The company delivered another robust quarter, declaring that "the age of AI is in full steam" as sales of its popular semiconductor chips surged.
Nvidia reported third-quarter revenue of $35.08 billion, marking a 94 per cent year-over-year increase and surpassing the consensus analyst estimate of $33.25 billion.
You would think that Wall Street would be impressed by this; after all, what has a company got to do?
Nvidia forecast fourth-quarter sales of $37.5 billion, plus or minus 2 per cent, aligning with estimates of $37.1 billion. While the guidance met expectations, it did not exceed the highest analyst predictions. So, in other words, it is not enough for you to meet Wall Street’s wildly optimistic expectations. You must beat them.
The chipmaking giant announced that production for its Blackwell chip, the successor to the widely popular Hopper chip favoured by many Big Tech companies, will continue to ramp up into fiscal 2026. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang noted that Blackwell's demand was strong and "coming from a lot of different places."
"Demand for Hopper and anticipation for Blackwell — in full production — are incredible as foundation model makers scale pretraining, post-training, and inference," Huang said.
Nvidia CFO Colette Kress added that demand for Blackwell "is expected to exceed supply for several quarters in fiscal 2026." The company's profit margin, a closely watched metric, is expected to be impacted by Blackwell production in the short term, but Kress indicated it could return to the mid-70s in the second half of next year.
When asked about the potential impacts of Trump's tariff plans on Nvidia's China business, Huang stated that the company is taking things "one quarter at a time."
"Whatever the new administration decides, we will, of course, support the administration" and "fully" comply with any new regulations, Huang said.
Following the earnings report, Nvidia's stock fell two per cent in volatile after-hours trading and was down more than a per cent as the analyst call concluded. Despite this, the stock has risen 194 per cent so far in 2024.
