For chip stock Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), big ambitions are the order of the day. And it’s recently offered up some insight into how it means to make those big ambitions a reality. Investors, meanwhile, are quietly optimistic and gave Qualcomm shares a fractional boost at the time of writing. Qualcomm expects to pull in $4 billion in revenue by the end of this year from just one sector. And, by the end of the decade, that figure will more than double to $9 billion if all goes as planned. The sector of choice for Qualcomm? Connectivity in cars.
Currently, Qualcomm is showing off its Snapdragon Cockpit Experience Toolkit, along with the work it’s done previously, as a way to demonstrate how it plans to improve vehicle connectivity and user experience. That’s helped Qualcomm branch out from merely powering smart devices to having a real shot at those multi-billion returns.
A Growing Product Line
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that Qualcomm would want to branch out, but a look at how much might be. In fact, reports from Axios noted Qualcomm recently knocked IBM (NYSE:IBM) out of its slot on the overall patent list. Now, Qualcomm has the second-most patents of any corporation in the United States, second only to Samsung. This is also the first time in 30 years that a company has managed to achieve more patents than IBM, which makes Qualcomm a real potential up-and-comer, even if it already has substantial name recognition behind it.
Is Qualcomm a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on QCOM stock based on 13 Buys, five Holds, and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 22.57% rally in its share price over the past year, the average QCOM price target of $143.18 per share implies 2.38% upside potential.
