Nvidia Earnings Today: Wall Street Expects Blowout Numbers

Wall Street’s heady expectations: Analysts expect Nvidia to report January quarter revenue of $38.1 billion, up 72% versus the prior year, with adjusted earnings per share of 85 cents. For the current quarter, the Street currently estimates revenue of $42.1 billion with earnings per share of 91 cents.

The next-generation of products: Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72 Blackwell Server system is a significant step up from the prior model, with its 72 GPUs linked together inside one server rack versus the previous server’s eight GPUs. A former Intel executive called the NVL72 the current “apex predator” in AI hardware, with unprecedented computing power density in a small space. Analysts say there is massive demand due to the product’s performance, but the main question for investors is how quickly production capacity for the NVL72 will expand to meet demand through 2025.

Earnings call commentary from Amazon.com and Super Micro Computer suggest Nvidia’s Blackwell production growth may be gradual in the near term, with an accelerated product transition ramp into the second half of 2025 and early next year. A slower ramp could worry investors in the near-term.

Custom chip rivals: Competitors like Broadcom are helping large technology companies design their own AI chips to compete with Nvidia. Look for Nvidia management to explain that the company has the most mature technology stack across hardware, software, and networking, which have been optimized with over a decade of fixes, making Nvidia’s AI semiconductor leadership defensible.

DeepSeek’s impact: Analysts are likely to ask about the effect of DeepSeek’s latest AI models on hardware demand. Last week, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that the DeepSeek’s innovations would drive increased demand for computing capacity because of its reasoning capability. This feature allows the AI model to reflect more thoroughly on a query by performing numerous thought computations before arriving at a higher-quality response. Expect Huang to provide similar, more detailed commentary on DeepSeek.

Trump policy risks: Government policy, not demand, may be Nvidia’s primary challenge this year. President Donald Trump has threatened chip tariffs of up to 100% that could affect Nvidia’s Asia-made products. The president may also decide to further tighten export restrictions on AI GPUs to China and other countries. Nvidia management may explain the effects of various policy scenarios.

How should investors digest the report? They should stay the course unless something drastic happens to the multiyear demand outlook. Amid all the concerns and worries, from chip tariffs and production delays to competition, Nvidia shareholders have been well-served by taking a long-term view on the stock.

While it is tempting to get swayed by short-term noise, the big picture is what matters. The durable demand trends in this generational computing shift and Nvidia’s strong competitive position are key. Both look as strong as ever.

On the demand front, three major AI trends will drive significantly more purchases of Nvidia’s products this year: 1) widespread use of AI agents that can complete multistep tasks, 2) multimodal AI models to process images, videos, and audio—not just text, and 3) advancements in “time-test compute,” allowing AI models to research and reason.

Like last year, setbacks are probable in 2025. Trump may implement tariffs, but a subsequent stock market decline will likely make the administration backpedal on any overly onerous policies, making it somewhat self-correcting.