revenue
115–124 $million
Q3 2027
official guidance
| Revenue | $417.8M |
|---|---|
| Operating income | $-27.6M |
| Net income | $-24.8M |
| Free cash flow | $-36.7M |
| Operating margin | -6.6% |
| Net margin | -5.9% |
| Return on equity | -4.0% |
| Period | TTM 2026-07-31 |
OpenFilings analyst
Agentic read of the latest earnings call — recommendation updates when we process a new transcript. Research synthesis, not investment advice.
Strong product traction, but near-term supply risk and long-dated, largely unquantified growth initiatives do not yet justify a decisive buy.
Latest call · Q2 2027Hold: Ambarella delivered solid execution with Q2 revenue of $108.1 million, up 13.2% year over year, record automotive revenue, and Q3 guidance of $115 million-$124 million.
The long-term Physical AI opportunity is expanding—SAM rises from $8.5 billion in FY2027 to $22.9 billion in FY2032—but the investment case remains offset by memory-related Q4 uncertainty, 157 days of inventory, heavy distributor concentration, and an unproven X7 accelerator entering a crowded market.
Q4 demand is the key near-term risk: management said memory availability and customer price increases could reduce total chip volumes, although Q2 and Q3 revenue have seen only limited impact so far.
Q3 revenue guidance of $115 million-$124 million implies favorable seasonality and Physical AI-led IoT growth; gross margin is guided to 59%-60% despite rising supply-chain costs.
Management plans to pass higher costs to customers, creating a test of pricing power and potential volume elasticity.
Inventory days rose to 157 from 145 despite a 4% sequential decline in inventory dollars, warranting monitoring as memory constraints and customer demand evolve.
The 20% five-year SAM CAGR and shift toward IoT—approximately 70% of terminal-year SAM—depend heavily on edge infrastructure, robotics, enterprise security, and other markets that are still early-stage.
X7's 4-5 watt power envelope and claimed 4 MB memory requirement could differentiate it against GPU-based solutions, but the product is only sampling and competes with NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and roughly 50 startups.
CapGemini and Macnica each represent a stated potential revenue opportunity of approximately $500 million over seven years, but meaningful revenue is expected to take two to three years and initial wins are small and fragmented.
The 2-nanometer CV8 semi-custom project could produce first revenue in FY2028 and broaden Ambarella's addressable market, but the model requires customer specifications that can be resold to non-competing customers.
More than 50 million edge AI SoCs shipped, the Cooper platform, and expanding automotive, robotics, and monitoring wins support a credible platform moat if Ambarella can convert design wins into volume production.
Memory scarcity is explicitly an unresolved Q4 risk; management could not quantify the potential revenue impact and only said it was continuing to monitor customer access and pricing.
The X7 is entering a crowded competitive field, and management provided no quantified design-win pipeline, customer commitments, ASPs, or gross-margin profile for the accelerator.
The $1 billion combined CapGemini and Macnica opportunity is a seven-year target rather than current backlog or guidance; management described meaningful revenue as two to three years away.
Revenue concentration is substantial: WT Microelectronics represented 60.2% of Q2 revenue and Hakuto 11%, although both are logistics/distribution partners serving multiple customers.
The $9 million GAAP R&D reduction came from terminating an automotive development project, highlighting customer-project cancellation risk even though management said it does not affect non-GAAP outlook.
The company authorized a $50 million repurchase program but made no repurchases in Q2, so buyback support is currently optional rather than demonstrated.
revenue
115–124 $million
Q3 2027
official guidance
gross margin
59–60 pct
Q3 2027
official guidance
OpenFilings analyst view from primary-source filings and earnings calls — not investment advice.
The rest of this company's wire — with summaries and source links — is part of Pro.
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