Buy, Sell or Hold Broadcom Stock? Key Tips Ahead of Q1 Earnings

Broadcom AVGO is set to report its first-quarter fiscal 2026 results on March 4.

For first-quarter fiscal 2026, AVGO expects revenues of $19.1 billion. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues is pegged at $19.27 billion, suggesting growth of 29.2% from the year-ago quarter’s reported figure.

The consensus mark for earnings has been unchanged at $2.03 per share over the past 30 days, indicating 27% growth from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter.

Consensus Earnings Trend

Broadcom’s earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in all the trailing four quarters, the average earnings surprise being 3.35%. 
 

Broadcom Inc. Price and EPS Surprise

Broadcom Inc. price-eps-surprise | Broadcom Inc. Quote

Let us see how things have shaped up for AVGO shares prior to this announcement.

Factors to Note Prior to Broadcom’s Q1 Earnings

Broadcom’s fiscal first-quarter performance is expected to have benefited from its expanding AI offerings. AI revenues are expected to double year over year to $8.2 billion, thanks to strong demand for custom AI accelerators (XPUs), which are a type of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) necessary to train Generative AI models. 

Broadcom’s current order backlog for AI switches exceeds $10 billion as AVGO’s latest 102-terabit per second Tomahawk 6 switch continues to gain traction. AVGO’s networking portfolio is gaining from strong demand for Tomahawk 6 products, as well as the Jericho 4 Ethernet fabric router. Moreover, Broadcom has a rich partner base that includes the likes of OpenAI, Walmart, NVIDIA, Canonical, Arista Networks, Alphabet, Dell Technologies, Meta Platform, Juniper and Supermicro.

Broadcom expects semiconductor revenues to jump 50% year over year to $12.3 billion. Infrastructure Software revenues are expected to be $6.8 billion. 

However, Broadcom’s first-quarter fiscal 2026 guidance reflects the negative impacts of unfavorable AI mix in revenues, a sequential decline in non-AI semiconductor revenues and modest growth expectations for the Infrastructure Software segment. The company expects non-AI semiconductor revenues to be approximately $4.1 billion, flat year over year but down sequentially due to seasonality in wireless revenues. Higher tax rate attributed to the impacts of global minimum tax and shift in geographic mix of income compared with fiscal 2025 is another concern.

AVGO Shares Outperform Sector

AVGO shares have returned 70.5% in the trailing 12-month period, outperforming the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s return of 30.6% and the Zacks Electronics - Semiconductors industry’s appreciation of 65.14%. The company has outperformed peers, including Cisco Systems CSCO, Arista Networks ANET and Marvell Technology MRVL, in a year’s time. While shares of Cisco Systems and Arista Networks have returned 25.1% and 55.2%, respectively, Marvell Technology shares have dropped 4.9% over the same timeframe.

AVGO Stock’s Performance

The AVGO stock is not so cheap, as the Value Score of D suggests a stretched valuation at this moment.

In terms of the forward 12-month price/earnings (P/E), Broadcom shares are trading at 27.67X, higher than the sector’s 25X, Cisco’s 18.32X, Marvell’s 23.02X, and Arista Networks’ 36.92X.

AVGO Stock’s Valuation

Strong AI Portfolio Aids Broadcom’s Long-Term Prospects

AVGO’s long-term prospects are expected to benefit from the growing demand for AI infrastructure. Broadcom is benefiting from strong demand for XPUs. AVGO sees massive opportunities in the AI space as specific hyperscalers have started to deploy its XPUs. The company expects accelerated demand for XPUs in the back half of 2026 as hyperscalers focus more on inference, along with frontier model training.

AVGO expanded its portfolio with the launch of the industry’s first Wi-Fi 8 silicon solutions for the broadband wireless edge ecosystem, including residential gateways, enterprise access points and smart mobile clients. Broadcom is expanding its Wireless Device Connectivity solutions portfolio with the launch of its next-generation BCM4918 accelerated processing unit, alongside two new dual-band Wi-Fi 8 devices, the BCM6714 and BCM6719. The launch of BroadPeak, a highly integrated radio digital front-end SoC device, for 5G massive multiple-input multiple-output and remote radio head applications, which is expected to boost AVGO’s footprint in next-gen 5G advanced and 6G wireless infrastructure.

Momentum in VMware is driving Infrastructure Software revenues. The launch of VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, a fully integrated cloud platform that can be deployed by enterprise customers on-prem or carried to the cloud, is noteworthy in this regard. VCF 9 enables enterprises to run any application workload, including AI workloads, on virtual machines and on modern containers, thereby offering an alternative to public cloud.

Conclusion

Broadcom’s strong portfolio, along with an expanding partner base, reflects solid top-line growth potential over the long run. However, declining gross margin and stretched valuation make the stock a risky bet ahead of first-quarter fiscal 2026 results.

AVGO currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), which implies that investors should wait for a favorable entry point to accumulate the stock. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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