Bank of America has adjusted its valuation of Qualcomm, raising the firm’s price target from $165 to $195 after extending its model to calendar year (CY) 2028 and applying a 15x price-to-earnings multiple, while leaving its underlying estimates unchanged. Those estimates include a projection of roughly $2.5 billion in AI revenue for CY 2028.
Qualcomm is set to host an Investor Day on Wednesday, June 24, where management is expected to lay out a strategic shift away from heavy dependence on handset revenue toward a broader AI compute platform. Company presentations are anticipated to emphasize plans to address compute needs across the edge, automotive, internet of things (IoT) and data center markets, with management aiming to show a path that would see the majority of sales sourced from non-smartphone segments by the end of the decade.
What analysts expect from Investor Day
Bank of America outlined five specific updates it expects Qualcomm to provide during the event:
- Data center market sizing: A near-term addressable opportunity estimated at $2 billion to $5 billion by fiscal years 2027-2028.
- HUMAIN agreement progress: An update on a 200-megawatt agreement for accelerators, with the ramp expected in the second half of 2026.
- Hyperscaler ASIC deal: Further details on a previously announced multi-generation ASIC contract.
- Dragonfly roadmap: Performance targets and specifics for the AI200 and AI250 accelerators focused on inference in data centers.
- Customer pipeline: Additional AI customer announcements and design wins.
Why BofA remains cautious
Despite the higher price target and Qualcomm’s extended AI roadmap, Bank of America retained an Underperform rating for two central reasons. First, its scenario analysis suggests that a highly successful outcome - for example, hitting $10 billion in data center and AI sales in CY 2028 at 20% earnings before tax (EBT) margins - appears to be reflected already in the stock’s current price.
Second, the firm flagged execution risk in a crowded market. Current data center revenue for Qualcomm is still minimal, and the company needs to demonstrate it can translate its strong consumer-device CPU and NPU performance into the complex workloads associated with data centers. BofA pointed to an array of established competitors that Qualcomm will face, including Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, Marvell, Arm and Intel.
Market context and investor tools mentioned
The analysis notes that while the valuation has been extended to CY 2028, BofA did not change its financial estimates beyond that roll-forward. The write-up also references investor services that evaluate Qualcomm alongside other companies; one such tool described in the material assesses firms using more than 100 financial metrics and cites prior notable picks such as Super Micro Computer (+185%) and AppLovin (+157%).
As Qualcomm prepares to present its timetable, product roadmaps and customer engagements, investors and industry observers will be watching whether management can substantiate a transition toward meaningful non-smartphone revenue and provide concrete evidence of scale in the data center segment.