All week long, the market was waiting for one thing. And that was Nvidia’s earnings, which were announced last night.
It’s the most valuable company in the world right now. So naturally, these kinds of earnings reports are watched closely by investors everywhere. And honestly, the numbers that came out were extremely strong.
THE RESULTS FROM THE LAST QUARTER
Let’s start with the basics.
Nvidia’s revenue for the quarter reached $81.62 billion. That’s an 85% increase compared to last year. Yes, you read that correctly. Revenue almost doubled within a single year.
Adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.87, while analysts were expecting around $1.76. And net income? $58.32 billion. Nearly three times higher than last year.
And this is where things get even more interesting. Because Nvidia’s biggest secret has one name: data centers.
Revenue from that segment reached $75.2 billion. Almost double compared to last year. And pay attention to this next number. That segment now represents 92% of the company’s total revenue.
To understand how massive this transformation is, let’s go back a few years. Before the AI boom, Nvidia was mainly a gaming company. In 2020, more than half of its revenue came from gaming. Today? Gaming accounts for less than 8%, while data centers make up more than 90%. In just a few years, the entire business completely flipped upside down.
THE FORECASTS
The previous numbers are impressive, but markets always look ahead. So the real question is: what does Nvidia expect for the next quarter?
And once again, the figures are huge. The company expects revenue of $91 billion, with a margin of plus or minus 2%. Analysts were expecting around $87 billion. So the forecast came in well above expectations.
And now here’s the crazy part. Nvidia gave this forecast without including a single dollar from China. In other words, the company is basically saying: “This is what we expect to make, even if we sell absolutely nothing there.” Think about that for a second.
So where is all this demand coming from? From what CEO Jensen Huang calls “AI factories.” According to him, this is “the largest infrastructure expansion in human history,” and it’s happening at incredible speed. He also said that “agentic AI” has arrived, is already doing real work, and is creating real value.
Nvidia also changed the way it presents its financial results. The company now divides the business into two main categories: Data Center and Edge Computing. According to management, this better reflects where the real growth is happening.
And as if that wasn’t enough, the company also rewarded shareholders. Nvidia announced an $80 billion stock buyback program and increased its quarterly dividend to 25 cents per share, up from just 1 cent previously.
HOW THE STOCK REACTED
This is where things get strange. With numbers like these, you’d normally expect the stock to skyrocket. And yet, in after-hours trading, the stock fell by less than 1%.
“So why did it drop if everything was so strong?” you might ask. The explanation is simpler than it looks.
Investors have become used to Nvidia completely destroying expectations every quarter. At this point, it’s not enough for the company to perform well. It has to perform spectacularly. And to be fair, some forecasts for the next quarter were as high as $96 billion in revenue. So for some investors, $91 billion actually felt… disappointing.
Analysts, however, remained positive. One said that “the AI trade is alive and evolving,” and argued that the old complaint about “not enough computing power” no longer makes sense when the company is growing at this pace. Another analyst described the results as “strong” and the guidance as “quite positive.” However, he also pointed something out: the $80 billion buyback sounds enormous, but it represents only about 1.5% of the company’s market capitalization.
And there’s another factor too: competition.
For the first time, Nvidia is facing serious challenges to its dominance. AMD is preparing to launch its own system, called Helios, which will compete directly with Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin system. And AMD is not alone. Broadcom and Google are also moving aggressively with their own technologies.
Still, there’s one very important detail. Nvidia itself says it currently has more orders than it can fulfill. So demand is clearly there. And in a very big way.
