Nvidia Earnings Live: Results Top Expectations on Booming Demand for AI; CEO Huang Says DeepSeek 'Ignited Global Enthusiasm'
Huang Says Deepseek ‘Ignited Global Enthusiasm’
13 hr 11 min ago
CEO Jensen Huang said demand for AI inference is only accelerating as new AI models emerge, to Nvidia’s benefit, with a shoutout to Chinese startup DeepSeek’s R1, among others.
“DeepSeek R1 has ignited global enthusiasm. It’s an excellent innovation, but even more importantly, it has open sourced a world class reasoning AI model,” Huang said, adding “nearly every AI developer is applying R1 or chain of thought and reinforcement learning techniques like R1 to scale their model’s performance.”
Ahead of the company’s earnings report, Nvidia announced a partnership with DeepSeek bringing optimizations to Blackwell.
“We defined Blackwell for this moment,” Huang said.
The comments come after Nvidia lost nearly $600 billion in market capitalization in a single day late last month as DeepSeek’s sophisticated, lower-cost model raised doubts about Big Tech’s spending on AI infrastructure. However, several analysts have suggested they expect DeepSeek’s rise to benefit Nvidia.
Gross Margins Expected to Improve Later This Year
13 hr 44 min ago
CFO Colette Kress said Nvidia expects gross margins to reach the “mid 70s” later this year once Blackwell production has ramped up.
The chipmaker’s gross margin fell to 73% in the fiscal fourth quarter from 76% a year earlier, and the company estimated 70.6% in the first quarter.
“At this point, we are focusing on expediting our manufacturing,” Kress said. “Once our Blackwell fully ramps, we can improve our cost and our gross margin.”
Has ‘All the Good News’ Been Priced Into Nvidia’s Stock?
13 hr 44 min ago
Are the best days for Nvidia stock behind them? That’s the take of Mott Capital founder Michael Kramer, who noted the market’s comparatively tame response to Nvidia’s latest results and outlook in a late-Wednesday commentary.
“This stock has been dead money since June 2023, and when stocks post ‘better than expected’ results and can’t rally, it tells you that all the good news has been priced in,” he wrote.
Nvidia shares were down slightly in recent after-hours trading, after gaining 3.7% during the regular session.
Meet Nvidia’s New Investor AI Agent
13 hr 56 min ago
Nvidia investors can now use AI right on the company’s web site.
A link at the top of Nvidia’s investor relations section points to a “Financial Info AI Agent.” When Investopedia checked it out, we were put in a timed queue; when the timer ended, we were sent here.
On the page, there is a box for prompts and some suggestions, including “Show NVIDIA’s revenues by market platform over the last three years as a stacked bar chart.”
There’s also some text:
“Hello! I’m NVIDIA’s AI-powered Financial Info AI Agent, currently in its Alpha phase. I am designed to answer questions – through charts and tables – related to NVIDIA’s reported financial information in its financial statements and CFO commentary.”
The agent is powered by OpenAI, according to the page.
Nvidia Teases ‘Exciting Things’ at GTC Next Month
14 hr 8 min ago
After Nvidia’s strong results, the next catalyst for Nvidia’s stock could be the chipmaker’s annual GPU Technology Conference in March, which Bank of America analysts called the “AI Woodstock” in a note to clients Tuesday.
“We have some really exciting things to share with you guys at GTC,” CEO Jensen Huang said on Nvidia’s earnings call, telling analysts to come to GTC, where Huang said he expects to talk more about the chipmaker’s Blackwell, its Blackwell Ultra next-generation AI system, and Vera Rubin board—Blackwell’s successor combining the GPU and CPU into a superchip.
CEO Huang: ‘We’re Just at the Start of the Age of AI’
14 hr 14 min ago
CEO Jensen Huang told investors that the ‘age of AI’ is just getting started. Here are some of his comments on where artificial intelligence is headed:
- “We’re at the beginning of reasoning, AI and inference, time scaling, but we’re just at the start of the age of AI. Multi-modal AI enterprise AI, sovereign AI, and physical AI are right around the corner,” Huang said.
- “Going forward, data centers will dedicate most of CapEx to accelerated computing and AI data centers will increasingly become AI factories.”
- “We’ve really only tapped consumer AI and search and some amount of consumer generative AI advertising, recommenders, kind of the early days of software,” he said, adding “the next wave is coming—agentic AI for enterprise, physical AI for robotics, and on sovereign AI as different regions build out their their AI for their own ecosystems.”
Cheng Yu-Chen / AFP / Getty Images
Customers ‘Anxious and Impatient’ to Get Blackwell
14 hr 45 min ago
Nvidia CFO Colette Kress told analysts on the company’s earnings call that “companies across industries are tapping into Nvidia,” from robotics to automotive and healthcare companies.
CEO Jensen Huang added that the chipmaker expects its Blackwell line “is going to be incredible across the board.”
“We’re going to have to continue to scale as demand is quite high and customers are anxious and impatient to get their Blackwell systems,” he said, as demand for the Blackwell system continues to outpace supply.
Nvidia said it expects to see strong sequential growth in the first quarter as supply increases and constraints ease.
Hyperscaler Demand Remains Strong at Nvidia, Analyst Says
15 hr 22 min ago
Some market watchers wonder about the degree to which hyperscalers-the big tech companies that have spent billions, much of it with Nvidia, to build out AI infrastructure-might eventually take their money elsewhere or build their own technology.
The company on Wednesday said about half of its fourth-quarter data center revenue came from large cloud service providers, making up a vital chunk of Blackwell sales. For now, one analyst says, that’s a good sign for Nvidia.
“Based on the Q4 numbers and also on the guidance, it seems like the demand for Blackwell… is very, very strong,” WestEnd Capital analyst Ali Mogharabi, told Yahoo Finance in a video after the earnings report. “One can only assume that actually is coming from the hyperscalers. “
Nvidia Cites Data Centers as Gross Margins Slip
15 hr 45 min ago
Nvidia’s gross margins fell year-over-year and sequentially in the fourth quarter, the company said, citing higher-cost systems in the data center segment that is by far its largest source of revenue.
Gross margins were at 73% for the quarter, the company said, down from 76% a year earlier. Operating margins, at 61%, were roughly in line with the year-ago quarter.
Fourth quarter net margins came in at 56%, also about in line with the previous year’s fourth quarter.
AI Advancing at ‘Light Speed’, CEO Says
15 hr 55 min ago
CEO Jensen Huang used some dramatic language to describe the company’s latest results, saying in prepared remarks that artificial intelligence was advancing at “light speed.”
From Huang, per Nvidia’s press release:
- “Demand for Blackwell is amazing as reasoning AI adds another scaling law — increasing compute for training makes models smarter and increasing compute for long thinking makes the answer smarter.”
- “We’ve successfully ramped up the massive-scale production of Blackwell AI supercomputers, achieving billions of dollars in sales in its first quarter.”
- “AI is advancing at light speed as agentic AI and physical AI set the stage for the next wave of AI to revolutionize the largest industries.”
Nvidia Has $43 Billion in Cash and Marketable Securities
15 hr 59 min ago
Nvidia had more than $43 billion in cash, equivalents and marketable securities on hand at the end of the quarter.
The company in a commentary published by its CFO said it had $43.2 billion on hand, up from $38.5 billion at the end of Q3 and $26 billion at the end of the previous year’s fiscal fourth quarter.
Higher revenue lifted that figure, offset by stock buybacks. The company reported $7.8 billion in buybacks during the quarter, along with $245 million in dividends.
Data Center Sales Jump as Big Tech Firms Double Down on AI
16 hr 4 min ago
Nvidia’s data center sales hit a quarterly record of $35.6 billion in the fourth quarter, exceeding analysts’ expectations, as Big Tech firms work to build out their AI infrastructure.
In recent earnings calls, several of Nvidia’s Big Tech buyers, including Microsoft (MSFT), Meta (META), Amazon (AMZN) and Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL), announced plans to raise their capital expenditures to fuel their AI ambitions.
In a note to clients Tuesday, Wedbush analysts said about 70% of Nvidia customers they spoke with said they are boosting their budgets for AI spending.
The chipmaker was also named a key technology partner in a $500 billion AI joint venture called Stargate that President Trump announced last month.
Revenue Guidance Slightly Above Street Consensus
16 hr 10 min ago
Nvidia guided investors toward fiscal first-quarter revenue of $43 billion, plus or minus 2%. Wall Street is looking for $42.1 billion, according to estimates compiled by Visible Alpha.
The company reported $26 billion in first-quarter revenue a year ago; at $43 billion, that would represent year-over-year growth of about 65%.
Results Top Expectations as Data Center Revenue Soars
16 hr 13 min ago
Nvidia’s results beat analysts’ expectations on the top and bottom lines as data center revenue soared.
The chipmaker posted record quarterly revenue of $39.3 billion, up 78% year-over-year and above the analyst consensus from Visible Alpha. Adjusted net income of $22.07 billion was up 72% from a year earlier and also topped expectations.
The results came as sales from Nvidia’s data center segment, representing the bulk of the chipmaker’s revenue, nearly doubled to a record $35.6 billion.
Nvidia shares bounced between gains and losses as investors awaited comments from CEO Jensen Huang in a conference scheduled for 5:00 p.m. ET.
Traders Expect Big Move for Nvidia After Earnings
16 hr 46 min ago
Nvidia holds the record for both the largest one-day increase and decrease in market value, and options traders on Wednesday were positioning themselves for another sizable move in the stock.
Nvidia options pricing on Wednesday afternoon suggested traders expect shares to move roughly $10, or about 8%, in either direction during the two days after Wednesday’s earnings.
That would be the stock’s largest post-earnings move since May when shares gained more than 12% in the two days after Nvidia blew past earnings expectations.
Nvidia stock has retreated after each of its two most recent reports. Shares lost more than 4% in the days after its August report and almost 3% after its November earnings. The company’s results exceeded expectations in both of those instances, but disappointed investors who may have been looking for even larger beats.
Nvidia’s earnings come during a difficult stretch for stocks. The Magnificent Seven stocks, which have accounted for a large share of the stock market’s gains over the last two years, were trading in correction territory on Wednesday.
Nvidia gained 3.7% during Wednesday’s regular trading session, closing at $131.28. Despite the stock’s recent slump, it remains up 66% over the past 12 months.
Analysts Bullish on Nvidia Heading Into Earnings
17 hr 9 min ago
All but one of the 18 analysts covering the stock who are tracked by Visible Alpha have issued “buy” or equivalent ratings, with one analyst giving the stock a “hold” rating. Their consensus price target of about $175 would imply 34% upside from Wednesday’s intraday price. The stock was up 3% at $130.50 in recent trading.
Wedbush and Oppenheimer analysts, who reiterated $175 price targets in the days ahead of the report, suggested booming demand for the company’s advanced chips as Big Tech firms ramp up spending on AI infrastructure could lead to another strong quarter.
Nvidia is projected to post record quarterly revenue of $38.34 billion, up 73% year-over-year, according to estimates compiled by Visible Alpha. Net income is expected to climb to $21.1 billion, from $12.84 billion a year earlier.
UBS analysts, who maintained a $185 price target, noted “investor expectations having crept up a bit recently,” and added supply chain improvements could mean higher sales of Nvidia’s Blackwell line. UBS nearly doubled its estimate for Blackwell’s contribution to fourth-quarter revenue to $9 billion, up from $5 billion previously.
Oppenheimer also indicated the rapid rise of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek could ultimately prove “positive” for the chipmaker, as competition pushes Nvidia’s American clients to step up their efforts in the AI race instead of pulling back.