Nvidia delivers better-than-expected guidance after Q4 results top estimates

Investing.com - Nvidia on Wednesday reported Q4 results that topped estimates and delivered better-than-expected revenue guidance for the current quarter, stoking optimism on demand outlook for the chipmaker's next-generation AI Blackwell chips.

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) traded choppy after-hours immediately following the results but gained traction as the conference call started. Shares last traded up 1.8%.

For the three months ended Jan. 26, the company announced Q4 adjusted earnings per share of $0.89, up from $0.81 in the same period a year earlier, on revenue of $39.3B, up 78% from a year ago. Analysts polled by Investing.com anticipated EPS of $0.84 on revenue of $38.16B.

Data center, which makes up the bulk of revenue, revenue was $35.6B, up 16% from Q3, beating estimates for $34.1B.

Looking ahead to Q1, the company forecast revenue $43B, beating forecasts of $42.05B. Gross margin for Q1 was forecast to come in at 70.6%.

"We’ve successfully ramped up the massive-scale production of Blackwell AI supercomputers, achieving billions of dollars in sales in its first quarter," the company said.

The better-than-expected guidance stoked optimism about demand for the company's next-gen AI Blackwell chips and also alleviate concerns somewhat about rising competition for enterprise spending from Chinese AI firms including Deepseek.

The emergence of a low-cost Chinese artificial intelligence model had weighed on Nvidia recently amid investor worries about a sharp decline in AI capex, because "the new models cost far less to train and use than those made by Western counterparts," Truist Securities said in a note ahead of the earnings report.

On the conference call, CEO Jensen Huang reiterated that post-training for AI is driving demand. He explains that post-training requires more compute as reasoning models need more resources. He said the next generation AI models would be even more thoughtful, and post-training could require hundreds, thousands, or perhaps millions more compute.

Huang said Blackwell was designed for post-training and the company is more enthusiastic about the Blackwell ramp. Customers are enthusiastic and eagerly awaiting their Blackwell systems. Many are starting to come online.

Commenting on whether gross margins will bottom in the first quarter, the CFO said gross margins will be in the low-70s during the Blackwell ramp due to the company's commitment to build out manufacturing. Once it fully ramps, gross margins can improve to the mid-70s later this year.

Discussing the future of AI, Jensen highlighted that the world has only recently tapped consumer AI. The next wave is coming: agentic AI, physical AI, and sovereign AI.

(Yasin Ebrahim contributed to this report)

This article first appeared in Investing.com