Artificial intelligence kingpin Nvidia late Wednesday beat Wall Street's lowered targets for its fiscal first quarter but its sales guidance for the current period was below views. Still, Nvidia stock rose in extended trading.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company earned an adjusted 81 cents a share on sales of $44.06 billion in the quarter ended April 27. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected Nvidia to earn an adjusted 73 cents a share on sales of $43.34 billion in fiscal Q1. In the year-earlier period, Nvidia earned an adjusted 61 cents a share on sales of $26.04 billion.
For the current quarter, Nvidia forecast revenue of $45 billion, vs. expectations for $45.92 billion. In the same quarter last year, Nvidia posted sales of $30.04 billion.
In after-hours trading on the stock market today, Nvidia stock climbed more than 2% to 138.19. During the regular session Wednesday, Nvidia stock dipped 0.5% to close at 134.81.
Last month, Nvidia warned that it would take a charge of "up to approximately $5.5 billion" for H20 inventory that the Trump administration blocked the company from selling to China. Nvidia ended up taking a smaller charge, totaling $4.5 billion.
Excluding the charge, Nvidia would have earned an adjusted 96 cents a share in fiscal Q1.
The U.S. government notified Nvidia on April 9 that it will need to get export licenses to sell its H20 processor in China and other restricted markets. The move effectively barred Nvidia from selling the throttled processor, which it designed to meet previous U.S. export restrictions.
6:16 p.m. E.T.
Nvidia CEO Says He Trusts Trump Will Make Right Decisions On AI
Chief Executive Jensen Huang said he is confident that President Trump will make the right decisions when it comes to supporting the U.S. AI industry.
"The president has a plan. He has a vision and I trust him," Huang said. President Trump wants to win the AI race, he said.
Huang listed four positive surprises this year for the AI market. They include demand growth from inference reasoning, agentic AI, industrial AI and the cancelation of the Biden-era AI Diffusion Rule.
Huang said he will be on the road next week in Europe. He hinted that new AI data center announcements are pending from the continent.
"We're at the beginning of the buildout and there should be many more announcements in the future," he said.
Earnings call has ended. Nvidia stock up more than 4%.
5:45 p.m. E.T.
Nvidia CEO Warns Moves Against China Could Backfire
On the earnings call, Huang said U.S. government officials are underestimating China's tech industry. If U.S. tech companies are blocked from the Chinese market, China will build its own ecosystem, including its own AI processors, he said.
"U.S. technology leadership is at stake," he said. "China is one of the world's largest AI markets and a springboard to global success."
"The question is not whether China will have AI. It already does," Huang also said. "The question is whether one of the world's largest AI markets will run on American platforms. Shielding Chinese chipmakers from U.S. competition only strengthens them abroad and weakens America's position. Export restrictions have spurred China's innovation and scale."
5:21 p.m. E.T.
A 'Challenging' Quarter
On a conference call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress called fiscal Q1 a "challenging operating environment."
She said losing access to the China market would have a "material adverse impact" on Nvidia and "benefit competitors in China and worldwide."
Large cloud service providers were the biggest customer segment of Nvidia's data center business in fiscal Q1, at just under 50% of revenue, Kress said.
"The strong year-on-year and sequential growth was driven by demand for our accelerated computing platform used for large language models, recommendation engines, and generative and agentic AI applications," she said.
On Wall Street, Nvidia's report drew cheers as the stock rallied nearly 5% in late trades
5:06 p.m. E.T.
Nvidia Warning On China Market
In prepared remarks, Kress explained the smaller H20 charge in Q1.
"The $4.5 billion charge was less than what we initially anticipated as we were able to re-use certain materials," she said.
The company's second-quarter revenue guidance reflects a loss in H20 revenue of about $8 billion due to the recent export control limitations, Kress said.
In the company's 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Nvidia said it is still hoping to supply China with a modified processor.
"We are still evaluating our limited options to supply Data Center compute products compliant with the USG's export control rules," the company said. "The export controls applicable to China are complex and address a variety of parameters, including the total processing performance of a chip, the 'performance density' of a chip, the interconnect bandwidth of a chip, and the memory bandwidth of a chip."
Nvidia said it may be unable to create a competitive product for China's data center market that receives approval from the U.S. government.
"In that event, we would effectively be foreclosed from competing in China's data center computing/compute market, with a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition," Nvidia said.
4:51 p.m. E.T.
Demand Was 'Incredibly Strong'
On a year-over-year basis, Nvidia earnings rose 33% while sales jumped 69% in fiscal Q1.
Nvidia's data center revenue surged 73% from the year-ago period to $39.1 billion.
Nvidia recorded H20 product sales of $4.6 billion in the first quarter prior to the new export licensing requirements. The company was unable to ship an additional $2.5 billion of H20 products in the period.
"Global demand for Nvidia's AI infrastructure is incredibly strong," Chief Executive Jensen Huang said in a news release. "AI inference token generation has surged tenfold in just one year, and as AI agents become mainstream, the demand for AI computing will accelerate."
He added, "Our breakthrough Blackwell NVL72 AI supercomputer — a 'thinking machine' designed for reasoning — is now in full-scale production across system makers and cloud service providers."
3:52 p.m. E.T.
Nvidia Gives Up Gains As Session Ends
Nvidia stock gave up gains as the regular trading session drew to a close. The shares traded flat, last down a fraction at 135.20 with just minutes left in the session. Nvidia is expected to report first-quarter results after the closing bell.
2:06 p.m. E.T.
Cathie Wood Loads Up On Nvidia Stock
Fund manager Cathie Wood, CEO and chief investment officer of Ark Invest, on Tuesday acquired more than 34,000 shares of Nvidia ahead of the chipmaker's fiscal Q1 report.
The purchases were split between two of Ark's actively managed exchange-traded funds: Ark Innovation ETF and Ark Next Generation Internet ETF.
The combined purchases of Nvidia stock totaled $4.7 million.
Nvidia stock posted more gains in late afternoon trades, up nearly 1% at 136.49.
1:20 p.m. E.T.
Nvidia Stock Is Near Buy Point
Nvidia stock gained a fraction in afternoon trades ahead of the tech giant's first-quarter report.
The stock has formed a cup-with-handle base with a buy point of 137.40, based on IBD analysis. That base is within a larger consolidation pattern with a buy point of 153.13, according to MarketSurge.
The Nvidia earnings report will be closely watched as a barometer for the AI infrastructure market.
On Tuesday, shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Nvidia's contract chipmaker, broke out of a cup-with-handle base at a buy point of 196.22, according MarketSurge charts. TSM stock had flirted with that buy point last week, but closed below it. In recent trades, TSM stock was down a fraction to 197.17.
Other Nvidia-linked stocks include system builders Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Super Micro Computer.
12:40 p.m. E.T.
What Will Nvidia Say About Non-China Customers?
Nvidia turned positive in midday trades, gaining a fraction to 135.98.
Deepwater Asset Management analysts Gene Munster and Brian Baker said they expect downward revisions from Wall Street analysts after Nvidia's Q1 report.
In a blog post, the analysts said Street estimates for revenue growth in 2025 likely will drop to around 40% year over year from the current expectation of 56%. U.S. chip export restrictions on China are to blame, they said.
"The key on the call will be any commentary from the company that suggests, outside of the impact from the China curbs, the demand from non-China customers is exceeding expectations," they wrote. "In other words, management doesn't have to guide the July quarter higher than expectations, but rather show that the dip is temporary and tied to export paperwork, not end-market weakness."
11:12 a.m. E.T.
Nvidia Stock: 'Expect A Very Noise Guide'
Nvidia stock still in the red in late morning trades.
The AI giant's shares have been a market laggard over the past year, Mizuho Securities trading-desk analyst Jordan Klein said in a client note Wednesday. But some investors believe it could be a "catch-up trade" if Nvidia "can give anything better than expected in terms of outlook, Blackwell ramp, new China revenues."
He added, "Gun to head, I would rather be long vs. short the stock today into the print. That said, I am starting to worry a bit with stock up so much (the) past few weeks into the print, given I expect a very noisy and potentially disappointing July-quarter guide."
10:30 a.m. E.T
'A Little Bit Of A Scare Factor'
Nvidia stock edged lower an hour into the trading session. Shares were off a fraction at 135.24 ahead of the tech giant's Q1 report.
The spotlight will be on the impact of the recent market turmoil triggered by the Trump administration's trade policies and growing geopolitical tensions.
"There's a little bit of a scare factor here," Bloomberg journalist Kriti Gupta said on a Wednesday morning broadcast. "We talk about this every quarter. They're the A-plus-plus student. There's lofty expectations. This time it's the geopolitics of tariffs and the AI story that kind of meshed together."
9:35 a.m. E.T.
Consensus Numbers Likely 'Stale'
Nvidia stock traded sideways at the opening bell, last up a fraction at 135.57.
Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore said Tuesday that sell-side analysts haven't fully accounted for the impact of the H20 sales ban in their estimates. So, there's a risk of Nvidia missing views because of "stale" consensus numbers, he said in a client note.
Moore estimates that Nvidia had to take out $1 billion in lost sales to China in the April quarter. It will take out the rest of the write-off in the July quarter, he said.
"Nvidia is clearly lobbying for licenses to ship H20, which can be granted under the current system, or to remove the restrictions altogether," Moore said.
Nvidia argues that cutting off access to China will embolden China to develop a competing domestic hardware ecosystem, which "will ultimately be a bigger issue for the U.S.," Moore said. He rates Nvidia stock as overweight with a price target of 160.
Late Tuesday, the Financial Times reported that Nvidia's hardware partners are accelerating production of the chipmaker's latest Blackwell AI data center racks after resolving technical issues that had delayed shipments. Those partners — including Dell Technologies, Foxconn, Inventec and Wistron — are now scaling up production of Nvidia GB200 AI racks, the FT said.
Follow Patrick Seitz on X, formerly Twitter, at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks.
