Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia Corp., during the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, United States, Tuesday, March 19, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Nvidia reports its first quarter financial results Wednesday after the bell.
Here’s what Wall Street expects, according to LSEG consensus estimates:
- Earnings per share: $5.59, adjusted
- Income: $24.65 billion
The chipmaker, which a decade ago was a niche developer of 3D gaming hardware, has found itself at the center of the tech action.
Nvidia’s report comes about a year after the company first signaled to investors that it was about to embark on a period of meteoric growth, fueled by demand for artificial intelligence chips from companies like as Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and OpenAI.
Revenues have increased more than 200% in each of the last two quarters, and Wall Street expects this trend to continue, with estimates pointing to a 243% increase in the first quarter compared to last year. ‘last year. Net profit is expected to be more than quintupled from a year ago.
Nvidia shares have more than tripled since the company reported its financial results for the first quarter of last year and provided surprisingly strong guidance for the second quarter.
The company’s current generation of AI graphics processing units (GPUs), called Hopper, are required by top AI scientists to develop chatbots, translators and image generators. Over the past year, customers have bought them in droves, with the largest cloud computing and internet companies spending billions of dollars on technology to expand their infrastructure.
But questions swirl around the sustainability of Nvidia’s meteoric growth, as many customers need to start taking advantage of all their heavy spending. AI software costs much more to run than traditional software, in part because of the expense of Nvidia GPUs.
Nvidia is also starting to ship its next-generation AI GPUs, called Blackwell. Some companies may be interested in upcoming chips, which could lead to a lull in sales of existing technology.
Starting in the fiscal second quarter, Nvidia will face tough year-over-year comparisons with the early days of AI-led growth. Analysts expect expansion to fall below 100% in the July quarter and decelerate significantly in the following two periods.
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