Nvidia earnings are on deck. Here’s what Wall Street is watching for
Expectations are high for Nvidia’s earnings. Nvidia is expected to report fiscal 2025 third-quarter results Wednesday after the close. Analysts see the darling chipmaker posting a profit of 75 cents per share on revenue of $33.16 billion, per LSEG. Both figures represent more than 80% growth from the year-earlier period. The report will likely have implications for the broader market, given Nvidia’s massive size. The semiconductor giant has a market capitalization of more than $3.6 trillion, making it the most valuable U.S.-listed company. But just as key as the results themselves will be is what Nvidia says about the demand behind its latest Blackwell graphics processing unit, or GPU, which is designed to meet the heavy processing needs for artificial intelligence capabilities and often sold to large tech hyperscalers. NVDA YTD mountain Nvidia performance this year. Momentum behind Nvidia’s Blackwell ramp Wall Street majors view Nvidia’s Blackwell platform — which should be generally available in the January quarter — as a multibillion-dollar revenue opportunity for the chipmaker. Nvidia had said in August that it expected about “several billion” in Blackwell sales during the January quarter. According to Piper Sandler analyst Harsh Kumar, Nvidia could deliver between $5 billion and $8 billion of Blackwell revenue in the January quarter. “We are making NVDA our top large-cap pick given the company’s dominant positioning in AI accelerators and the upcoming launch of the Blackwell architecture,” Kumar said in a Nov. 11 note, putting a $175 price target on the stock. “We think that demand for H100 and 200 will continue to be spread between cloud/enterprise and sovereign, however the initial allocation of Blackwell in the January and April quarters will likely be met with supply to hyperscalers.” Goldman Sachs and Citi are similarly bullish on Nvidia’s Blackwell sales, but their analysts believe a successful transition to Blackwell chips will be more visible in the first quarter of next year. Goldman maintained its $150 price target, while Citi hiked its target by $20 to $170. Both shops have a buy rating on the stock. “Although we expect FY1Q (April) to be the true ‘break out’ quarter in which the ramp of Blackwell coupled with improved supply-side conditions drives meaningful positive EPS revisions, we expect FY3Q (Oct) results, FY4Q (Jan) guidance and management commentary on the earnings call to support our constructive thesis on the stock,” Goldman analyst Toshiya Hari said in a Nov. 5 note to clients. “We believe the stock is set up well to sustain its outperformance.” Analysts are also largely undeterred by recent concerns about a recent report from The Information that Nvidia’s Blackwell NVL-72 server racks are experiencing issues with overheating. Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya wrote Sunday that the company is poised for a “solid” 2025 despite concerns about the thermal issues and anticipating a slowdown in AI scaling. He kept his $190 price target on the shares, one of the Street’s most bullish forecasts — suggesting nearly 30% potential upside from Tuesday’s close. “We believe both concerns are noteworthy but unlikely to derail NVDA’s CY25 momentum as every cloud customer needs to deploy as much as AI capacity (Hopper and/or Blackwell) to address surging demand,” he said. “Concerns re slowdown in AI scaling are also premature in our view as the industry is still in its infancy.” Citi analyst Atif Malik similarly modeled a bigger quarterly beat and raise beginning in the April quarter, expecting Nvidia’s gross margins to improve on the Blackwell transition. HSBC said Blackwell supply chain concerns have “subsided” and expects upside in the company’s fiscal 2026 data center momentum, which it thinks the market has not yet fully priced in. What about the quarter overall? Many analysts expect strong results from the chipmaker, thanks in part to solid sales of its Hopper GPU. Goldman’s Hari sees revenue up 90% year over year at more than $34 billion, with earnings of 79 cents per share also exceeding expectations. “We expect strong demand for Nvidia’s Hopper-based GPUs (i.e. H100 and particularly the H200) and Spectrum-X (i.e. Ethernet-based Networking product) to drive strong double-digit (%) Data Center revenue growth,” Hari wrote. Wells Fargo’s Aaron Rakers sees earnings coming in at 73 cents per share, slightly below the LSEG estimate. That said, he maintained his overweight rating on the stock earlier this month, citing “expanding AI opportunities” around autonomous driving, health care and robotics. He also pointed to what he believes could be a multibillion-dollar opportunity for Nvidia: its work with Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI . Nvidia announced last month that its Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform made possible the system behind xAI’s Colossus supercomputer that is being used to train xAI’s Grok family of large language models. Colossus comprises 100,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs, and xAI is in the process of doubling that, per Nvidia’s Oct. 28 release . Stifel analyst Ruben Roy, who has a buy rating on the stock, said Monday he expects earnings per share of 75 cents for the company, matching the consensus. “A broad set of industry commentary, coupled with our checks, suggests a consistent set-up relative to prior quarters,” said Roy in a note. “For fiscal 4Q, we are, again, expecting revenue guidance above the current consensus estimate.” Correction: Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya kept his $190 price target on the shares suggesting nearly 30% potential upside from Tuesday’s close. An earlier version misstated the percentage. The supercomputer xAI has is called Colossus. An earlier version misstated its name.
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