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Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang Unveils New  Innovations At CES 2025
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang presenting in Las Vegas on January 6, 2025 (Artur Widak/Getty Images)

Nvidia Q3 earnings and sales beat estimates; Q4 sales outlook well ahead of expectations

Unlike Q2, data center revenues handily beat estimates, and management guided for sales to rise $8 billion from Q3 to Q4.

Luke Kawa

Nvidia is reminding everyone how great it is to be the stock at the center of the AI boom, posting Q3 sales and earnings beats along with a very robust Q4 revenue outlook.

For the three months ended October 26, the chip designer reported:

Sales growth accelerated to 62.5% year-on-year, breaking a six-quarter streak of deceleration.

“Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out,” CEO Jensen Huang said.

Looking ahead to the current quarter, management offered the following outlook:

Shares, which ended the day up about 3%, are building on those gains in the after-hours session.

“Tonight the markets and tech stocks got a pop the champagne moment with Nvidia's robust earnings and guidance,” wrote Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

Appetite for Nvidia’s chips isn’t really in question in the short term: on October 28, Huang said the company had already received more than $500 billion in orders for its Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips through 2026. And announcements since then, like this week’s partnership with Microsoft and Anthropic as well as Nvidia’s participation in Brookfield’s newly launched AI infrastructure fund, are poised to swell that pipeline of future sales even further. On the conference call, the company will likely face questions about stresses in parts of the AI supply chain and if those will hamper its ability to deliver on orders or weigh on margins.

Shares slid after Nvidia reported second-quarter results in late August as data center revenues were slightly shy of estimates despite firm demand, hinting that the real issue at the time was boosting production to meet that appetite.

At the time, Huang said Blackwell Ultra was “ramping at full speed” and that “we expect to have a much more mature and fully scaled-up supply chain” by the time its Rubin platform was ready for prime time. For this quarter at least, Huang appears to have answered some of those nascent doubts.

These strong results are also boosting many AI-adjacent stocks, from other chip companies, to neoclouds, to data center firms.

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Lululemon’s stretch getting tested: Stock plunges after after outlook is cut

Lululemon shares are down double digits in premarket trading after the company cut its full-year sales and profit outlook, overshadowing a Q1 beat and raising fresh concerns about the brand’s turnaround efforts.

The company now expects fiscal 2026 revenue to be flat to down 1%, compared with its prior forecast for 2% to 4% growth. Guidance for full-year diluted earnings per share was dragged down to a range of $10.95 to $11.15, below the company’s previous guidance of $12.10 to $12.30 and well below Wall Street’s estimate of $13.26.

Key numbers for Q1:

  • EPS of $1.69 vs. the $1.68 expected.

  • Revenue of $2.47 billion vs. the $2.43 billion expected.

The modest top-line beat masked a widening divergence between Lululemons geographic markets. While international revenue rose 22% overall with a 30% increase in Mainland China, the bigger problem remains North America, where revenue fell 5%.

Interim co-CEO and CFO Meghan Frank acknowledged during the earnings call that recent product rollouts underperformed. A highly anticipated yoga campaign failed to generate its expected halo effect across broader product lines.

Profitability metrics took a major hit, with gross margins contracting by 410 basis points to 54.2% due to mounting tariff costs and promotional markdowns. Operating income consequently fell 37% year over year to $276.9 million.

“We experienced spikes of negative commentary in the media and on social channels with regard to our brand, which had an impact on traffic and overall top-line performance,” Frank said during the earnings call. “And second, not all of our product launches have met our expectations. While we have had several successful launches so far this year, we have seen others as we start Q2 not generate the anticipated guest response.”

Lululemons valuation has already been steadily compressing for years. While it was once one of retails richly valued stocks, investors have been questioning whether the company can return to the double-digit growth era.

The results also arrive during a leadership transition. Lululemon announced back in April that former Nike executive Heidi ONeill is set to take over as CEO in September, with investors looking to her to revive growth in North America and restore the brands growth.

As Lululemon faces both macroeconomic pressure and brand-specific challenges, its stock has dropped around 40% year to date.

markets

US job growth skyrocketed in May, blasting past expectations

The US economy added 172,000 jobs in the month of May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, sending 10-year Treasury yields higher.

The strong May job market surprised economists. Experts had predicted only 85,000 new jobs — just half the reported number. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, as expected.

The job growth story is a hopeful spot for the economy as consumers continue to feel inflationary pressure from the Iran war.

Job gains were buoyed by the leisure and hospitality sector, which added 70,000 jobs, as well as local government, healthcare, and education.

Both the March and April jobs reports were revised upward, making them collectively 93,000 higher than previously reported.

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