Smartphone chip company Qualcomm Inc.’s first-quarter financial results came in a bit mixed today, with profit just beating expectations and revenue falling short.

Despite strong guidance for the next quarter, the company’s stock fell after-hours.

The company reported a profit before certain costs such as stock compensation of $2.17 per share on revenue of $8.235 billion, up 62% from the same period one year before. Wall Street was looking for earnings of $2.10 per share on larger revenue of $8.27 billion.

Qualcomm Chief Executive Steve Mollenkopf (pictured) said in a statement that the company had delivered an exceptional quarter, doubling its year-over-year profit thanks to strong demand for 5G handsets, RF front-end, automotive and “internet of things” chips.

“We remain well-positioned as the 5G ramp continues and we extend our core technology roadmap to adjacent industries,” Mollenkopf said.

Indeed, Qualcomm’s business has benefited immensely from smartphones adopting 5G technology, which requires both its chips and its intellectual property. The company is expecting good things to happen this year too, forecasting between 450 million and 550 million 5G devices to ship globally this year. Notably, it has been selling 5G modems used in Apple Inc.’s new iPhones since last fall.

For the next quarter, Qualcomm is confident it will enjoy further growth, with a forecast of between $7.2 billion and $8 billion in sales, well above Wall Street’s forecast of $7.1 billion in second quarter revenue.

Even so, that wasn’t enough to please investors. The company’s stock fell more than 6% in the after-hours trading session.

Today’s report was the first from Qualcomm since January’s announcement that Mollenkopf intends to step down from the CEO role later this year after seven years in the job. The company already has a replacement lined up though, with current President Cristiano Amon set to assume the top job on June 30.

Qualcom said its Qualcomm Technology Licensing segment, which is the part of its business that licenses its technology patents, saw revenue of $1.66 billion, up 18% from the same period one year ago.

Qualcomm CDA Technologies, which accounts for the bulk of the company’s revenue, did even better with sales of $6.533 billion, up 81% from a year ago. For the first time, Qualcomm broke out revenue within QCT by segment, saying that its handset sales grew by 79%, to $4.216 billion. It also reported that its RF front-end chips, which are used to enable 5G along with its modems, saw sales rise $157%, to $1.06 billion. IoT revenue grew 48%, to $1.044 billion, and automotive added an additional $212 million in sales, up 44%.

Qualcomm also returned $1.2 billion back to stockholders in the first quarter, including $739 million worth of cash dividends and another $444 million via a repurchase of 3 million shares of common stock.

Analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy said he was impressed by the “very solid” first-quarter earnings, which he put down to Qualcomm’s ability to lead and take advantage of the 5G mobile phenomenon.

“It wasn’t just smartphone growth, as both its IoT and RF-FE businesses achieved $1 billion in revenue, two big milestones,” Moorhead said. “The RF-FE number cements Qualcomm’s mobile RF market share lead versus Broadcom, Qorvo and Skyworks. Also of note was a 44% increase in automotive sales. This is relevant as it appears Qualcomm was able to secure supply while its competitors had a hard time supplying auto manufacturers, who were forced to shut down lines as they couldn’t receive supply.”

Regarding the sharp drop in Qualcomm’s stock after hours, Pund-IT Inc. analyst Charles King said the failure to beat revenue estimates, combined with the upcoming leadership change, probably made some investors nervous. Then again, some may have simply decided that with Qualcomm’s stock price up 50% already in the past year and chatter about market bubbles on the rise, now is as good a time as any to take some profits.

“Whatever the case, Qualcomm appears to be well positioned to continue its leadership position in 5G and other growing markets,” King said.

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said Qualcomm’s strong revenue growth across all parts of its business was encouraging, but noted that the company still relies on the design wins of smartphone providers.

“It will be key for Qualcomm to renew these partnerships in 2021 in the post-Mollenkopf era,” Mueller said. “At the same time, the company needs to keep working hard on weaning itself off its dependency on its smartphone-related revenues.”

Plans to do so may already be in the works. Last month, Qualcomm announced plans to buy a chip startup called Nuvia Inc. that was founded just two years ago by Apple’s former top central processor unit engineer Gerard Williams III. The company said it will pay $1.4 billion to acquire Nuvia, which is believed to be working on a processor for servers that’s capable of faster compute speeds than current designs, using less power.

Qualcomm hasn’t said if it plans to muscle in on the data center server CPU market that’s currently dominated by Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Such a move can’t be discounted, but for now, Qualcomm said, it intends to focus on applying Nuvia’s technology to its smartphone, laptop, IoT and automotive chips.

Photo: Fortune Brainstorm TECH/Flickr