QCOM extends its rally as short sellers retreat and the Street turns cautious

The Street is more divided than the rally suggests. The consensus remains broadly cautious, with multiple neutral ratings sitting alongside a handful of buy-side holdouts. Piper Sandler initiated coverage on September 10 at Neutral with a $190 target — below the current price. RBC raised its target that same week from $160 to $180, but kept a Sector Perform rating. Rosenblatt stands apart with a $235 Buy, reflecting the bull camp's argument: Qualcomm's announced push into data centres — with specific product claims and revenue targets — represents a more aggressive addressable-market expansion than the Street previously modelled, with automotive and industrial AI providing a secondary growth rail. Bears counter that the smartphone cycle remains the dominant revenue driver, Apple customer loss risk lingers, and data centre revenues have yet to demonstrate meaningful scale. The mean price target across covering analysts is $194 — now below the market price — which partly explains why even friendly analysts have been reluctant to raise conviction. The P/E has expanded roughly 3.9 turns over the past 30 days to 19.3x, and the P/B has added 1.55 turns to 7.8x; the market is pricing in improving fundamentals that the analyst community has not yet fully endorsed.

T. Rowe Price stands out in the institutional register. The firm added just over 5 million shares as of September 1, pushing its stake to roughly 1.2% of shares outstanding — one of the larger recent active-manager additions in the holder list. Van Eck also added 3.2 million shares through August. On the insider side, CFO Akash Palkhiwala sold approximately 2,500 shares on September 11 across multiple tranches, all under a pre-arranged 10b5-1 plan. Planned sales carry far less signal than discretionary ones, but the aggregate insider net over 90 days is roughly -$1.9 million in value — a modest drag that reflects executive selling rather than any notable conviction on either side.

The next formal test is Q4 earnings on November 4. The most recent print on July 29 delivered a 6.9% single-day decline, unwinding to a 3.3% loss over five days — a pattern suggesting initial disappointment followed by partial recovery. With the stock now 23% higher than a month ago and trading above consensus targets, the November print carries more weight as a valuation anchor than it might have at lower levels: the question will be whether data centre momentum timelines and auto design-win pipeline can support a multiple that the Street has not yet blessed.