Contrasting Ambiq Micro (NYSE:AMBQ) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM)

Ambiq Micro (NYSE:AMBQ) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) are both technology companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, dividends, profitability, analyst recommendations, valuation, risk and institutional ownership.

Profitability

This table compares Ambiq Micro and Qualcomm’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Ambiq Micro	-37.77%	-11.85%	-10.80%
Qualcomm	21.01%	38.36%	17.48%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent recommendations and price targets for Ambiq Micro and Qualcomm, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Ambiq Micro	1	4	3	0	2.25
Qualcomm	2	20	14	2	2.42

Ambiq Micro currently has a consensus price target of $82.20, indicating a potential upside of 44.94%. Qualcomm has a consensus price target of $203.63, indicating a potential upside of 28.45%. Given Ambiq Micro’s higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Ambiq Micro is more favorable than Qualcomm.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

74.3% of Qualcomm shares are held by institutional investors. 10.0% of Ambiq Micro shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.1% of Qualcomm shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Ambiq Micro and Qualcomm”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Ambiq Micro	$97.87 million	14.01	-$36.46 million	($2.12)	-26.75
Qualcomm	$44.07 billion	3.78	$5.54 billion	$8.64	18.35

Qualcomm has higher revenue and earnings than Ambiq Micro. Ambiq Micro is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Qualcomm, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Qualcomm beats Ambiq Micro on 11 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Ambiq Micro

Our mission is to enable intelligence (artificial intelligence (AI) and beyond) everywhere by delivering the lowest power semiconductor solutions. We are a pioneer and leading provider of ultra-low power semiconductor solutions designed to address the significant power consumption challenges of general purpose and AI compute – especially at the edge. Our customers rely on Ambiq to deliver AI compute closer to end users (edge environments) where power consumption challenges are the most severe. Our leading position is built upon our hardware and software innovations that deliver two to five times lower power consumption than traditional semiconductor designs. Our products power over 270 million devices today. We shipped more than 42 million units in 2024, and we estimate that over 40% of them ran AI algorithms. We seek to drive growth in AI adoption at the edge in the personal devices, medical/healthcare, industrial edge, and smart home and building markets and continue to set new standards in edge AI performance and power efficiency. Over time, we expect to integrate our ultra-low power technology into additional chip products that benefit from greater power efficiency, including high-performance compute applications such as AI data centers and automotive. AI is perhaps the most disruptive and revolutionary technology trend of recent history, estimated to represent $23 trillion of global annual spend by 2040, according to McKinsey. AI use cases continue to permeate our lives and improve our daily productivity by enabling us to interact with devices via voice and gestures, unlock our homes with facial recognition, track health accurately and intelligently, and hold clear calls amidst loud background noise. To date, a majority of AI compute has been deployed in data centers due to its large physical scale and the need for wall plug energy, as AI compute requires enormous and steady energy resources. At the edge, however, power limitations have been especially acute due to small device size and limited battery life. We believe this greatly constrains the potential of AI to improve our daily, on-the-go lives. Enabling AI at the edge – where the action takes place – with vastly improved power efficiency will allow faster real-time decision-making due to data proximity, greater data privacy, higher energy efficiency from reduced network usage, and less dependence on constant costly connections to the cloud. We believe new AI use cases will only be possible if edge devices are much more power efficient. Our proprietary Sub-threshold Power Optimized Technology (SPOT) platform is designed to fundamentally and cost-effectively reduce power consumption of battery- and wireline-powered devices alike. Depending on the application, devices incorporating SPOT demonstrate a two to five times reduction in power consumption compared to conventional integrated circuit designs. SPOT is a ground-breaking approach at the chip design level that incorporates sub- and near-threshold hardware without using expensive manufacturing processes. We provide a full-stack solution encompassing tightly integrated hardware and software. Our solutions include a diverse family of systems-on-chip (SoCs) and the software required to enable on-chip AI processing, general compute, sensing, security, storage, wireless connectivity, and advanced graphics. Our SoC solutions deliver compute at a very small fraction of the power consumed by our competitors’ products. Our ultra-low power SoCs serve a wide range of markets requiring on-device and real-time AI, including smartwatches and fitness trackers, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) glasses, smart rings, digital health monitors, security systems and access control, livestock tracking, crop monitoring, and factory automation. These devices increasingly offer on-chip AI-powered features such as speech recognition, domain-specific language models, image and video processing, and sensing, further straining power consumption, which our solutions are positioned to address. As global demand for our SoC solutions accelerates, our sales and marketing efforts are increasingly focused on our end customers in target geographies such as the United States, Europe, and Asia (ex-MainlandChina). We were incorporated in Delaware on January 20, 2010 under the name Cubiq Microchip, Inc., and in October 2012, changed our name to Ambiq Micro, Inc. Our principal executive offices are located in Austin, Texas.

About Qualcomm

Qualcomm Incorporated engages in the development and commercialization of foundational technologies for the wireless industry worldwide. It operates through three segments: Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT); Qualcomm Technology Licensing (QTL); and Qualcomm Strategic Initiatives (QSI). The QCT segment develops and supplies integrated circuits and system software based on 3G/4G/5G and other technologies for use in wireless voice and data communications, networking, computing, multimedia, and position location products. The QTL segment grants licenses or provides rights to use portions of its intellectual property portfolio, which include various patent rights useful in the manufacture and sale of wireless products comprising products implementing CDMA2000, WCDMA, LTE and/or OFDMA-based 5G standards and their derivatives. The QSI segment invests in early-stage companies in various industries, including 5G, artificial intelligence, automotive, consumer, enterprise, cloud, IoT, and extended reality, and investments, including non-marketable equity securities and, to a lesser extent, marketable equity securities, and convertible debt instruments. It also provides development, and other services and related products to the United States government agencies and their contractors. The company was incorporated in 1985 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.