Nvidia (NVDA) stock jumped 5% higher in early trading on Thursday as investors digested a noisy first quarter earnings report and ultimately saw strong sales outweighing the headwinds in its China business.
That puts shares of the AI chipmaker up 5% for the year, a stunning rebound from a nearly 30% year-to-date loss in early April. The reaction Thursday pushed Nvidia stock closer to surpassing its closing all-time high of $153.13, reached on Jan. 7.
Nvidia shares tend to be volatile following quarterly results, swinging 7.4% higher or lower on average over the past eight quarters.
Read more about Nvidia’s stock moves and today’s market action.
While the Trump administration’s ban on exporting H20 chips to China added a dark cloud over results, it was CEO Jensen Huang’s comments about inference demand and accelerated spending on artificial intelligence that captured investors’ attention.
The results were good enough for Wall Street, which continues to view Nvidia as the key player underpinning the artificial intelligence boom that has powered stocks higher since 2022.
Nvidia said that it missed out on $2.5 billion in chip sales to China due to the chip export restrictions and forecast another $8 billion loss in the second quarter. The company also took a $4.5 billion inventory charge due to chips it produced but couldn’t sell in China, $1 billion less than Wall Street was expecting.
Excluding that charge, Nvidia’s adjusted earnings per share were $0.96, beating Wall Street’s expectations for $0.93. But profits came in at $0.81 when factoring in the hit to its H20 chips.
Nvidia’s data center business continued to grow, with sales reaching $39.1 billion, slightly below estimates for $39.1 billion. Just under 50% of its data center revenue came from hyperscalers like Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG), and Microsoft (MSFT).
Read more: How does Nvidia make money?
“I thought it was a really strong quarter, all things considered,” Benchmark Company managing director Cody Acree told Yahoo Finance following the results. “Given all the issues with China and all of the concerns about slowing capital budgets, to see the company come in with an $8 billion loss for the Chinese revenue and still come within the marginal range of estimates, I think is a victory.”
In the first quarter, Nvidia’s annual revenue growth slowed to 69.1% from 262% the year before, but the chipmaker still reported record revenue of $44.1 billion, which surpassed Wall Street analyst estimates of $43.3 billion, according to Bloomberg analyst consensus data.
On the earnings call, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said Microsoft alone deployed “tens of thousands of Blackwell GPUs” and is expected to ramp up “to hundreds of thousands of GB200s with OpenAI as one of its key customers.”
It shows how Nvidia has become a central pillar propping up Big Tech’s AI ambitions and a $306 billion AI startup boom alike.
Also on the earnings call, Huang called out the company’s investments in America but warned that China already has advanced models and that its AI advancement “moves on with or without US chips.”
Read more about Nvidia’s earnings:
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Nvidia beats on Q1 revenue, warns of $8 billion sales hit in Q2 from H20 export ban
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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang touts US manufacturing plans
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Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang get a pass for an earnings whiff: What Wall Street is saying
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How Nvidia ‘played a central role’ in the $306 billion AI startup boom
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Big Tech’s spending drove Nvidia’s rise
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