AI giant Nvidia blows away earnings estimates

For the better part of the past year, Nvidia has led the stock market. And if that proves true on Thursday, it could be an exciting day.

The chipmaker and critical AI component company, on Wednesday, reported first quarter earnings that, as expected, surpassed analyst expectations. Nvidia reported earnings per share of $6.12, compared to an expectation of $5.59 (and stratospherically ahead of last year’s $1.09). Revenues came in at $26.04 billion versus expectations of $24.64 billion. Those were 18% ahead of the previous quarter and up 262% from a year prior.

The company also announced plans for a 10-for-1 stock split, effective June 7, which it says will make its shares more accessible to employees and investors. Shareholders will receive an additional nine shares for each one they hold. Nvidia also increased its quarterly cash dividend by 150% to 10 cents per share.

Shares jumped as much as 5% in after-hours trading, taking the share price closer to the $1,000 mark. Year to date, shares are up 97%.

“The next industrial revolution has begun,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia in a statement. “Companies and countries are partnering with Nvidia to shift the trillion-dollar traditional data centers to accelerated computing and build a new type of data center—AI factories—to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence.”

Data center revenues also beat expectations, coming in at $22.6 billion versus expectations of $21.32 billion, up 427% from a year ago and up 23% from the previous quarter. And the sales increase was a sign that the AI boom is still going strong.

The earnings were notable beats, but it was the guidance number that investors were keeping a close eye on. The whisper number for revenues for the upcoming quarter was $28 billion, and the company guided right at that figure, which might be why the company’s shares did not explode right as the earnings were released.

It was a year ago that Nvidia became the market powerhouse that it is today. That’s when the company first alerted investors that phenomenal growth was ahead, as demand for AI chips from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI was set to explode. In that time, the stock has more than tripled in value.

The question at this point is how long the company can keep this sort of growth going. AI firms, especially publicly traded ones, will need to show a profit on their spending at some point, which could mean they slow down on spending. And beginning next quarter, the year-over-year comparisons aren’t going to be as impressive as they have been. Expansion for the second quarter, which the company will report in roughly three months, is not likely to top 100%.

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