Key Takeaways
- QBTS stock advanced 2.5% to reach $20.74 during Wednesday’s session, though volume remained significantly lighter than typical levels.
- Mizuho maintained its Outperform stance while reducing the price objective to $29 from the previous $35 target following disappointing quarterly results.
- Second quarter revenue totaled $3.1 million, falling short of the $4 million analyst projection; quarterly bookings plummeted 94% compared to the previous period.
- The company obtained funding up to CAD $300,000 from Canada’s National Research Council to advance quantum software capabilities.
- Wall Street analysts maintain a Strong Buy consensus rating, with a collective price target of $35.79 suggesting approximately 73% potential upside.
Shares of D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) finished Wednesday’s trading session at $20.74, posting a gain of 2.52%. Trading activity registered approximately 13.2 million shares, representing a decline of roughly 55% compared to typical daily volumes.
The upward movement occurred as Mizuho’s Vijay Rakesh maintained his Outperform recommendation on the quantum computing company, while simultaneously adjusting his price objective downward to $29 from the prior $35 target. This modification came in response to second quarter performance that failed to meet Wall Street projections for both revenue generation and new bookings.
The company reported Q2 revenue of $3.1 million, falling short of the Street’s $4 million expectation. New bookings registered approximately $2.1 million, representing a steep 94% quarter-over-quarter decline, although showing a 59% improvement compared to the same period last year.
The company recorded an earnings loss of $0.10 per share, wider than the anticipated $0.08 loss.
Customer Base Expansion
Notwithstanding the underwhelming quarterly figures, Rakesh characterized D-Wave as being “well positioned as the only dual-modality QC platform,” highlighting its unique capability to advance both gate-model and annealing quantum computing technologies.
The commercial segment demonstrated encouraging developments. D-Wave has expanded its customer roster beyond 100 organizations, with commercial entities representing over half of that figure. Revenue contribution from Forbes Global 2000 enterprises reached 49% of first-half 2026 revenue, a substantial increase from merely 8% during the comparable period in the previous year.
The firm’s sales pipeline has expanded by more than 120% year to date. Management continues to project two system sales for 2026, with both anticipated to close during the fourth quarter.
D-Wave additionally disclosed securing funding of up to CAD $300,000 through the National Research Council of Canada’s Applied Quantum Computing Challenge initiative. These resources will support the advancement of annealing quantum computing software, including graph minor-embedding algorithms designed for its Zephyr topology and compatibility with its open-source Ocean software development kit.
Development Timeline
Regarding hardware development, D-Wave aims to deliver a 17-qubit gate-model system by the conclusion of 2026 and a 181-qubit configuration by 2028. The extended roadmap projects achieving 10 to 100 logical qubits during the 2030 to 2032 timeframe. The company’s Advantage3 annealing platform continues progressing toward an ambitious target of 100,000 qubits.
Remaining performance obligations decreased 4% sequentially, ending at $40.7 million.
Recent insider transactions have drawn attention. Chief Financial Officer John Markovich divested approximately 328,752 shares during May at $27.70 each. Director Rohit Ghai sold 13,518 shares in June. Combined insider selling reached approximately $35.8 million in value throughout the most recent quarter.
Institutional ownership stands at 42.47% of outstanding shares. Multiple investment firms including CoreCap Advisors and Sigma Planning Corp have incrementally increased their holdings in recent periods.
The analyst community assigns QBTS a Strong Buy consensus recommendation derived from 15 ratings, comprising 14 Buy recommendations and one Hold rating. The collective price target of $35.79 indicates potential appreciation of approximately 73% from present trading levels. Wedbush launched coverage on August 3rd, assigning an Outperform rating alongside a $40 price objective.
The two anticipated system sales scheduled for December represent the critical near-term catalyst to monitor.
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