A Broadcom sign is pictured as the company prepares to launch new optical chip tech to fend off Nvidia in San Jose, California, U.S., September 5, 2025.
Brittany Hosea-small | Reuters
Broadcom reported fourth-quarter results that beat expectations for earnings and revenue, and issued a strong forecast for the current quarter, driven by artificial intelligence demand.
The stock initially rose in extended trading before declining 2%. On an earnings call with analysts, the company said it had acquired a fifth customer for its custom chips, and revealed that Anthropic had placed a $10 billion order for Google’s TPUs during the quarter.
Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: $1.95 adjusted vs. $1.86 estimated
- Revenue: $18.02 billion vs. $17.49 billion estimated
Broadcom said revenue in the fiscal first quarter will be about $19.1 billion, which would represent 28% year-over-year growth, and is higher than the $18.3 billion average analyst estimate, according to LSEG.
CEO Hock Tan said in a statement that Broadcom expects AI chip sales this quarter to double from a year earlier to $8.2 billion, both from custom AI chips as well as semiconductors for AI networking.
Net income climbed 97% to $8.51 billion, or $1.74 per share, from $4.32 billion, or 90 cents per share, in the year-ago period.
Along with Nvidia, Broadcom has been the other major winner among U.S. semiconductor companies due to the AI boom. The company’s stock price is up 75% so far in 2025, after doubling last year, as its custom chips, such as Google’s tensor processing units, are gaining increasing traction in the market as a rival to Nvidia’s graphics processing units.
In June, Broadcom said it had three customers and four prospects for its custom AI chips. In September, it said it had a fourth mystery customer who had placed a $10 billion order for custom chips, and separately, announced a partnership with OpenAI in October to develop custom chips. Investors are closely watching to see Broadcom confirm that those companies are continuing to engage and are on-track to buy and deploy custom chips.
The mystery fourth customer is Anthropic, which is using the latest Google TPU called Ironwood, Tan said on a earnings call with analysts.
Tan said that Broadcom’s other customers “prefer to control their own destiny by continuing to drive their multiyear journey to create their own custom AI accelerators, or XPUs, as we call them.”
He said that Broadcom had added a 5th customer for custom chips, which had placed a $1 billion order expected to be delivered in late 2026.
Broadcom’s overall revenue grew 28% during the quarter, which the company attributed largely to a 74% increase in AI chip sales, which would be equivalent to $8.2 billion in AI revenue during the fourth quarter.
AI chip sales are reported in the company’s semiconductor solutions business, which reported $11.07 billion in sales, up 22% on an annual basis, and topping StreetAccount’s $10.77 billion estimate.
Broadcom’s other major segment, infrastructure software, reported 26% growth to $6.94 billion in sales, topping Wall Street’s expectations. The segment includes sales from the company’s VMWare offerings.
Broadcom said that it would issue a per-share dividend of 65 cents, payable later this month, up from 59 cents.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/11/broadcom-avgo-q4-earnings-2025.html
