One of big tech’s biggest battles is now over, and it’s making Wall Street more bullish on the space.
On Tuesday, chipmaker Qualcomm and iPhone maker Apple settled a yearslong dispute over patent royalties, sending shares of Qualcomm on a more than 35% tear over the course of two days, a $26 billion boost to its market cap.
Here’s what four top market watchers had to say about the newfound prospects for Qualcomm and Apple:
Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” was excited about what this deal means for Apple:
“The thing that I don’t understand is why isn’t Apple up more? Before, we had 5G that was completely uncertain. We had no way to build a model on 5G. Now you have 5G. So … I believe next Christmas — not this year, but next year — could be the biggest Apple Christmas in history. So, you want to sell the stock now, because you know that next year at this time you can buy it back at $270?”
Cerity Partners’ Jim Lebenthal saw huge runway for Qualcomm’s stock:
“I think you stick with this stock. I do understand that it’s up something like 33% in two days, but fair value to me on this stock is $96 a share. With Apple revenues and earnings now back in the picture — they’ve been out for two years — you’re looking at earnings around $6 [per share], probably north of that. But use $6, put a 16 [times price-to-earnings] multiple on that, [and] you get to $96. If you want to know, why 16 times? Look: if this were just a chip manufacturer, you’d say 10 to 12 times. But what happened yesterday validated … the high-margin [intellectual property] model that Qualcomm has depended on for 25 years. That deserves a much higher multiple. And, look, for people who know this stock over the last 20 years, this Apple issue isn’t the first time they’ve been challenged on this. You go back to Broadcom 15 years ago; same thing happened. You had Samsung, you had countries, whether it’s Korea, China [or] the U.S. right now. This model has been tested again and again and again and they always come out on top. That’s why I love this stock at $50, but $96, 25% higher? I see that by summer.”
Pete Najarian of Investitute.com also noted how well Qualcomm was holding up:
“Yesterday I had options and stock in here, and it all started when we had some huge buying. And we were talking about everything being short term. Well, you go back to February, March: all of a sudden, we saw some October buying [and] we saw some July buying in here. By the way, those July [options were] July $62.50 calls — how are they doing? 80 cents, and now the stock’s trading, what is it? $77, $78? So these are now trading, call it, somewhere close to some real money. So these are huge gains. You have to take stuff off into that. I took it off way too early. I was taking this off yesterday in the afternoon as I’m watching the stock scream to the upside because I thought, ‘At any moment, we’re going to see something that’s going to pull it back down.’ It hasn’t happened.”
Virtus Investment Partners’ Joe Terranova had his eyes on a sidelined winner:
“I think what happened yesterday is very favorable for Intel. I applaud [Intel CEO] Bob Swan for acting quickly, pivoting out of a business that he wanted to get out of. This gives him the opportunity to do it. Now you’ve got Intel at a 19-year high. Clear runway straight ahead. They could focus on the priority of the business. They get out of these 5G modem chips. I think this is fantastic for Intel.”
