Arm’s 90% Rally Shines Light on High Multiple, Low Growth

Ryan Vlastelica
5 min read

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(Bloomberg) -- One of the year’s best-performing artificial intelligence stocks could be about to face a rude awakening.

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Arm Holdings Plc is due to report results after the market close, and investors are skeptical that the chip-design company will be able to justify the almost 90% share-price jump that has made it one of the most expensive stocks in the market. Fiscal second-quarter revenue is expected to grow just 0.6%, a far cry from the explosive trends seen by other AI companies. The shares were trading 1.4% higher as of 10:27 a.m. in New York.

“At the end of the day, Arm is a company with a multiple far surpassing Nvidia, without anything like a Nvidia-esque growth rate,” said Dan Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust. “It is instrumental in all the new tech chipmakers are involved with, and there’s so much momentum surrounding AI, but I don’t know that we can make the case the growth justifies the multiple.”

Arm shares trade at more than 76 times estimated earnings, making it the third-most expensive stock in the Nasdaq 100 by this metric, and pricier than Nvidia Corp. at 37 times. In terms of estimated sales, Arm’s multiple is above 32, by far the highest in the index.

“Valuation investors have been asleep at the wheel with Arm, and therefore it wouldn’t be a surprise if this earnings report acted as a real corrective,” said David Trainer, chief executive officer of investment research firm New Constructs. “It would need to have huge earnings growth for years to justify this valuation,” he added, noting that Arm is operating in a “super competitive industry.”

Analysts are mixed on the stock. While more than half of those tracked by Bloomberg rate it a buy, the average price target suggests less than 2% upside for the shares over the next 12 months.

Bernstein’s Sara Russo became one of the few analysts with a sell-equivalent rating after downgrading Arm shares to underperform last week. “The long term equity story remains very appealing,” she wrote, “but at what price?” Given the stock’s year-to-date strength and valuation, “we struggle to find upside.”

While Arm’s AI-related businesses “are holding up fine,” she added, “we worry about the revenues outside of AI, given the cyclical headwinds our analog names are facing, especially ex-memory.”

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