D-Wave Quantum reports second-quarter results before the market opens Thursday, ten days after an expanded agreement with AT&T gave investors one of the sector’s clearest examples of quantum computing being applied to a commercial problem.
The company will release its results on August 6 and hold its earnings call at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time, or noon GMT. D-Wave confirmed the schedule on July 23. The timing matters because some earnings calendars incorrectly list the report after the close. It is a premarket release.
The AT&T announcement strengthened D-Wave’s commercial narrative, but Thursday’s numbers will expose the scale of the financial gap that remains. Wall Street expects approximately $4 million of quarterly revenue from a company valued at about $8.1 billion during Tuesday trading. Investors are paying for adoption that has not yet appeared consistently in the income statement.
The AT&T Deal Will Not Be in the Quarter
AT&T announced the expanded agreement with D-Wave on July 27. The telecom company plans to integrate D-Wave’s annealing technology into tools supporting its agentic AI systems and explore applications including outage response, technician routing, network planning and traffic management.
In preliminary work, AT&T said D-Wave’s technology reduced the processing time for one network-optimization workload from approximately one hour to less than 15 seconds. The companies did not disclose the agreement’s value or duration.
That performance claim helped lift D-Wave and renewed enthusiasm across quantum-computing stocks. D-Wave closed 20.36% higher at $19.51 on July 27, after early-session reports had shown gains of roughly 7% to 9%.
Thursday’s reported revenue cannot include the AT&T agreement because the second quarter ended June 30, almost a month before the announcement. The deal can affect management’s outlook, bookings or remaining performance obligations only if contractual activity occurred after quarter-end and the company chooses to disclose it.
The earnings report is therefore not a financial verdict on AT&T. It is a test of whether D-Wave’s earlier commercial agreements are beginning to convert into recognized revenue.
Wall Street Expects About $4 Million of Revenue
The consensus revenue estimate is approximately $4.02 million, up about 30% from $3.10 million in the year-earlier quarter.
TipRanks lists an expected loss of $0.09 per share, compared with a loss of $0.08 a year earlier. Other data providers currently show an $0.08 loss, meaning the earnings consensus is less uniform than the revenue estimate.
The low revenue base makes percentage growth less informative than it would be for a mature technology company. A 30% increase still leaves quarterly sales near $4 million, while operating expenses have been running many times higher.
In the first quarter, D-Wave generated $2.9 million of revenue and incurred $56.5 million of operating expenses. Its adjusted EBITDA loss was $32.8 million. The company ended March with $588.4 million in cash and marketable securities, giving it substantial financing capacity despite the operating gap.
Revenue has also been unusually uneven. First-quarter sales fell 81% year over year because the comparable 2025 period included $12.6 million from D-Wave’s first annealing-system sale. That makes bookings and contracted revenue at least as important as the headline quarterly result.
Bookings Must Start Becoming Revenue
D-Wave entered the second quarter with $33.4 million of first-quarter bookings, including a $20 million system purchase by Florida Atlantic University and a $10 million, two-year quantum-computing-as-a-service agreement with an unidentified Fortune 100 company.
Remaining performance obligations reached $42.4 million at March 31. D-Wave expected approximately 54% of that amount to become revenue within 12 months and 71% within two years.
Those figures provide more visibility than D-Wave had a year ago, but they also create an execution test. Investors need to see evidence that signed contracts are progressing through installation and service milestones rather than remaining primarily inside bookings and backlog.
A result near the $4.02 million consensus would represent sequential improvement from the first quarter, but it would not by itself close the gap between D-Wave’s commercial announcements and its valuation. The more important figures will be new bookings, remaining obligations and management’s estimate of how quickly existing contracts will be recognized.
Options No Longer Price a 17.5% Move
A July 26 options snapshot implied a 17.46% one-day move after earnings. That is the source of the roughly 17.5% figure in earlier previews.
The figure has since declined. TipRanks’ August 1 earnings preview showed options pricing a move of approximately 13.5% in either direction, reflecting changes in option prices and the continued loss of time value as the announcement approaches.
The direction of the change is clear: 17.5% is no longer the freshest estimate and should not be used without its July 26 date.
Wall Street’s 136% Upside Has Also Expired
A recent TipRanks snapshot showed 12 Buy ratings and one Hold, producing a Strong Buy consensus. It listed an average target of $38.27 and calculated approximately 135% upside when D-Wave traded near $16.21.
That percentage is no longer current. D-Wave traded around $21.70 during Tuesday afternoon after gaining more than 8% during the session. TipRanks’ current stock page lists a slightly lower average target of $37.58. At that price, the target implies approximately 73% upside rather than 136%.
The target still reflects aggressive expectations, but the stock has already absorbed part of the projected return before earnings.
Thursday’s central question is not whether D-Wave can produce another compelling demonstration. AT&T has already supplied one. The question is whether demonstrations and agreements are becoming revenue quickly enough to support a multibillion-dollar valuation.
At approximately $4 million of expected quarterly sales, the narrative remains far ahead of the profit-and-loss statement. Bookings, contract conversion and the second-half outlook will determine whether that distance is beginning to narrow.