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Bull Of The Day: IonQ (IONQ)

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IonQ (IONQ - Free Report) is a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) that has an F for Value and an F for Growth.  As one of the poster children for the quantum computing phenomenon that taken hold, this stock has seen a lot of volatility late.  A lot of the movements from IONQ and other stocks like RGTI, QUBT and QMOC all stemmed from a recent Alphabet (GOOG) announcement (https://blog.google/technology/research/google-willow-quantum-chip/).  Since then a number of stocks have seen parabolic moves both up and down.

Citron Research has been rather vocal in the space, urging investors to sell shares of RGTI on December 5 when the stock closed at $3.18 and then again on December 11 when the stock closed at $7.38.  Yesterday the research outfit posted on X.com that RGTI, QUBT and IONQ were all overvalued due to their R&D spending.  Yesterday RGTI closed at $10.69, up 233% from when a sale was recommended.  That track record more than speaks for itself in the short term.

Description

IonQ, Inc. develops and manufactures quantum computers. The firm specializes in quantum computing and quantum information processing. The company was founded by Christopher Monroe and Jung Sang Kim in 2015 and is headquartered in College Park, MD.

Earnings History

When I look at a stock, the first thing I do is look to see if the company is beating the number.  This tells me right away where the market’s expectations have been for the company and how management has communicated to the market.  A stock that consistently beats has management communicating expectations to Wall Street that can be achieved.  That is what you want to see.

IonQ (IONQ - Free Report) has a good earnings history with the company topping the Zacks Consensus Estimate in 3 of the last 4 quarters.

The lone miss in the last four quarters was the most recent earnings print that saw the company post a loss of 24 cents when a loss of 23 cents was expected.

Earnings Estimates Revisions

Earnings estimate revisions is what the Zacks Rank is all about. 

Estimates are moving higher for IONQ.

Following the recent miss, the estimates for this quarter have increased.

The consensus has moved from a loss of $0.25 to a loss of $0.23 over the last 7 days.

Next quarter has seen a two cent increase moving from a loss of $0.26 to a loss of $0.24

The full year 2024 estimate is up from a loss of $0.86 to a loss of  $0.83.

Next year increased from a loss of $1.15 to a loss of  $1.06.

All of the estimate moves have come in the last week.

Growth

This year the company is looking from $40.5M in sales which is good for 83.7% growth.

Next year analysts are expecting $80M in sales which represents growth of 97.5%.

That is a significant acceleration in growth.

Valuation

This is where the rubber meets the road.  In a mature business you can expect to see earnings and multiples that are within a standard deviation or two (or three) of an industry average.  That is not the case for IONQ or many of the other quantum computing stocks.  Right now, investors are looking out to what could be… more than what is there right now, but that is the reason that all investors buy stocks, because they believe that the outlook will improve.

With no earnings there is no PE to lean on.  Instead we see a price to book of 21.7x which is very high.  The price to sales multiple of 253x is also sky high, but recall that the company is looking forward to topline growth of nearly 100% next year.

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