Wall Street’s most cautious major upgrade on D-Wave Quantum (NYSE: QBTS) still implies a 168% gain from current levels, exposing a vast gulf between analyst conviction and market reality.
B. Riley trimmed its price target on QBTS to $27 from $40 on November 2, yet maintained a Buy rating even as the stock slid 5% that session to close at $10.09.
The revised target sits 22% beneath the broader Street consensus of $35, which itself is derived from 17 analysts whose average view has held far above the trading price for months.
Even the most bearish analyst on the Street carries a target of $18.36, a figure that still towers over where shares actually change hands today.
The stock has shed 73% from its 52-week high, declining from $36.11 to around $10.65 over the past year, a collapse that analyst price targets have largely failed to track.
At the heart of the skepticism is a revenue profile that has struggled to justify the optimism baked into those targets, with second-quarter 2026 sales coming in flat at $3.1 million versus the prior year.
More alarming than stagnant revenue is the spending trajectory: GAAP operating expenses surged 93% to $55.0 million during the same quarter, widening losses at a pace that unsettles even bullish investors.
Analysts modeling a path to B. Riley’s $27 target are banking on D-Wave delivering two quantum computing systems before year-end, a scenario then-CFO John Markovich described as systems “likely to ship during the fourth quarter.”
Those two deliveries are expected to generate the bulk of full-year 2026 revenue, with the company needing roughly $36.5 million in the second half alone after posting just $5.9 million in the first six months.
That is a steep ramp for a company that has missed revenue consensus in each of the last three quarters, and analysts are projecting 2026 sales of $42.5 million, nearly doubling to $80.6 million by 2027.
A shareholder securities class action filed on October 15 added another layer of uncertainty, alleging that D-Wave’s record 2026 bookings were concentrated in two older contracts and that system deliveries were slipping behind schedule.
The claims remain unproven, but they cast a shadow over precisely the fourth-quarter deliveries that the entire bull thesis depends upon.
The valuation math behind B. Riley’s target requires the stock to trade at roughly 155x forward sales, modestly above D-Wave’s three-year average multiple of 152x, which was itself inflated by a peak of 839x during the 2025 quantum computing rally.
As of late October, QBTS traded at just 61x forward sales, meaning a recovery to the B. Riley target would demand a significant multiple expansion on top of hitting ambitious revenue numbers the company has yet to demonstrate it can reach.
Dilution compounds the challenge, with D-Wave’s weighted diluted share count having tripled since 2022, steadily eroding per-share value even if the business eventually scales.
The bull case is not without substance: first-half bookings surged more than 1,120% to $35.5 million, and remaining performance obligations stood at $40.7 million, suggesting real contracted demand sits behind the fourth-quarter delivery schedule.
The next major inflection point arrives November 10, when D-Wave reports third-quarter results, offering the first hard evidence of whether its revenue acceleration is on track and whether both systems remain on schedule for year-end shipment.
