Nvidia (NVDA) will report its Q3 earnings after the bell next Wednesday, giving Wall Street its best and latest look into the strength of the AI trade.
The world’s largest publicly traded company by market cap, Nvidia’s stock price has continued to rocket higher throughout 2024, thanks to the explosive growth in AI across the tech landscape and beyond. Shares of Nvidia were up 189% year to date as of Friday, easily outpacing any of the company’s chip rivals. AMD (AMD), Nvidia’s closest competitor, has seen its stock price sink nearly 8% year to date, while Intel (INTC), which is contending with a difficult turnaround, has seen its stock plunge 51%.
Nvidia is expected to report Q3 earnings per share (EPS) of $0.74 on revenue of $33.2 billion, according to analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. That works out to an 83% year-over-year increase on both the top and bottom lines versus the same period last year when Nvidia saw EPS of $0.40 on revenue of $22.1 billion.
Nvidia’s Data Center segment, its largest business, is set to bring in $29 billion for the quarter. That’s a 100% increase versus the $14.5 billion the company reported in Q3 last year.
Gaming revenue is expected to top out at $3 billion, up 7% from last year when the segment brought in $2.8 billion.
Analysts are anticipating gross margins to hit 75%.
Investors will be on the lookout for not only whether Nvidia beats on the top and bottom lines for the quarter, but if it raises its outlook for Q4 as well. Analysts are expecting Nvidia to announce Q4 guidance of $37 billion in revenue in the coming quarter.
Even if it delivers a stellar report and outlook, shares could still fall following the earnings announcement. Nvidia topped expectations on the top and bottom lines and beat out anticipated guidance in Q2, but shares still fell 6% immediately after it announced its results.
That could have been a sign that some investors weren’t impressed with Nvidia’s performance compared to prior quarters, where it saw revenue growth of 200% and EPS growth of nearly 600%. Or it could simply come down to investors taking profits on their gains at the time.
Investors will also be on the lookout for any insights from CEO Jensen Huang about Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell line of AI chips, which are used to both train and run AI applications. During the company’s last earnings call in August, Huang said Blackwell production will pick up in Q4, when he expects to see several billions of dollars of revenue from the chips.
At the time, Huang said demand for Blackwell was already outstripping supply, and he expects that to continue in the year ahead. What’s more, he said the company’s Hopper chip, the predecessor to the Blackwell line, is expected to continue selling well into the coming quarter.
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