if this forces rivals to defend share with higher R&D and pricing concessions, especially in areas where Qualcomm can bundle connectivity, edge inference, and IP more effectively than point-solution competitors.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Go long QCOM for a 3-6 month trade on post-Investor Day re-rating, but use a staged entry on pullbacks because the stock is now priced for execution; target 15-20% upside if the market keeps discounting 2027-2029 targets.
• Buy QCOM calls or call spreads dated 6-12 months out to express the AI/data center optionality with defined downside; prefer spreads over outright calls because the catalyst path is credible but still execution-dependent.
• Pair trade: long QCOM / short AAPL over 3-6 months to express the unwind of the Apple-headwind overhang and relative multiple expansion at QCOM; this works best if QCOM gets additional design-win headlines while AAPL remains slower-growth.
• Take profits on any immediate post-news momentum spike if QCOM reaches the upper end of analyst target band quickly; the risk/reward worsens after a fast re-rating unless customer proof points follow within one earnings cycle.
• For more conservative exposure, buy QCOM against short-term semi peers with weaker AI narratives on a relative basis; the trade is best framed as a 1-2 quarter momentum/relative-value expression rather than a long-duration fundamental hold.