IonQ is a buy for high-risk investors; valuation at 20x futures sales supports at least 17% upside in 12-18 months.

We have great news for IonQ stock investors , as the company's management team has announced a major breakthrough in quantum computing. The stock price rose by more than 5% after this announcement, and of course I am happy about that .

The reason is that I recently upgraded IonQ stock to a buy opportunity for very high- risk investors, given that it is one of the riskiest stocks you can buy. But it also comes with one of the biggest growth opportunities you can see in the stock market today.

So, after this significant increase in the share price, do I still believe that IonQ stock represents a buying opportunity? Well, IonQ reported that researchers successfully tested a complete real-time quantum error detection decoder on a single standard CPU.

Now, quantum error correction is designed to detect and correct errors caused by noise in quantum systems, helping to support larger and more reliable devices. Therefore, error correction is a crucial skill that must be mastered when developing quantum computing technology.

I will not go into more detail because it is very complicated and strange, but the gist of the news is that IonQ is achieving and reaching key stages . This is extremely important when you are investing in an early-stage, innovative company like IonQ.

What the company needs is to reach its basic stages within a reasonable timeframe. This will allow the company to obtain more funds from investors to give it time to reach the next stage.

And so things continue step by step, one innovation after another, until finally an innovative product is created that can generate billions of dollars in revenue.

I mentioned investor capital as a very important element because this business is losing a lot of money, and I will share with you later how much I expect the company to lose in cash flow and how much liquidity it will burn through over the next few years.

Therefore, it is important to have money available to give yourself time to get through that difficult period. IonQ has a lot of capital. The company benefited from the quantum computing frenzy that occurred in 2025 when stock prices rose by thousands of percentage points.

The management team seized the opportunity to sell shares to raise capital.

Therefore, it now has a very strong balance sheet with over $2 billion in cash and short- term investments. To put this figure in perspective, if the company were to invest these funds in very safe, short-term U.S. government bonds , which yield returns of 4 to 5%, this would give the company about $100 million a year in interest income.

That's a great investment opportunity, or in other words, that's a huge amount of money that the company can use to pay its outstanding employees for research and development, giving it more time to reach that next milestone.

She mentioned that she loses a lot of money, but the reason is that she spends a lot on research and development. As a percentage, the ratio of research and development spending to revenue over the past twelve months was 182%.

This means that for every $100 the company generates in revenue, it spends $182 on research and development.

Therefore, from this expense item alone, the company is already in a net loss. This does not include a range of other expenses that the company needs to operate. Fortunately, this percentage decreases as the company's revenues increase.

This is what investors would like to see: that the company's revenues continue to grow at a faster pace than its investment in research and development.

I recently mentioned that I upgraded my rating on IonQ stock to "buy". The reason is that I saw a lot of the hype and enthusiasm fade away from this assessment. Or to put it another way, I saw some air escaping from the bubble of this balloon here .

At one point, this stock was trading at a price-to-futures-sales multiple approaching 60. This was at the height of the market frenzy. It could be argued that the state of obsession was greatest at the end of 2024, shortly after the election of Donald Trump.

There was a lot of excitement in many of the most risky areas of the stock market. IonQ was one of those companies that experienced a real explosion in its stock price.

At that moment, I warned investors that the situation did not look like a good buying opportunity. But now, it is trading at a fraction of that valuation, only a fifth of that level with a price-to- sells multiple of 20 .

In fact, earlier this year when I upgraded the rating, the stock was trading at a price-to- futures-sales multiple in the mid-dozens. Therefore, the valuation has become much more attractive, and this is important when you are looking at a company with enormous growth potential, but which also carries very high risks.

You want to maximize gains while minimizing potential losses, and give yourself the maximum possible reward for the risk you take, because you take a lot of risks. You want to make sure you get adequate compensation for that risk.

If you are already paying a very high price for a business, much of that profit is already included in the share price, and you will not get enough reward for all the risks you take.

As for IonQ, it does not have much of that hope and enthusiasm embedded in its stock price at the moment . So, another way I like to look at this is by calculating the discounted cash flow valuation of the company, and I calculated a fair value of $50 for AeonQ shares , which is now at $42.64.

Therefore, I see gains of at least 17% over the next 12 to 18 months for IonQ. But within these 17 % gains there is a wide range of possible outcomes. The price of this stock could rise by 1000% over the next 12 months.

It may also decrease by 85% over the next 12 months .

That's why I mentioned that this is one of the most dangerous stocks in the market because of the fluctuations not only in the stock price, but also in the results, right ? They could achieve a major breakthrough that would send the stock price soaring , or they could fail a key test that could lead to a stock price collapse.

It is one of the riskiest investments and should only be considered by investors with a very high risk tolerance. I can see this business 15 years from now, and it will likely become a trillion-dollar company.

Currently, the market capitalization is less than $20 billion, specifically at $17 billion .

So, there are huge payoffs here for AeonQ if they do things right, if they continue to achieve these milestones, if they continue to make progress , and if they continue to deliver results for investors, they will continue to receive capital, and investors will be patient if they continue to achieve those milestones.

I upgraded IonQ stock to a " buy" rating on September 2nd, and in view of these recent developments , I will reiterate that buy rating , while cautioning investors that this should only be considered by investors with a very high risk tolerance .