Nvidia is on a run for the ages, blowing past Wall Street’s earnings estimates for eight consecutive quarters. Investors are holding their breath to see whether the chipmaker at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom can do it again on Wednesday, when it is set to report its latest earnings.
A lot is riding on Nvidia’s success. Its stock surge has helped push the company past Apple to become the world’s most valuable public company. It has huge market heft, accounting for around 7 percent of the total value of the S&P 500 index.
Investors have high hopes for the company’s earnings, but some analysts have questioned whether the billions flowing into A.I.-related companies are inflating a speculative bubble.
Nvidia has grown so fast that analysts have had to reach for new measures to put its recent run into perspective. At $3.6 trillion, Nvidia’s market capitalization dwarfs the total value of all the companies listed on most European stock markets.
Jonathan Stubbs, an equity strategist at Berenberg, a German investment bank, said that “Nvidia is now about 150 percent larger than the Dax 40,” the index of the largest listed companies in Germany. He said he had joked with investors that “an M&A banker could make the case for Nvidia buying Germany.”
Here are three things to watch for in Nvidia’s earnings:
The chipmaker is expected to report a roughly 80 percent year-on-year jump in revenue, to about $33 billion. Analysts will be focused on updates on the company’s new Blackwell chip.
Analysts forecast that Nvidia’s profits for the past 12 months will top $61 billion. That would be a nearly 15-fold increase since early 2023, according to Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank.
The United States has barred Nvidia from selling its highest-end chips in China’s fast-growing market. Geopolitical tensions are likely to weigh on the company under the Trump administrationcrazy ball, too.