IonQ Is Up 3% in a Week. Is Its “Industry Record” Guidance Really That Good? Wiltone Asuncion Thu, November 12, 2026 at 1:20 PM EST 4 min read IONQ -8.75% RGTI -5.40% QBTS -5.54% ^GSPC -0.07% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
IonQ shares are up 3% in a week after third-quarter revenue rose 336% and it raised its 2026 guidance to $505-$515 million.
Nearly half the quarter's revenue came from a chip foundry IonQ bought in July, and rivals Rigetti and D-Wave rallied on IonQ's numbers.
Analysts cut their targets after the beat, and the stock is one to wait on until 2027 estimates rise.
IonQ (IONQ:NYSE) stock is up 15% in the week to the Nov. 11 close while the S&P 500 slipped 0.9%, after its Nov. 5 third-quarter report pulled it off a 52-week low. The report lifted rivals Rigetti Computing (RGTI:NASDAQ) and D-Wave Quantum (QBTS:NASDAQ) too.
Revenue rose 336% to $173.8 million, beating the $141.2 million analysts expected, and IonQ raised its 2026 guidance to $505-$515 million from $450-$460 million. "We are pleased to raise our full-year 2026 revenue guidance to an industry record of more than half a billion dollars," CFO Inder Singh said in the release.
But $83.5 million of that revenue came from SkyWater, the foundry IonQ bought on July 31, while its own platform grew 127%. Gross margin fell to 21.9% from 46.7% a year earlier, and the adjusted EBITDA loss grew to $133.6 million, so the narrowing losses IonQ needed to show didn't arrive.
Analysts already have 2026 revenue at the middle of the new range:
D-Wave pays IonQ's SkyWater to make part of its chips, so IonQ now earns money when a rival grows. D-Wave's third-quarter revenue came to $4.5 million on Nov. 10, and its bookings fell 19% from a year earlier to $1.9 million. Rigetti reported after the close the same day, posting $1.41 million in revenue against the $3.68 million analysts expected, and its stock fell 8.6% on Nov. 11. In September, IonQ said its second-quarter revenue was nearly double that of the rest of the pure-play quantum industry combined.
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Nine firms cut their targets the morning after the report, from B. Riley's $70 down to Morgan Stanley's $40. IonQ's forward price/sales hit a five-year low of 15x on Nov. 5 and has bounced to about 18x, against a five-year average of 121x.
But that average predates the foundry. And the share count has nearly doubled since the end of 2024, to 432.46 million on Oct. 28, before the Elisity stock deal closed.
The record guidance is good news for the quantum business, but it doesn't make the stock a buy yet. Analysts already have it, and losses and the share count keep climbing, so the signal worth waiting for is 2027 estimates rising. Lock-ups expire Nov. 14 on some IonQ shares, and management aims to show an operational 256-qubit system by year-end. Still, CEO Niccolo de Masi said on the Nov. 5 call that 2027's Superion 256 capacity is "sold out," so those estimates could climb quickly.
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