When Nvidia reports earnings Wednesday afternoon, investors have short-term questions on Blackwell shipment delays and long-term questions on the 2026 outlook
Nvidia reports earnings on Wednesday afternoon.
Investors will be looking for plenty of answers from Nvidia Corp.’s management team later this week — concerning both the immediate term and the semiconductor company’s prospects going out more than a year from now.
In the short term, there are questions about the company’s new Blackwell chip lineup, especially given reports that initial shipments could be slightly delayed. And even before Blackwell starts shipping, Wall Street will still be wondering whether anticipation for that product has crimped any demand for Nvidia’s current Hopper line.
Longer term, investors want to hear about the opportunity for Blackwell once fully ramped, and the product pathway even beyond Blackwell.
Here are the five most important topics to listen for when Nvidia reports fiscal second-quarter earnings on Wednesday afternoon:
How robust is Hopper demand — and supply?
The prospect of a Hopper “air pocket” has been on investors’ minds for a while now, given some fears that customers would pull back on Hopper purchases as they await the more powerful Blackwell lineup.
Last quarter, Chief Executive Jensen Huang “was able to successfully quell concerns of a demand air pocket, and we would expect he likely does the same” this quarter, Evercore ISI C.J. Muse wrote in a recent preview.
“Our hope is that he lays out a vision for continued data-denter growth over the next 12 months, which would bridge the gap into a full-fledged Blackwell ramp,” Muse continued.
Rosenblatt’s Hans Mosesmann will be keeping an eye on Hopper supply. The “wildcard” in Nvidia’s earnings is “how constrained the company is for Hopper platforms,” he wrote recently. That will determine the magnitude of the beat-and-raise performance he expects from the company.
What are the expectations for early Blackwell shipments?
Analysts aren’t really sweating the prospect of a brief delay to the start of Blackwell shipments, but they’ll certainly be looking for Huang to comment on the expected timeline.
“Yes, we were concerned when we first heard about issues with the new Blackwell chips in the supply chain and from customers that included commentary around a three-month delay due to potential overheating, a design issue and some packaging issues,” Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes wrote in a note to clients. “However, it seems volumes for Blackwell systems can still be quite strong in the April ’25 quarter.”
The thinking from some analysts seems to be that as long as potential Blackwell delays don’t last too long, Nvidia wouldn’t really lose out on business but rather would see revenue shift into later quarters.
And there could be margin benefits in the interim, according to Raymond James analyst Srini Pajjuri. He and his team “expect any delays to drive upside to Hopper [graphics processing units] in the short term, which could actually benefit gross margins.” They estimate gross margins for Hopper are three to six percentage points above what they’ll be for Blackwell.
How big will the beat be?
While consensus expectations call for $28.7 billion in revenue, up from $13.5 billion a year earlier, many analysts expect Nvidia to end up posting sales at or above the $30 billion mark.
Melius Research’s Reitzes, for instance, will be looking to see whether Nvidia can beat expectations for the latest quarter by $2 billion — while also suggesting that revenue for the current quarter can be $2 billion above last quarter’s total, and giving investors confidence in the potential for sales to be $2 billion higher than that in the January quarter.
The company has beaten revenue expectations every quarter going back at least five years, according to FactSet data. It beat by about $1.5 billion in the April quarter.
From a profit standpoint, Nvidia has only missed expectations on adjusted earnings per share in one of the past 20 quarters, and it posted a roughly 9% beat in its last report.
Analysts are looking for 65 cents in adjusted EPS this time around, up from 27 cents a year before. Nvidia was expected to be the largest contributor to the S&P information-technology sector’s year-over-year earnings growth, according to an Aug. 16 FactSet report.
What will the Blackwell ramp look like next year?
Beyond the short-run issue of potential Blackwell shipment delays is the bigger topic of what the new chip will do for Nvidia once the ramp takes off.
Raymond James’ Pajjuri is upbeat. The “supply chain appears to be building as much as [50,000 to 70,000] GB200 NVL rack capacity” for next calendar year, “which translates to [$100 billion to 150 billion in] potential revenue from systems alone,” he wrote.
“We won’t get too carried away based on supply-chain numbers alone but see room for upside to consensus estimates” for data-center revenue in calendar 2025. That was $146 billion at the time he published his note last Tuesday and stands at $148 billion now.
But while Jefferies analyst Blayne Curtis was upbeat about the short term, he took a more measured view on the medium term.
“We highlighted over a month ago that expectations for Blackwell timing and content were too optimistic and we felt it was harder to get to $5 in EPS for CY25, but we do still believe our estimates (roughly $1 billion ahead for July/Oct) are achievable but likely not beatable,” he wrote on Thursday.
And how about 2026?
Yes, Nvidia investors are already thinking more than a year out.
Late last year, some on Wall Street wondered whether 2024 could wind up the “peak” year for Nvidia, according to Reitzes. “The ‘peak year’ worry could resurface again soon” when it comes to calendar 2025, he wrote. “It will be best to hear (yet again) from Jensen on this call regarding whether he’s still on a one-year upgrade cadence with the successor to Blackwell.”
That Rubin product could set the stage for further revenue growth in calendar 2026, he noted. (The FactSet consensus calls for revenue of $194 billion in calendar 2026, up from an estimated $164 billion in calendar 2025 and a projected $116 billion this calendar year.)
“The one issue that Nvidia will need to tackle more and more is the concern around power availability — and how it is helping customers find affordable and available electricity,” Reitzes wrote. “Blackwell and Rubin innovations will help offset shortages and space constraints, but the view is that customers will just buy more and still use a lot of power.”
Comments