AI behemoth Nvidia (NVDA) will report its fourth quarter results after the bell on Wednesday, the most anticipated announcement of the earnings season.
The news comes just a few weeks before the company is set to host its GTC 2026 event in San Jose, Calif., where it’s expected to make a number of major product announcements.
It also follows the launch of Nvidia’s latest AI superchip, Vera Rubin, during the annual CES technology conference in Las Vegas in January.
More recently, Nvidia expanded its agreement with Meta to include a massive, multiyear deal that will see the chip company provide the social media giant with both its Blackwell and Rubin AI processors, as well as the first major standalone deployment of its Grace CPU servers.
Despite the momentum, Nvidia stock was up just 2.6% since the start of the year as of Monday morning. Still, that’s better than Advanced Micro Device’s (AMD) 8.3% decline and Broadcom’s (AVGO) 4.2% drop. Intel (INTC), however, is up 18.8% in the same period.
Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster wrote in a blog post that the disconnect between Nvidia’s recent announcements and its stock performance comes down to whether investors believe the AI trade is nearing an end — or still just getting started.
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“The real debate is what growth looks like in 2027 and 2028,” Munster wrote. “Ultimately, investors have to decide what inning of the AI buildout we are in, if it’s the fifth inning, 2027 growth should look more modest, and if it is the second inning, which I believe, Nvidia’s growth outlook over the next several years remains robust.”
Much of that build-out this year will continue to come from hyperscalers like Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Meta (META), and Microsoft (MSFT), which plan to spend a collective $650 billion on AI capital expenditures in 2026 alone.
For the quarter, Nvidia is expected to see earnings per share of $1.53 on revenue of $65.8 billion, according to Bloomberg analyst consensus estimates. That’s up from the $0.89 and $39.3 billion the company recorded in Q4 last year.
Nvidia’s data center business will power the vast majority of that growth, with analysts projecting segment revenue of $60.2 billion for the quarter.
But in a research note ahead of Nvidia’s earnings, KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst John Vinh said sales of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips could provide a larger boost to the company’s data center revenue.
“We expect increasing shipments of Blackwell Ultra to be a key driver of strong results and guidance, with tailwinds expected from both unit and [average selling price], as [Blackwell Ultra] carries a 20% to 30% higher ASP vs. [Blackwell]. Additionally, increasing rack shipments should also represent a key driver, as we estimate [Nvidia] remains on track to ship just under 30K racks this year,” Vinh wrote.
