AI earnings gauntlet: AVGO's $16B AI target headlines a four-day print that will reset SMB tool costs

Five prints in four days, and the wholesale cost of every AI-embedded software tool a small business will renew this fall is being set inside them. Palo Alto Networks and Dell Technologies report Tuesday after the close on September 1; Broadcom, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Snowflake follow on September 2. The S&P 500 sits about 1% off its August 13 all-time high, with fed funds futures pricing a 57% chance of a rate hike at the September FOMC meeting following Chair Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole address.

The headliner is Broadcom. Hock Tan’s team guided fiscal Q3 revenue to roughly $29.4 billion, up 84% year-over-year, with AI semiconductor revenue targeted at “over 200 percent year-over-year to $16.0 billion” against $5.2 billion a year ago and $10.8 billion (up 143%) last quarter. LSEG consensus sits at $3.24 EPS on $29.24 billion; FactSet’s AI-semi line pencils in $15.23 billion. RBC Capital Markets thinks Broadcom could lift its fiscal 2027 AI outlook, previously “in excess of $100 billion,” toward $120 billion, and UBS models a fiscal 2028 step-up to the ~$200B range. Nvidia last week forecast a 70% revenue jump for its next fiscal year.

The economics behind that are structural. Q2 adjusted EBITDA hit $15.2 billion (69% of revenue), free cash flow reached $10.3 billion, and Q3 guidance holds non-GAAP operating margin at approximately 67% of revenue. Networking is currently 40% of the AI chip mix and drifting toward 30% as custom accelerators scale, implying roughly $17 billion of a $56 billion fiscal 2026 AI target. OpenAI’s Jalapeño accelerator has two further generations in development. Goldman Sachs sees the optical networking market growing from $15 billion in 2026 to $154 billion by 2028.

Palo Alto guided fiscal Q4 revenue to $3.345–$3.355 billion (CNBC consensus: $3.35 billion) and non-GAAP EPS of $0.96 to $0.98 on 830–840 million shares, matching consensus at $0.98. Nikesh Arora’s Next-Generation Security ARR guide of $8.90–$8.95 billion implies 59% to 60% growth from Q3’s $8.1 billion, which itself included $1.6 billion from CyberArk and Chronosphere; remaining performance obligation grew 36% to $18.4 billion.

That’s the pass-through. Marvell’s record $2.74B print and Google’s $120B custom-chip payday told the supply-side story last week; last weekend’s Salesforce, Nvidia and CrowdStrike trifecta told the demand-side one. The four-day gauntlet closes the loop between chip cost and the per-seat invoice landing on a thirty-person shop’s desk in October.

Sources

• https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/30/here-are-the-3-big-things-were-watching-in-the-stock-market-in-the-week-ahead.html
• https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/jobs-report-broadcom-results-pose-100141778.html
• https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001730168/000173016826000051/avgo-05032026x8kxex99.htm
• https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001327567/000132756726000012/ex991q326earningsrelease.htm
• https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/08/30/prediction-broadcom-stock-will-go-parabolic-after/