3. Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO)
Number of Hedge Funds Investors: 128
Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) is one of the stocks that could boost interest in the artificial intelligence sector in the short term, according to Bank of America.
“We expect strong results from AVGO, MRVL, and CRDO to reignite interest in AI semiconductors, as spending by US cloud customers and AI investments from governments remain the few reliable demand drivers in the global economy,” analyst Vivek Arya said in a client note.
For Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO), Arya expects the company to emphasize the long-term addressable market of $60B to $90B for custom accelerator chips and networking.
Broadcom threw it out of the park with its latest quarterly results. The most important part of the report? The company expects strong AI semiconductor sales growth to continue. It sees AI semiconductor revenue of about $4.4 billion in fiscal Q2, which would be a 42% year-over-year growth. Broadcom reported $6 billion in free cash flow for the quarter. Its software business gross margin came in at about 90%. But what’s Broadcom’s moat? It makes ASIC, chips designed for specific applications and tasks. As major companies look for custom chips to break Nvidia’s monopoly and lower costs, Broadcom is positioned well to thrive. Many top AI spenders are teaming up with Broadcom to develop these chips, which are expected to be high-margin, high-volume products, potentially driving substantial growth in both revenue and profits.
Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO) continues to be a leader in the AI ASCI and networking chips market. Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO) has 3nm AI ASIC chip deals with Alphabet and Meta in addition to many other tech giants aiming massive spending for AI hyperscaling.
Bell Global Equities Fund stated the following regarding Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“During December we introduced two new holdings to the portfolio and exited two names. The first addition was Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO), a leading global player in the semiconductor and software industry. We established the position early in December as we saw good potential for earnings upgrades going into 2025. Broadcom’s fundamentals continue to improve and there are many opportunities for them to continue growing double-digit revenue growth and faster profit acceleration. Broadcom has built their industry leading positions through both organic investment and strategic acquisitions. They are also a key player in the booming AI market where they develop custom chips used in data centres which are tailored to specific customer needs and networking infrastructure. Their recent acquisition of VMWare is another good example of how Broadcom can expand their opportunity set into enterprise software and garner strong pricing power from their existing customer base. This adds to their software footprint in mainframe, through CA Technologies, and in cybersecurity following their Symantec acquisition. The strength of their franchise is reflected in the high margins that they earn, which helps them generate a free cashflow margin near 40%. The strong results in mid-December reinforced the strength of the business and we see continued upside for this holding.”
