Qualcomm Inc. brushed aside fears that its business might be held back by supply chain issues, delivering strong fourth quarter results driven by a 56% year-over-year boost in smartphone chip sales.

The company reported a profit before certain costs such as stock compensation today of $2.55 per share on revenue of $9.32 billion, up 43% from the same period a year ago.

It was a strong performance and it was better than most analysts were expecting, with Wall Street modeling a profit of just $2.26 per share on sales of $8.86 billion. Qualcomm also reported its full-year results, with earnings of $8.54 per share on total annual sales of $33.6 billion.

Investors cheered, raising Qualcomm’s stock price more than 7% in after-hours trading on the report.

Qualcomm President and Chief Executive Cristiano Amon (pictured), who has been leading the company since the summer, hailed the strong results. “As of fiscal 2021, we are exceeding our 2019 Analyst Day targets for revenue growth and diversification and operating margin expansion, while more than doubling our year-over-year Non-GAAP EPS,” he said.

San Diego-based Qualcomm makes the modem chips used by Apple Inc.’s iPhones and a sizable portion of the world’s other handsets to connect to carrier networks. The company also sells mobile processors that power many Android phones, as well as chips for cars and “internet of things” devices.

The bulk of Qualcomm’s sales comes from the Qualcomm CDA Technologies unit, its main chip business. For the fourth quarter, it drove $7.7 billion in revenue, an increase of 56% from the same quarter last year. Qualcomm said the growth was mostly driven by strong demand for smartphone chips, which accounted for $4.68 billion of those sales.

The company saw healthy growth in all of its chip segments though. IoT chip sales, for instance, were up an even more impressive 66% to $1.54 billion. RF front-end chips, which are used for mobile 5G connectivity, rose 45%, to $1.24 billion. Finally, Qualcomm’s automotive chip sales came to $270 million, up 44%.

Analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy told SiliconANGLE Qualcomm delivered a “huge quarter,” benefiting from a diversification strategy that has seen it put less focus on smartphone chips in the last couple of years. “The company’s bet on premium Android handsets versus just unit tonnage is also paying off as revenue from Chinese handsets is growing faster than Apple,” Moorhead said.

Today’s results also highlight how successful Qualcomm’s strategy of using multiple chip fabs to build its products has been, Moorhead said. The tactic has enabled it to weather supply chain problems far better than many tech companies, such as its customer Apple.

“It’s interesting that the company has managed to grow this much during a supply-constrained environment,” Moorhead said. “Some critics said Qualcomm’s multifoundry approach was too complex, but now it’s looking very smart.”

Qualcomm’s second business is its patent licensing unit, Qualcomm Technology Licensing, which is also very profitable. However, with sales there up just 3%, to $1.56 billion, it was perhaps the only real blot this quarter.

For the full year, Qualcomm said the QCT revenue hit $27 billion, up 64% from the previous year. QTL revenue came to $6.32 billion, up 26% from a year ago.

Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT Inc., said Qualcomm looks to be in safe hands under its new CEO Amon.

“There’s nothing wrong with being in the right place at the right time, especially for new executives,” he said. “That Qualcomm has been executing so well during a time when many of its competitors have been asking for understanding and patience speaks well of the company’s leadership and its business plans and strategy.”

Looking to the first quarter of fiscal 2022, Qualcomm said it’s anticipating revenue of between $10 billion and $10.8 billion, with the QCT business expected to contribute $8.4 billion to $8.9 billion of that. The forecast is well above expectations, with Wall Street modeling sales of just $9.7 billion for the quarter.

Photo: Qualcomm