IonQ (IONQ) stock trades at about $37, roughly 55% below its high inside the last year. The market did not do that: over the past twelve months the S&P 500 returned 16.6% while IonQ lost 33.4%. Its own numbers went the other way, which makes the downside hard to size.
Did IonQ Report Anything Bad?
Only the loss. Adjusted EBITDA was negative $120.3 million in its second-quarter 2026 results. IonQ also raised its own full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $280 million to $290 million, and called the quarter its fifth straight record.
What IonQ has not sized is the business it just bought. IonQ closed a $1.8 billion purchase of SkyWater days before those results. While management initially withheld combined metrics on its Q2 call, it guided combined 2026 revenue to $450 million–$460 million at its September 2026 Investor Day.
Is IonQ A Worse Business Now?
On its own numbers, no. Revenue over the trailing twelve months is about $250 million, up 370.6% from a year earlier, against a three-year average growth rate of 176.4%. Growth is speeding up. The operating margin, at -408.2%, is deeply negative and still the best of its last three years.
Those numbers do not explain the price. At about $14 billion of market value, IonQ trades at roughly 54 times its own trailing revenue, which does not include SkyWater. The multiple is a bet on 2027.
IonQ is moving its trapped ion machines from laser control to electronic qubit control, putting the ion traps on a semiconductor chip. SkyWater, the foundry IonQ now owns, fabricates those chips, and the first fully integrated ones are back for testing. IonQ is working to demonstrate its 256-qubit architecture, with prototype chips currently undergoing testing as it targets system commissioning in 2027.
How Far Does IonQ Fall When The Market Falls?
An average of 38% peak to trough, against 13% for the S&P 500. That is the record across five market shocks since IonQ began trading in 2021. Its deepest came in the 2022 inflation shock and Fed tightening: 75%, against the index’s 24%.
Its worst environment by type of shock has been rate and valuation shocks, the group that includes 2022: an average fall of 56%. A bet on 2027 is what a valuation shock reprices. That 75% is measured inside the shock window, January to October 2022. From its own 2021 peak to its 2022 trough the fall was about 90%.
A 75% fall on a position that is a tenth of your portfolio takes about 8% off everything you own, and about 15% at a fifth. After those five shocks the stock recovered fast. The current fall is not one of them. The median wait from the low back to the prior high was about two months. Its slowest, after the 2022 fall, took about 15 months from the low, and about 19 months below the prior high in total.
The profile is honest: IonQ falls much harder than the market, and after past market shocks it climbed back. If that is more than you want to carry, the stocks that hold up best when the market falls are a different list.
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