Arm Holdings PLC (NASDAQ:ARM)'s long-term growth outlook is improving as rising demand for artificial intelligence workloads drives increased need for CPUs, according to Jefferies, which raised its price target on the semiconductor designer to $320 from $290.
The company's shares are up almost 150% so far this year, trading hands at $272 on Monday afternoon.
Jefferies wrote that Arm's AI-related CPU opportunity has expanded following the company's fiscal 2026 results, driven by growing demand from agentic AI applications and new customer additions including Oracle and ByteDance. The firm now expects Arm's AI CPU revenue to reach $18 billion in fiscal 2031, above the company's guidance of $15 billion.
The analyst firm noted that the total addressable market for CPUs could reach $200 billion by 2030, up from an earlier estimate of more than $100 billion. Jefferies expects Arm's AI CPUs to capture at least a 15% share of that market, with Meta projected to become the company's largest customer, followed by OpenAI, Oracle and ByteDance.
Jefferies also raised its estimates for AI CPU revenue in fiscal 2028 and fiscal 2029, forecasting $1.5 billion and $3 billion, respectively, compared with previous estimates of $1.4 billion and $2.7 billion. The firm wrote that Arm could increase production capacity through higher-cost wafer supply options, which may weigh on gross margins but help the company secure market share.
The firm highlighted data centre as another area of potential growth, with royalty revenue expected to benefit from increasing adoption of Arm-based infrastructure. Jefferies noted that Arm's compute subsystem-based royalties have increased to $1.50 per core from $1 previously.
Jefferies also pointed to a potential AI accelerator launch from SoftBank using Arm's design services as a potential future royalty opportunity. The firm wrote that royalties from such products could exceed $7,000 per chip given the high average selling prices of GPUs, although volumes remain difficult to predict.
The firm expects Arm's revenue and earnings to grow at more than 40% annually through fiscal 2031, with Jefferies forecasting a five-year earnings per share compound annual growth rate of 45%. Jefferies wrote that the company's growth visibility and exposure to AI-driven CPU demand could support outperformance relative to the broader semiconductor sector.
The revised price target is based on a fiscal 2031 price-to-earnings multiple of 29 times, with Jefferies also citing discounted cash flow analysis as support for its valuation.
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