Nvidia’s quarterly results exceed projections as concerns mount over AI economy 

Artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia on Wednesday announced another quarter of astounding quarterly growth as investors try to decipher whether technology’s latest craze is overblown hyperbole or a springboard into a new era of prosperity and productivity.

The results for the November-January period blew past the analyst projections that shape investors’ perceptions, as has been the case since Nvidia’s high-end chips emerged as AI’s best building blocks three years ago.

Nvidia’s fiscal fourth-quarter revenue surged 73% from the previous year to $68.1 billion while its profit nearly doubled to roughly $43 billion, or $1.76 per share.

“No quarter has had more riding on it than this one,” said Jake Behan, head of capital markets for the investment firm Direxion. “The AI trade needed some positive news and Nvidia’s earnings report brought plenty of it.”

The Santa Clara, California, company also provided a forecast exceeding analyst projections while its CEO Jensen Huang reinforced the demand for the company’s chips is still “skyrocketing.” That description feeds into Huang’s thesis that the AI boom is still in the early stages of a buildout that will reshape society. If Nvidia hits its revenue target for the February-April period, it will translate into a 77% increase from last year — a sign that the company’s already phenomenal growth rate is still accelerating.

“AI is here, AI is not going to go back,” Huang said during a conference call with analysts. “AI is only going to only get better from here.”

Despite the stellar results and still-rosy outlook, many investors still evidently are worried about a jarring comedown after a three-year boom that has seen Nvidia’s market value soar from $400 billion at the end of 2022 to nearly $4.8 trillion now. After initially rising 4% in extended trading after the latest quarterly numbers came out, Nvidia’s stock price backtracked and was slightly down following Huang’s upbeat conference call.

Nvidia has regularly cleared the bar set by analysts in the past three years, often by a wide margin, but that hasn’t always been enough to satisfy investors who have become increasingly skeptical about whether AI will justify the trillions of dollars that are being spent to develop the technology.

After Nvidia delivered a stellar performance that far exceeded analyst forecasts in its last quarterly report, its stock price still fell by 3% during the next day’s trading.

The AI fervor has escalated again during the past month as the four companies leading the AI charge — Amazon, Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta Platforms — collectively made commitments to spend about $650 billion this year ramping up their AI computing power.

A significant amount of the money is expected to be earmarked to buy more Nvidia chips required to power their AI factories, just as has been the case for much of the past three years — as Nvidia’s annual revenue soared from $27 billion to $216 billion. Analysts expect the chipmaker’s revenue to surpass $330 billion during the company’s next fiscal year, a more than 50% increase from the past year.

“We want to take the great opportunity that we have as we’re in the beginning of this new computing era, this new computing platform shift, to put everybody on Nvidia,” Huang said.

—Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer

View the full article