Nvidia late Wednesday beat expectations for its fiscal second quarter and with its outlook. But Nvidia stock fell in extended trading.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company earned an adjusted $1.05 a share on sales of $46.74 billion in the quarter ended July 27. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected Nvidia to earn an adjusted $1.01 a share on sales of $46.05 billion in fiscal Q2. In the year-earlier period, Nvidia earned an adjusted 68 cents a share on sales of $30.04 billion.
For the current quarter, Nvidia forecast revenue of $54 billion, vs. expectations for $53.43 billion. In the same quarter last year, Nvidia posted sales of $35.08 billion.
In after-hours trading, Nvidia stock sank more than 2% to 176.37.
6:14 p.m. ET
What About China?
Nvidia's conference call has ended. Stock last down 3%.
Chief Executive Jensen Huang said he has been in discussion with the Trump administration about getting greater access to China. It's critical for "American companies to lead the AI race," he said.
"The opportunity for us to bring Blackwell to the China market is a real possibility," he said.
Huang declined to comment on the performance improvements coming with next year's Rubin, saying the company is focused now on selling Blackwell Ultra systems.
Nvidia is on an annual release cycle to benefit its customers by improving performance per watt and performance per dollar of its systems, he said.
Huang said he has encouraged customers to roll out their data centers on an annual rhythm as well to take advantage of Nvidia's annual processor releases.
Nvidia's customers are maxed out on capacity for their AI applications, he said.
"The buzz is everything is sold out," Huang said.
5:48 p.m. ET
CEO Cites Reasoning AI And Physical AI Push
The big driver of Nvidia's business going forward will be the shift to "reasoning AI" and "long thinking" AI systems, CEO Huang told analysts. Those AI applications need much greater computational resources, he said.
Those systems also produce more accurate results, he said. For instance, the amount of hallucination in generative AI "has dropped significantly," Huang said.
He also sees breakthroughs ahead in physical AI, including robotic systems and autonomous vehicles.
Stock down 2.4%.
Futures: Nvidia Falls, Leads Earnings Movers
5:19 p.m. ET
No Production Hiccups
"The transition to the GB300 (product line from GB200) has been seamless," Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said on a conference call with analysts. Nvidia is now in full production of Blackwell GB300, producing 1,000 racks per week, she said.
Further, Nvidia remains on schedule to deliver next-generation Rubin chips next year. "This keeps us on track for an annual product cadence," she said.
Meanwhile, Nvidia's sales to China have been stalled by delays in U.S. government licensing of exports, Kress said. If Nvidia gets licenses from the U.S., it could realize $2 billion to $5 billion in H20 revenue from China in the third quarter.
5:08 p.m. ET
Hyperscalers Big Blackwell Buyers
Nvidia stock still down 3% as earnings call begins.
Large cloud computing service providers represented about 50% of Blackwell sales in the second quarter, Kress said in prepared remarks.
"The strong year-on-year and sequential growth (overall for Nvidia) was driven by demand for our accelerated computing platform used for large language models, recommendation engines, and generative and agentic AI applications," she said.
4:57 p.m. ET
No China Sales In Second Quarter
Nvidia made no H20 sales to China-based customers in its second quarter. However, it did sell some of its H20 inventory to a non-Chinese customer.
"Nvidia benefited from a $180 million release of previously reserved H20 inventory, from approximately $650 million in unrestricted H20 sales to a customer outside of China," the company said.
Nvidia also did not include any H20 sales to China in its fiscal Q3 outlook.
Nvidia stock was down around 3% ahead of the company's earnings call.
4:47 p.m. ET
Blackwell Is Big Sales Driver
Nvidia stock slides more than 3% ahead of chip giant's earnings call.
On a year-over-year basis, the company's earnings rose 54% in fiscal Q2 while sales climbed 56%.
Nvidia's data center revenue advanced 5% from the first quarter and 56% from the year-ago period to $41.1 billion.
Revenue from sales of Nvidia's Blackwell products grew 17% sequentially from fiscal Q1.
"Blackwell is the AI platform the world has been waiting for, delivering an exceptional generational leap," Chief Executive Jensen Huang said in a news release. "Production of Blackwell Ultra is ramping at full speed, and demand is extraordinary."
He added, "Nvidia NVLink rack-scale computing is revolutionary, arriving just in time as reasoning AI models drive orders-of-magnitude increases in training and inference performance. The AI race is on, and Blackwell is the platform at its center."
4:13 p.m. ET
Nvidia Stock Closes Flat. Report Out Soon.
Nvidia shares traded flat ahead of its earnings report. The shares closed at 181.60, down a small fraction. The broader market advanced as investors waited for the AI giant's results. The report is seen having implications for the artificial intelligence trade that has spurred massive gains for the stock market and data center plays.
2:46 p.m. ET
Nvidia Stock In Holding Pattern
Nvidia stock is up a fraction in mid-afternoon trades.
The Nvidia earnings report is seen as key to keeping the AI stock trade alive. Other AI stocks riding the artificial intelligence wave include AMD, Astera Labs, Broadcom, Credo and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.
Those stocks also were up slightly in afternoon trading.
Nvidia stock notched an all-time high of 184.48 on Aug. 12. It ended regular-session trading on Tuesday up 1.1% to 181.77.
12:30 p.m. ET
Nvidia Earnings: Modest Stock Gain After Report?
Nvidia stock is still trading sideways in midday trades.
But the share are likely to experience a "modest 3-4% move post-earnings" as no major surprises are anticipated, Mizuho Securities trading-desk analyst Jordan Klein said in a client note Tuesday. That would be on par with last quarter when Nvidia stock rose 3.3% the day after its fiscal Q1 report.
"Any dip over 5% gets bought quickly, in my view, but I am skeptical Nvidia stock rips higher near term," he said. Nvidia stock is still one of his "favorite core longs in all tech for (the) coming year," Klein said.
After Nvidia's Q1 report, the stock gradually moved higher until it broke out of a 24-week consolidation pattern at a buy point of 153.13 on June 25, according to IBD MarketSurge charts.
11:28 a.m. ET
China Issues Overshadow Nvidia Earnings
Nvidia stock trading sideways, now up a fraction.
Wall Street analysts expect minimal contribution from China in Nvidia's fiscal Q3 guidance.
Nvidia's China business is in flux as the Chinese government pressures domestic companies not to buy the chipmaker's H20 AI processors, citing security concerns. Nvidia reportedly has halted production of the throttled processor, which was designed to meet U.S. export restrictions on national security grounds.
"This remains an important issue to resolve longer term, and we think that it will be resolved ultimately, with both countries incentivized to enable access to U.S. hardware," Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore said in a client note Monday.
"But how the company guides this portion of the business is a large element of where exactly guidance will land," he said. Moore believes Nvidia will guide conservatively.
Rosenblatt Securities analyst Kevin Cassidy believes China is holding out for a better AI processor from Nvidia. The H20 is based on the company's prior-generation Hopper series, not the current Blackwell series.
"We expect Nvidia to introduce a China-specific version of its Blackwell GPU (graphics processing unit) rather than reverting to the H20," Cassidy said in a client note Monday. "The Blackwell would command a higher price point, better margins, and offer a more competitive solution. We believe this strategy would be well received by investors."
10:45 a.m. ET
No AI Bubble, Wedbush Says
Wedbush Securities analysts on Wednesday pushed back on the fear that AI stocks are in a bubble.
"While some investors fear that a stock market bubble is forming due to lofty valuations and unachievable expectations for artificial intelligence (AI), we disagree," the analyst team led by Seth Basham, director of research at Wedbush, said in a report.
"The potential for AI to drive productivity and economic growth dwarfs past technologies. Furthermore, earnings forecasts likely materially underestimate the benefit of AI in the years to come, making stocks reasonably valued."
Nvidia is one of 30 companies that Wedbush believes "define the future of the AI Revolution over the coming years."
9:37 a.m. ET
Nvidia slips ahead of report
Nvidia shares fell more than 1% ahead of the tech giant's report as the broader market wavered.
9:05 a.m. ET
Nvidia Stock Nabs Price-Target Hikes
In the days leading up to the company's Q2 report, Nvidia stock received at least seven price-target increases from Wall Street analysts.
In premarket trades on the stock market today, Nvidia stock rose a fraction to 182.69.
Nvidia is on at least five IBD stock lists: IBD 50, Big Cap 20, Leaderboard, Sector Leaders and Tech Leaders.
Nvidia typically posts its quarterly earnings reports at 1:20 p.m. Pacific time (4:20 p.m. Eastern). The company is holding a conference call with analysts at 2 p.m. PT (5 p.m. ET). That's when investors will hear from Chief Executive Jensen Huang, dubbed "the godfather of AI" by Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.
Follow Patrick Seitz on X at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks.
