IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) fell 3% Thursday as a broad technology selloff swept through quantum computing stocks, erasing much of the sector’s gains from the previous session.
Quantinuum dropped 7%, Rigetti Computing (NASDAQ: RGTI) fell 5%, and D-Wave Quantum (NYSE: QBTS) shed 4%, with all four names giving back Wednesday’s rally in a single session.
The immediate trigger was a warning from Lam Research (NASDAQ: LRCX) CFO Doug Bettinger, who cautioned on the company’s earnings call that supply constraints could push some December-quarter shipments into March.
Lam Research had actually beaten estimates and guided above consensus, but Bettinger’s supply chain comments were enough to rattle chip stocks across the board Thursday morning.
Quantum computing names sit at the riskiest end of the AI trade, which means they tend to fall harder and faster than the broader market when sentiment turns negative.
IonQ fell close to three times as far as the Nasdaq-100 during Thursday’s session, a pattern consistent with the stock’s behavior as a leveraged proxy on AI spending expectations.
Neither Quantinuum, Rigetti, nor D-Wave had any company-specific news to explain the declines, and both Rigetti and D-Wave carry betas above 2, making outsized moves in either direction a regular feature of trading these stocks.
IonQ’s valuation rests entirely on revenue that analysts do not expect to fully materialize for years, with consensus forecasts calling for sales to more than triple from $130 million in 2025 to $455 million this year, before surpassing $1 billion by 2028.
The stock trades on a forward price-to-sales multiple rather than earnings, and at Wednesday’s close it sat at roughly 20 times forward sales, just above the five-year low of 19 times reached earlier in the week, before Thursday’s drop pushed it back toward that floor.
IonQ has also been under pressure following a $2 billion stock sale that sent shares down roughly 15% over the course of a week, adding to the headwinds facing the stock heading into its third-quarter report in early November.
Nothing in IonQ’s underlying business changed between Wednesday’s close and Thursday’s open, and the selloff reflects shifting sentiment around AI spending rather than any deterioration in the company’s own operations or outlook.
For investors with a long-term horizon, the stock trading near its cheapest forward sales multiple in five years alongside analyst expectations for revenue to more than triple in the near term may make the recent declines look excessive relative to fundamentals.
The next concrete test for the stock will be IonQ’s third-quarter earnings report in early November, which will either confirm or challenge the aggressive growth trajectory that analysts currently have priced into the stock.
