Nvidia rises after better-than-expected Q4 results, big upside surprise in Q1 sales guidance
The chip designer delivered its 13th consecutive bottom-line beat and 14th on the top line.
Nvidia rose in postmarket trading after posting better-than-expected Q4 results and very strong sales guidance for the current quarter. However, the stock pared gains during the conference call as CEO Jensen Huang said he was very confident that AI investments would enable hyperscalers to boost cash flows and keep spending even more on GPUs.
For its fiscal Q4 2026, the world’s most valuable company reported:
Q1 guidance was also positive, particularly when it comes to sales:
“Computing demand is growing exponentially,” CEO Jensen Huang said in a press release.
In October, Huang touted the “exceptionally” strong demand for its flagship products, noting that orders for Blackwell and early Rubin chips were above $500 billion through 2026.
During this conference call, CFO Colette Kress shared that the future’s gotten even brighter.
“We expect sequential revenue growth throughout calendar 2026, exceeding what was included in the $500 billion Blackwell and Rubin revenue opportunity we shared last year,” she said.
However, the stock pared some of its gains as Kress mentioned that the company does not yet know whether it will be able to ship any AI chips to China, and that its competitors in the world’s second-largest economy are “making progress and have the potential to disrupt the structure of the global AI industry over the long term.” The stock continued to lose steam, up less than 1% in postmarket trading as of 5:30 p.m. ET.
The downdraft came as Huang said he was confident that hyperscalers’ cash flows would improve, despite these coming under severe pressure amid their capex binges. Without more compute, their top lines would flatten, he suggested.
“Without compute, there's no way to generate tokens. Without tokens, there's no way to grow revenues,” he said. “So in this new world of AI, compute equals revenues.”
Near-term demand for Nvidia’s chips isn’t really in question, thanks to the gargantuan capex budgets unveiled by hyperscalers this reporting period. Wall Street will be looking to see if the chip designer can maintain high profitability as it delivers racks, particularly with memory chip prices elevated and its next-gen Vera Rubin offering coming to market.
“We anticipate a keen focus on management’s commentary around (among other things) backlog growth, customer engagements/data center segment growth for calendar year 27 (as a read-through on capex growth), margin expectations amid rising input costs (particularly memory), and the rising competitive threat from AI ASICs/XPUs,” JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur said ahead of this report.
So far, this looks similar to November, when the knee-jerk boost in Nvidia following solid Q3 earnings and Q4 guidance didn’t last long and shares ended well in the red the next session.
