Nvidia among first on-premises customers; 2027 next-gen units fully booked

Q3 sales of $173.8M beat estimates by 23%

Full-year revenue guidance raised again; backlog tops $1.2B

Mirae Asset Securities maintains 'buy,' target price $37.90

This image is not directly related to the article. An IBM quantum computer. [IBM]
This image is not directly related to the article. An IBM quantum computer. [IBM]

As quantum computing emerges as the next major growth industry after AI, analysts are offering an upbeat outlook on the prospects of US quantum computing firm IonQ.

Commercial momentum is building — most notably with the entire 2027 production run of IonQ's next-generation quantum computer already sold out — fueling expectations of strong earnings growth ahead.

Mirae Asset Securities has maintained a "buy" rating on IonQ with a target price of $37.90. That implies upside of 22.8 percent from the closing price of $30.86 on Thursday.

Kim Eun-ji, a researcher at Mirae Asset Securities, highlighted that IonQ's next-generation quantum computer, the Superion 256, has secured its first on-premises customers — including Nvidia's Boston research center — and that the company has announced all of its 2027 production units have been sold.

On-premises deployment refers to installing and operating a computing system directly at a customer's own facility, rather than through an external cloud service. The fact that the next-generation quantum computer has landed real enterprise customers signals that technological advances are translating into genuine commercial demand.

Nvidia in particular plans to install the Superion 256 at its accelerated quantum research center and integrate it with AI supercomputing infrastructure. Analysts view this as a proof of concept for quantum computers operating alongside existing high-performance computing systems.

The Superion 256 is IonQ's sixth-generation quantum computing system, built on 256 physical qubits. Qubits are the basic unit of computation in a quantum computer — unlike the bits in a conventional computer, they exploit quantum mechanical properties to perform calculations.

Alongside its technology development, IonQ has been expanding system sales and cloud services to enterprises and research institutions. More recently, the company has broadened its business through orders for next-generation products and participation in technology validation programs run by defense and intelligence agencies.

IonQ's third-quarter earnings report delivered results well ahead of expectations. Revenue for the quarter came in at $173.8 million, up 336 percent year-on-year and 117 percent quarter-on-quarter. That surpassed Mirae Asset Securities' prior estimate of $130 million by 34 percent and beat the market consensus of $142 million by 23 percent.

The figures include two months of revenue from SkyWater, a semiconductor foundry IonQ completed acquiring in late July, contributing $83.5 million to consolidated results. IonQ's legacy platform business also posted revenue of $90.3 million, up 127 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Riding the earnings momentum, IonQ raised its full-year revenue guidance for 2026 to a range of $505 million to $515 million.

The company's order backlog — a key indicator of future performance — is also growing rapidly. As of the end of the third quarter, IonQ's remaining performance obligations stood at approximately $1.2 billion. RPO represents the value of contracts with customers that has not yet been recognized as revenue.

The RPO from IonQ's legacy platform business rose from $485 million at the end of the second quarter to $689 million at the end of the third quarter. The addition of SkyWater's RPO of $479 million pushed the combined total significantly higher.

Roughly half of the total RPO — $580 million — is expected to be recognized as revenue within the next 12 months, equivalent to about 66 percent of the $890 million in forward revenue that Mirae Asset Securities projects for the same period.

Kim said the surge in backlog, combined with the Superion 256's sales performance, has substantially improved visibility into next year's revenue.

IonQ's traction in the US defense sector adds another positive dimension. The company is the only ion-trap quantum computing firm to advance to Stage C — the final phase of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative. The program carries potential support of up to $300 million.

Given that quantum computers can be applied to tasks such as code-breaking and complex calculations that are beyond the reach of conventional machines, analysts say demand from defense and intelligence agencies could become a new growth engine for the company.


th5@heraldcorp.com