History Says Broadcom Stock's Best Season Starts Now. It Has Risen in 13 Straight Fourth Quarters.

Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) stock usually finishes the year strong. Shares have climbed in every fourth quarter from 2013 through 2025, 13 in a row, with an average gain of around 18%. And the next fourth quarter starts Thursday, Oct. 1.

No other part of the calendar comes close for the chip designer. Across the same 13 years, the stock's average rise in each of the other three quarters was about 12% or lower, and each of these quarters had its down years.

As I write, shares trade near $350. That's about 1% above where they finished 2025, and 29% below the stock's 52-week high of $495.

The streak's worth knowing about. But I think it rests on more than the calendar -- namely, a December report that has swung the stock hard in both directions.

13 years, 13 gains

The streak began in 2013, when the tech company still traded as Avago Technologies under the same AVGO ticker. (Avago bought Broadcom in early 2016 and took the Broadcom name.)

Shares climbed around 23% in the fourth quarter of 2013, then about 16% in both 2014 and 2015.

The next three years were the lean ones. The stock's fourth-quarter gain was under 3% in 2016 and around 6% in 2017. And 2018 saw a gain of about 3% in a quarter when the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) fell almost 14%.

Then the gains grew. The growth stock climbed 14% in the last quarter of 2019, then 20% the next year. The 2021 fourth quarter saw a 37% jump, the streak's biggest gain.

The stock added 26% in 2022, even though shares had shed a third of their value in that year's first nine months. Back-to-back 34% gains followed in 2023 and 2024, then a 5% climb last year.

Of course, the broader market helped. The S&P 500 climbed in 12 of the 13 fourth quarters. But Broadcom beat the index in 11 of them.

What happens in December?

Broadcom's fiscal year ends in late October or early November, so its full-year results arrive in December. Fiscal 2025, for example, ended Nov. 2, and the company reported on Dec. 11. That report also included the yearly dividend hike, a 10% boost to $0.65 a share a quarter.

Splitting each fourth quarter at the start of December shows the streak has had two sources. December, the month with the report, delivered the bigger part of the gain in eight of the 13 years. In 2016, 2018, and 2024, the stock was down for the quarter going into December, and December flipped it into a gain. The 2024 case was the most extreme. Shares were down 6% for the quarter at the end of November, then leapt 43% in December, including a 24% jump the day after the fiscal fourth-quarter report.

Still, December has gone badly, too. The stock sank 11% the day after the December 2025 report and shed 14% for the month. A 22% rise in October and November offset the damage.

December 2017 was a smaller version of the same thing. Shares lost 8% that month -- after a 15% climb over October and November.

Put another way, the two halves of the quarter have never both dropped in the same year.

The growth in every report hasn't mapped cleanly onto the stock's gains, either. Broadcom's fiscal fourth-quarter revenue climbed just 4% year over year in the report it put out in December 2023, but shares added 34% that quarter. Two years later, 28% revenue growth came with a 5% gain.

A lower starting point

This year's setup is unusual for the streak. Only once, in 2022, did Broadcom stock begin a fourth quarter farther below its 52-week high than it is today. It entered that quarter around 34% below its high and still rose 26%.

The December report might also show a far faster-growing business. Management expects fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of around $34.8 billion, up 93% year over year. That'd be a big acceleration from the 28% growth Broadcom saw the year before, and well above the 51% it reported for the same quarter in fiscal 2024, when the purchase of software firm VMware inflated sales. Management's guidance has its artificial intelligence (AI) chips supplying most of the expected rise.

Overall, history favors Broadcom this quarter, even from a starting point this far below its high. But the streak has lasted because the months before the report and the month of the report haven't failed together, and the report itself can swing shares sharply either way.

So the calendar is a nice tailwind. But the December report will probably decide whether the streak reaches 14.

Daniel Sparks has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Broadcom. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.