The simple version

A sale becomes revenue when control of the thing passes to the buyer. Payment is a separate event on a separate date. The money owed in between sits on the balance sheet as accounts receivable, which is an IOU, not a deposit.

That gap is normal and usually boring. It stops being boring when the IOUs pile up behind one name.

Then the question is no longer how good the year was. It is whether one buyer pays on time.

The numbers

• Broadcom's policy, in its own words: revenue is recognized when, or as, performance obligations are satisfied by transferring control of a promised product or service to a customer (Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended November 2, 2025)
• One customer accounted for 44% of net accounts receivable as of November 2, 2025, against 18% as of November 3, 2024 (same filing)
• Separately, one customer accounted for 32% of net revenue in fiscal 2025 (same filing)
• The filing describes each of those as one customer and never states that they are the same customer (same filing)

Why the two numbers can disagree

A share of revenue measures a year of selling. A share of receivables measures one day, the last day of the year, and only the part not yet paid.

So a buyer can be a modest share of sales and a large share of what is still owed, or the reverse, depending on when in the year it bought and how fast it pays. The two figures answer different questions.

That is why reading them as one number is a mistake. One is a flow across twelve months. The other is a snapshot at the stroke of midnight.

The actual math on 18 to 44

The share of receivables tied to one buyer went from 18% to 44% in a single year. That is not a 26% increase, it is 26 percentage points, and it means the share of outstanding money tied to one name roughly doubled and then some.

Put it the other way around. A year earlier, about four in five dollars owed were owed by somebody other than that buyer. Now a little over half are.

The filing gives the two shares and no dollar amounts for that customer, so there is no honest way to turn this into a dollar figure. The percentage points are the whole story.

What this means

For a company, revenue proves you sold something and cash proves you got paid. The distance between them is a real risk and it has a name on the balance sheet.

The same thing is true at household scale for anyone who invoices. Work finished is not money received, and a client who owes most of what you are owed is a concentration you can feel.

The reason to read the receivables line is that it tells you who the waiting is on.

What this is NOT

This article explains the difference between recorded revenue and collected cash, and what accounts receivable is, using Broadcom's annual report for the fiscal year ended November 2, 2025 as the example. It is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold Broadcom or any security, and it takes no view on the company's collections, its credit decisions, or the quality of its receivables. It does not claim the 32% revenue customer and the 44% receivables customer are the same customer: the filing describes each as one customer and never links them, and neither do we. It is not accounting advice, and revenue recognition under a different company's policy or a different kind of contract can turn on different facts. The percentage-point arithmetic is ours on the two shares the filing states. ClearMoneySchool uses AI tools from Anthropic, and Anthropic competes with OpenAI, which is named in the reporting that occasioned this article. This is not a political endorsement or criticism of anyone.

Sources

• Broadcom Inc., Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended November 2, 2025, accession 0001730168-25-000121, filed December 18, 2025, revenue recognition policy and significant customer information