Arm (NasdaqGS:ARM) Q3 2026 Earnings call February 04, 2026 05:00 PM ET Company ParticipantsAndrew Gardiner - Head of European Technology Equity ResearchJason Child - EVP and CFOJeff Kvaal - Head of Investor RelationsRene Haas - CEOSimon Leopold - Managing DirectorConference Call ParticipantsCharles Shi - Senior AnalystHarlan Sur - Executive Director and Equity Research AnalystJoe Quattrocchi - Director and Senior Equity Research AnalystJohn DiFucci - Senior Managing Director and Equity Research AnalystKrish ...

Arm (NasdaqGS:ARM) Q3 2026 Earnings call February 04, 2026 05:00 PM ET Speaker1Welcome to the Arm third quarter fiscal year 2026 webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 aga ...

At the silicon layer, Nadella pointed to a mix of NVIDIA and AMD GPUs and Microsoft’s own chips. He said Microsoft brought online its Maia 200 accelerator, describing it as delivering “10+ petaflops at FP4 precision” with “over 30% improved TCO compared to the latest generation hardware” in Microsoft’s fleet. He also highlighted the Cobalt 200 CPU, which he said delivers “over 50% higher performance” compared with Microsoft’s first custom processor for cloud-native workloads.On infrastructure, Nadella empha ...

Financial Data and Key Metrics Changes - Revenue for the quarter was $81.3 billion, up 17% year-over-year and 15% in constant currency [25] - Gross margin dollars increased by 16% and operating income rose by 21% [25] - Earnings per share was $4.14, reflecting a 24% increase year-over-year [25] - Company gross margin percentage was 68%, slightly down year-over-year due to investments in AI infrastructure [26] - Operating expenses increased by 5%, driven by R&D investments [26] Business Line Data and Key Metrics Changes - Microsoft Cloud revenue reached $51.5 billion, growing 26% year-over-year [31] - Productivity and Business Processes revenue was $34.1 billion, up 16% year-over-year [31] - M365 Commercial Cloud revenue increased by 17%, with paid M365 commercial seats growing 6% to over 450 million [32] - Intelligent Cloud segment revenue was $32.9 billion, growing 29% year-over-year [33] - More Personal Computing revenue declined by 3% to $14.3 billion [36] Market Data and Key Metrics Changes - Commercial bookings increased by 230%, driven by large Azure commitments from OpenAI [30] - Commercial remaining performance obligation (RPO) increased to $625 billion, up 110% year-over-year [30] - Azure revenue grew by 39%, slightly ahead of expectations [34] - LinkedIn revenue increased by 11%, driven by marketing solutions [24] Company Strategy and Development Direction - The company is focusing on AI diffusion and its impact on GDP, with significant investments in AI infrastructure [6] - Microsoft aims to build a comprehensive AI business that integrates across its platforms, enhancing customer experiences [10] - The strategy includes expanding sovereignty solutions to meet local data residency needs [9] - The company is investing in both first-party and third-party AI models to enhance its offerings [11] Management's Comments on Operating Environment and Future Outlook - Management expressed confidence in the growth of AI and its integration into various business lines, emphasizing the importance of infrastructure investments [6][9] - The company anticipates continued strong demand across its cloud services, with a focus on balancing supply and demand [34] - Management highlighted the importance of long-term investments in R&D and product innovation to drive future growth [50] Other Important Information - Capital expenditures for the quarter were $37.5 billion, with a significant portion allocated to short-lived assets like GPUs and CPUs [27] - The company returned $12.7 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, a 32% increase year-over-year [29] - The company is seeing strong momentum in its Copilot offerings, with significant increases in daily active users and paid seats [18] Q&A Session Summary Question: Concerns about CapEx growth and Azure revenue - Management acknowledged the correlation between CapEx and Azure revenue, emphasizing long-term investments in infrastructure to meet demand [48][50] Question: Line of sight from hardware CapEx to revenue and margins - Management clarified that much of the capital spent is already contracted for the useful life of the hardware, reducing risk [60][61] Question: Durability of OpenAI-related backlog - Management expressed confidence in the breadth and diversification of their RPO, highlighting strong growth across various customer segments [68] Question: Capacity additions and their impact - Management confirmed ongoing efforts to add capacity globally, emphasizing the need for efficient operations across multiple locations [75] Question: Performance of Maia 200 accelerator - Management highlighted the significance of silicon innovation and its role in enhancing performance and cost efficiency for AI workloads [80]

Core Insights - Amazon has launched Graviton5, the highest density and most powerful CPU to date, featuring 192 processor cores in a single slot, promising to elevate AWS performance to new heights [1][3] - Since its introduction in 2018, Graviton chips have become a cornerstone of AWS computing services, with over half of the new CPU capacity added in the past three years attributed to Graviton chips [1][3] Technical Specifications - Graviton5 is built on TSMC's 3nm process technology and includes 192 Arm Neoverse V3 cores, supported by a 192MB L3 cache, which reduces cache misses and enhances performance by minimizing data retrieval from slower DRAM [1][4] - The L3 cache capacity has increased 5.3 times from Graviton 4's 36MB to 192MB, improving each core's cache capacity from 376KB to 1MB, which is beneficial for low-latency applications [2][4] - The memory subsystem has been upgraded to support speeds of up to 7200 MT/s, with future support for 8800 MT/s DIMMs under development [1][4] Performance Enhancements - The new M9g instances based on Graviton5 show a 25% performance improvement over the previous M8g instances, which were based on Graviton4 [3][5] - Graviton5's architecture allows for reduced inter-core latency by approximately one-third, enhancing performance for workloads such as online gaming, high-performance databases, and data analytics [5][11] Competitive Positioning - Graviton5's core count of 192 matches the highest core counts from AMD and Intel, which have 192 and 144 cores respectively, positioning AWS competitively in the server CPU market [3][5] - The Nitro system, which Graviton5 instances utilize, offloads storage, networking, and virtualization functions, freeing up CPU resources for client workloads [7][12] Future Developments - AWS plans to release additional instance types, including C9g for compute-intensive workloads and R9g for memory-intensive workloads, in 2026 [15] - The introduction of the Nitro isolation engine enhances security by ensuring workload isolation through formal verification methods [13] Industry Context - Other companies, such as Microsoft and Google, are also developing custom CPUs, indicating a growing trend in the industry towards proprietary chip development for cloud services [8][9] - Amazon's Graviton5 is part of a broader strategy to optimize performance and cost-efficiency in cloud computing, addressing the increasing complexity and scale of cloud workloads [10][11]