If you’ve been following our 5G Endgame plays — Qualcomm (QCOM), Nokia (NOK) and Ericsson (ERIC) — you may have noticed a pattern.
Most of the news surrounding these companies over the past few weeks have related to the U.S. China trade war and Huawei, a Chinese telecoms gear maker.
The news has been a wash for NOK and ERIC — which I’ll get to in another alert. But recent developments have been a boon to QCOM.
While NOK and ERIC have been relatively flat, QCOM moved straight up right out of the gate. It’s up about 13% in less than two weeks.
One reason why is the U.S. and China agreed to a trade war truce. Plenty of QCOM’s sales come from Chinese companies, so any easing in tension between the U.S. and China is considered good news for QCOM and other chipmakers.
One Chinese company that uses QCOM’s products in its high-end smartphones is Huawei — the largest telecoms gear maker in the world.
For several months now, the U.S. and other governments around the world have been warning that China could use Huawei to spy on their citizens since it’s a major player in the 5G rollout and also sells phones worldwide. So in a move to protect national security, President Trump put restrictions on U.S. companies from doing business with Huawei.
As trade talks are now back on, and President Trump has eased restrictions on Huawei in the past two days, companies like QCOM who have business in China, and specifically with Huawei, have moved higher.
Another piece of good news for QCOM, which was buried among China-related headlines, was that its Snapdragon 855 chip received an EAL-4+ certification from Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security.
This certificate isn’t easy to get and should have a positive impact to its business.
The certificate means that QCOM’s chips are resilient to hacker attacks and are as secure as smart cards (cards with chips embedded). That’s critical, because as 5G continues to roll out, phones will increasingly be used for mobile payments and store more sensitive information, like financial and health data.
It should also give QCOM’s an additional competitive advantage. Because the chips themselves are so secure, mobile devices will no longer require separate security chips. That’ll save manufacturers money on materials and reduce power use on its devices.
That’ll be one more reason to choose QCOM’s chips over the competition.