D-Wave Quantum posts Q3 revenue beat
D-Wave Quantum reversed its premarket gains despite reporting better-than-expected Q3 sales, and is trading deep in the red minutes after the opening bell sounded.
The quarterly results:
Revenue: $3.7 million (compared to an analyst consensus estimate of $3.03 million)
Adjusted earnings per share: -$0.05 (estimate: -$0.07)
“Our strong third-quarter results reflect the momentum we see building across every aspect of our business, with key metrics, including revenue, gross profit, bookings, and cash balance, clearly indicating D-Wave’s success in accelerating global quantum computing adoption,” CEO Dr. Alan Baratz said.
D-Wave ended Q3 with $2.4 million in bookings (that is, its pipeline of expected future sales), but said that number has gone up by $12 million since the end of that quarter. Much of that appears to be linked to an agreement with Swiss Quantum Technology to deploy one of its systems.
The prospect of government support has been a major catalyst for the quantum space in recent months, including the US government deeming the technology an R&D priority, which was followed by a report that the Trump administration was in talks to accumulate equity stakes in D-Wave and its peers. D-Wave had outperformed rivals on this news, as this would have constituted a bigger shift in how the government feels about this annealing-centric quantum company relative to its peers, which focus on gate-based models. Back in May, Baratz told us he “couldn’t even get a foot in the door” with the US government, calling its focus on gate-based models “profoundly disappointing.”
However, that report of direct government investment in quantum computing stocks was quickly contradicted by separate reports.
Shares of the quantum computing company peaked at nearly $47 in mid-October, but slumped into the mid-$30 range ahead of this report as part of a broad pullback across many speculative pockets of the market.
