As we noted in our prior update, Broadcom (Nasdaq: AVGO) shares fell during the company’s conference call. Let’s unpack some of the highlights from the call and look at the reasons why shares collapsed during it.
All conference call transcriptions are compliments of S&P Capital IQ.
1.) Broadcom Announces An Additional $11 Billion Order from Anthropic :
“These XPUs, I may add, are not only been used to train and influence internal workloads by our customers, the same XPUs in some situations have been extended externally to other LLM peers, best exemplified at Google, where the TPUs use in creating Gemini, have also been used for AI cloud computing by Apple, Coherent and SSI as an example. And the scale at which we see this happening could be significant. And as you are aware, last quarter, Q3 ’25, we received a $10 billion order to sell the latest TPU Ironwood racks to Anthropic. And this was our fourth customer that we mentioned. And in this quarter Q4, we received an additional $11 billion order from the same customer for delivery in late 2026.”
The big ‘announcement’ from the call was Hock Tan noting the company now has $21 billion in TPU orders from Anthropic, a massive sum equal to about 25% of Wall Street’s revenue estimates for calendar 2026.
This large order is likely the reason Broadcom was able to guide AI Semiconductor revenue above consensus to doubling in Fiscal 2026.
2.) Broadcom has an AI Backlog of $73 Billion It Expects to Deliver Across the Next 18 Months
“Well, to answer your first question, what we said is correct that as of now, we have $73 billion of backlog in place secured of XPUs, switches, DSPs, lasers for AI data centers that we anticipate shipping over the next 18 months. And obviously, this is as of now, I mean, we fully expect more bookings to come in over that period of time. And so don’t take that $73 billion as that’s the revenue that we ship over the next 18 months. We’re just saying we have that now and in that bookings has been accelerating. “
Broadcom’s CEO also noted that this bookings number is a current snapshot, and actual deliveries could top $73 billion in AI sales across the next 18 months as Broadcom takes additional orders.
Overall, there was no specific negative news to point to for Broadcom’s drop.
That is to say, often when a stock drops sharply during its conference call it’s because the company announced disappointing guidance or new material information that will be a negative. There wasn’t anything in Broadcom’s call that was a red flag. However, here are a few reasons that contributed to Broadcom’s drop.
- No Surprises: Broadcom has issued several surprises in recent conference calls that led to shares soaring. The biggest ‘surprise’ today was a fifth customer, but this fifth customer has a relatively small billion-dollar order for late 2026. That’s not going to move the needle in a significant way.
- Muddled Answer on Customer Tooling: In our live earnings coverage, we said Wall Street would ask about the threat of ‘customer tooling,’ and it didn’t take long for that question to come up. Hock Tan’s answer was brief, essentially brushing ‘customer tooling’ off as a non-threat. That wasn’t a specific enough answer to one of the biggest ‘bear arguments’ against the company and led to accelerated selling.
- Profit-Taking: Broadcom shares were up more than 70% this year, headed into earnings (and are now worth more than $2 trillion), and without major surprises on the conference call like a new major customer, there likely was some profit-taking as Broadcom trades for a relatively rich forward multiple compared to rivals like NVIDIA.