Leading United Kingdom-based tech company Arm saw its stock surge over 30% on Wednesday, Feb. 7, after the company said it expected profits and sales before earnings for the current quarter to beat market expectations by a large margin.
The company, best known for designing cutting-edge chips, cited growing demand for its artificial intelligence (AI)-based technology, according to the Financial Times. As a key supplier of chip blueprints to semiconductor industry competitors, Arm has become a success story in technology. Its technology is becoming increasingly common in chips used for AI applications.
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The news saw Arm’s market capitalization jump by $26 billion, with its stock price hitting a high of $108 before falling back to $93 at publication time. Arm stock has almost doubled in price from the $51 set at its initial public offering in September 2023.
“This is a very solid forecast from them and I think it’s probably a pretty good sign for the rest of the tech industry as a result,” president and chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research Bob O’Donnell said in comments to Reuters.
The effectiveness of its expansion strategy was also underlined as Arm’s execs revealed a huge surge in demand for its Arm-based central processors working with Nvidia’s chips.
These chips are used in AI-based applications in data centers and new laptops and smartphones running AI chatbots.
Royalties generated from the firm’s Armv9 chip design architecture now account for 15% of overall royalty revenue, up from 10% last quarter. Armv9 is generating double the royalty rate of its predecessor, Armv8.
Arm’s financials are bucking an otherwise sluggish trend set by Intel, AMD and Texas Instruments — all of which have reported weaker results in 2024.
Arm’s majority owner, SoftBank, stands to make a sizeable profit through the stock hike and may even recoup its WeWork losses. SoftBank has a lock-up provision that prevents it from selling Arm shares until the middle of March.
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