Broadcom reports the third quarter of fiscal 2026 — the thirteen weeks ended 2 August 2026 — after the US close on Wednesday 2 September 2026, with the call at 2:00 p.m. Pacific. Consensus is $3.22 to $3.24 of non-GAAP earnings per share on $29.47 billion of revenue, press-reported from third-party estimate feeds.
Neither figure is an opinion about Broadcom. On 3 June the company guided the quarter to approximately $29.4 billion of revenue, up 84%, with non-GAAP operating margin stable at 67% and adjusted EBITDA at 68% of revenue, and it put a number on the line everyone is buying: $16.0 billion of AI semiconductor revenue, more than 200% above the $5.2 billion of a year ago. The revenue consensus is 0.24% above the guide. The EPS consensus is what falls out of applying the guided margin to the guided revenue at last quarter's conversion — our arithmetic, below, gets $3.28.
So the print itself is close to settled. What Wednesday decides is the fourth quarter, and the fourth quarter is where Broadcom's own fiscal-year figure gets demanding.
The points
- The quarter is guided, and the Street has taken the guide. Revenue of about $29.4 billion, non-GAAP operating margin of about 67%, adjusted EBITDA of about 68% — all Broadcom's, from the June release. Consensus of $29.47 billion is within a rounding error of the first.
- AI is guided to be more than half the company for the first time. $16.0 billion of AI semiconductor revenue on $29.4 billion is 54% of revenue, against 49% in the April quarter and 33% a year ago. The shares are our division of the company's figures.
- Everything that is not AI is guided up 18% in a quarter. $29.4 billion less $16.0 billion leaves $13.4 billion for non-AI semiconductors and infrastructure software together, against $11.4 billion in the April quarter. That subtraction is ours; it is a large step for the parts of Broadcom that do not usually step.
- The fiscal-year AI figure implies a $20.8 billion fourth quarter. Management said on the June call it expects about $56 billion of AI semiconductor revenue this fiscal year. $8.4 billion in the January quarter, $10.8 billion in April and $16.0 billion guided for July is $35.2 billion, leaving $20.8 billion for the October quarter — a 30% sequential step after this quarter's 48%. The fiscal-year figure is press-reported from the call; the subtraction is ours.
- The bar for fiscal 2027 is already public. Management reiterated in June that it expects AI semiconductor revenue in excess of $100 billion in fiscal 2027, on six custom-silicon customers. Any comment on that figure moves the stock more than anything in the quarter.
- Two EPS lines, 53 cents apart last quarter. Broadcom reported $2.44 of non-GAAP diluted EPS and $1.91 GAAP in April. The consensus is on the first basis; the series this site carries is the second. Compare like with like.
- Our trailing Rule of 40 is 75.7 — revenue growth of 32.3% plus a free cash flow margin of 43.4% on $32.76 billion of free cash flow against $75.47 billion of revenue. Our arithmetic, on reported figures.
- Our forward model sits on both sides of the price. Base $282.09, the management-targets case $462.80, against $370.34 at the 31 August close.
The quarter Broadcom already told you about
The three guided figures fit together, and the EPS consensus is the fourth corner of the same rectangle.
| Q3 FY25 reported | Q2 FY26 reported | Q3 FY26 guided | Consensus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $15.95B | $22.19B | ~$29.4B | $29.47B |
| AI semiconductor revenue | $5.2B | $10.8B | $16.0B | — |
| Non-GAAP operating margin | — | ~67% | ~67% | — |
| Adjusted EBITDA margin | 67% | 69% | ~68% | — |
| Non-GAAP diluted EPS | $1.69 | $2.44 | — | $3.22–3.24 |
| GAAP diluted EPS | $0.85 | $1.91 | — | — |
The reported columns are Broadcom's, from its September 2025 and June 2026 releases. The guided column is its June outlook. The consensus column is press-reported and not a series this site stores.
Run the guide through last quarter's shape and the consensus appears on its own. Sixty-seven percent of $29.4 billion is $19.7 billion of non-GAAP operating income. In April, $12.07 billion of non-GAAP net income came out of roughly $14.9 billion of non-GAAP operating income — 81 cents on the dollar after interest, tax and other. The same conversion on $19.7 billion is $16.0 billion, and over the 4.876 billion diluted shares of the April quarter that is $3.28 a share. Consensus is $3.22 to $3.24, four to six cents lower, which is what a slightly heavier interest or tax line would do. That derivation is ours and every input to it is the company's; the point is that a beat or miss of a few cents on Wednesday is noise on a guide, not information about demand.
The one line in the quarter that is information is gross margin. Broadcom's GAAP gross margin was 69.5% in April, the highest in the series this site holds, and it is the AI mix — custom accelerators sold at a lower margin than the networking and software around them — that management has been warning would pull it down. Coverage of the June call reports the company expecting consolidated gross margin to decline to about 74% on a non-GAAP basis; we have not verified that figure against a transcript, and the two bases are not comparable. Direction is what to read, not the level.
The fourth quarter is the print
Broadcom guides one quarter at a time, so the fourth-quarter AI figure arrives on Wednesday and it has a floor already set by the company. The fiscal-year figure of about $56 billion, given on the June call, less the three quarters already reported or guided, is $20.8 billion — and that is the line to hold the guide against.
| AI semiconductor revenue | Sequential | |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 FY26, reported | $8.4B | — |
| Q2 FY26, reported | $10.8B | +29% |
| Q3 FY26, guided | $16.0B | +48% |
| Q4 FY26, implied by ~$56B | $20.8B | +30% |
A guide at or above $20.8 billion says the fiscal-year figure holds and the second half is, as management put it, double the first. A guide below it is the first time in this cycle Broadcom's own annual number has slipped, and it would slip in the quarter before a fiscal year the company has said carries more than $100 billion. The deceleration from 48% to 30% is itself unremarkable — it is what a capacity ramp looks like when the denominator doubles — but the level is a commitment, and the market will read it as one.
The stacked bars above show the shape of this: the non-AI company grows, but the AI line has gone from a third of revenue to more than half in four quarters, and every incremental dollar of the guide is in it.
What the price is paying for
Our Broadcom model was published on 20 August against a share price of $362.48 and carries the AI business as capacity rather than as a growth rate: megawatts of AI compute Broadcom's silicon ships into each quarter, times the content per megawatt. That reproduces the reported $10.8 billion April quarter, and it reproduces the guided quarter too — the $16.0 billion needs 327 megawatts added to the base quarter's 680, which is exactly the build rate the base case assumes for this quarter. Wednesday is not a test of the model's near term. It is a test of the decay the model assumes after it.
| Case | Fair value | vs $370.34 |
|---|---|---|
| Bear | $91.44 | −75% |
| Base | $282.09 | −24% |
| Hock | $462.80 | +25% |
| Bull | $729.50 | +97% |
The base case takes management's guided window — about $56 billion this fiscal year, past $100 billion next — roughly as described, and then decays the build rate 17% a quarter so that AI revenue converges toward a plateau near $120 billion a year rather than compounding. That gets to $282, a quarter below the price. The Hock case takes the same stated targets and holds the operating leverage and the multiple where the CFO describes them; it gets to $463. The price sits between the two, which is a reasonable place for it to sit the day before the company says something about fiscal 2027.
What the price is not paying for is this quarter. Every case in the table produces the guided $16.0 billion in July, because the guide is a number the model was calibrated to. The variable that moves fair value is the fourth-quarter guide and whatever is said about the year after it — the build rate, the customer count beyond six, and whether content per megawatt is holding. Those are the questions the model cannot settle from a release alone, and neither can Wednesday's print; it can only make them more or less urgent.
What to watch
- AI semiconductor revenue against the $16.0 billion guide. The most specific number Broadcom gave in June, and the one every case in our model was set to.
- The fourth-quarter AI guide against $20.8 billion. That is the residual of the roughly $56 billion fiscal-year figure management gave on the June call, after $8.4 billion, $10.8 billion and $16.0 billion. At or above it, the year holds; below it, the annual number has slipped.
- Whether the more-than-$100 billion fiscal 2027 figure is repeated, raised or reframed. Six custom-silicon customers were named in June; a seventh, or a change in how the figure is described, is worth more than the quarter.
- Non-GAAP operating margin against 67% and gross margin against April's 69.5% GAAP. The AI mix dilutes the gross line; the operating line is guided flat. The gap between the two is the leverage the company keeps citing.
- Non-GAAP EPS against $3.22 to $3.24 and GAAP against April's $1.91. The two bases were 53 cents apart last quarter. The consensus is on the first; only the second is comparable to the series this site carries.
Broadcom reports the quarter ended 2 August 2026 after the US close on Wednesday 2 September, with the call at 2:00 p.m. Pacific, per its own notice of 3 August. Consensus of $3.22 to $3.24 and $29.47 billion is press-reported from third-party estimate feeds (Zacks, as of 1 September 2026) and is not a series this site stores or verifies; a second feed shows a lower EPS figure on a different basis, which is why the release is the arbiter. Every guided figure — third-quarter revenue, non-GAAP operating margin, adjusted EBITDA margin and AI semiconductor revenue — is Broadcom's own, from its second-quarter fiscal 2026 release of 3 June 2026, as are the reported revenue, AI revenue, margins and both EPS lines. The roughly $56 billion fiscal-year and more-than-$100 billion fiscal 2027 AI figures and the six-customer count are management statements on the June call as reported in press coverage, not release figures. Ours rather than Broadcom's: the implied fourth-quarter AI figure, the non-AI residual, the EPS derivation, the trailing Rule of 40, and the fair values, build rate, decay and multiples, which are assumptions in our Broadcom model of 20 August 2026 and not company forecasts. The price of $370.34 is the 31 August 2026 close; a live quote will differ.
