Wireless, Broadband Boosting Broadcom
Infrastructure and enterprise spending, “from our vantage point,” is “very much holding,” said Broadcom CEO Hock Tan on an earnings call Thursday for fiscal Q3 ended July 31. Broadcom’s net revenue growth of 25% in the quarter to $8.46 billion was driven by “robust demand” in sales from cloud, wireless service providers and enterprise computing, said Tan. Semiconductor revenue increased 32% year on year to $6.6 billion and infrastructure software revenue grew 5% to $1.8 billion, he said: “We expect ... continued investment by our customers of next generation technologies in data centers, broadband and wireless." Revenue in Broadcom’s broadband sector grew 20% year on year to $1.1 billion, and was 17% of semiconductor sales in the quarter, said Tan. “This steady growth was driven by major service providers continuing to deploy next generation broadband fiber to the home globally, with high attach rates of Wi-Fi 6 and 6E,” he said. Broadcom expects the first Wi-Fi 7 deployments in the second half of 2023 in home gateways, “enterprise access points” and smartphones, he said. Broadcom’s Q3 wireless revenue of $1.6 billion generated a quarter of its semiconductor sales, said Tan. “Sustained demand from North American customers drove wireless revenue up 14% year on year, in line with our guidance,” he said. In Q4, “we expect wireless revenue to be seasonally up 20% sequentially and to grow 10% year on year,” he said.