Nvidia stock rises ahead of highly anticipated earnings report

Nvidia (NVDA) stock rose 3.7% Wednesday ahead of the company’s highly anticipated fourth quarter earnings report after the bell.

The AI chipmaker’s earnings results are a major test for the AI trade as investors closely watch whether Big Tech is maintaining its torrid pace of spending on artificial intelligence

infrastructure, including investments in Nvidia’s $40,000 GPUs (graphics processing units). Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG), and Meta (META) together purchased an estimated $44 billion worth of Nvidia GPUs in the 2024 calendar year, according to a DA Davidson analysis.

Wall Street once again has high expectations: Analysts expect revenue to rise 73% to $38.2 billion and earnings per share to jump 63% to $0.84 for the quarter.

Nvidia stock has stalled over the last six months. Shares slid 9% over the five trading sessions ending Tuesday amid inflation fears linked to President Donald Trump’s trade and immigration policies that drove down major indexes. Adding pressure to Nvidia stock were reports of the Trump administration considering tighter export controls on the chip sector and fears of further delays related to Nvidia’s Blackwell AI chips and servers.

Analysts maintain bullish outlooks on Nvidia stock ahead of the company’s earnings results. Of the 60 analysts tracked by Yahoo Finance, 56 have Buy ratings on the stock and, on average, see shares rising to $171.64 over the next 12 months.

With Nvidia’s gain early Wednesday, shares stood just above $132.

As Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre writes, investors’ reaction to Nvidia earnings — which are historically volatile — may not reflect the bigger picture. According to Yahoo Finance’s analysis, buying Nvidia stock just before the earnings announcement has yielded a medium return of up to 4% on the one-month time frame over the last decade, but holding for three months yielded nearly 18%.