Nvidia erases premarket losses as sentiment shifts on earnings beat

Nvidia shares turned course to trade in the black in premarket, as sentiment turned on the tech giant’s earnings in the previous session.

Shares of the chipmaker added 2.44% at around 9:15 a.m. ET, paring losses from earlier in the day following the Wednesday release of Nvidia’s quarterly results, which beat on both the top and bottom lines.

Revenue came in at $35.08 billion, up 94% year-on-year and exceeding the $33.16 billion forecast by LSEG analysts. Earnings per share was 81 cents adjusted, also above analyst expectations.

Other chipmakers fell on the back of the market reaction to Nvidia’s third-quarter results. Shares of Intel, Qualcomm and Micron Technology all lost 1% or more in value, while AMD declined 0.6%.

The slump in Nvidia also had a knock-on effect on European semiconductor firms. ASML, a key chip equipment supplier, dropped 0.9%, while compatriot Dutch chip firm ASMI fell 0.5%. Chipmakers BE Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics and Infineon slipped 0.8%, 0.7 and 0.6%, respectively.  

Several notable chip names were also in negative territory in Asia. TSMC, which makes Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units, eased as much as 1.5%. Contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn dropped 1.9%.

Nvidia has largely cornered the market for the high-powered chips powering the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Despite nearly doubling sales year-on-year, Nvidia’s third-quarter results showed a slowdown from previous quarters. Nvidia previously reported growth of 122% in the second quarter, 262% in the first quarter, and 265% in the fourth quarter of 2023.

William de Gale, lead portfolio manager of BlueBox Asset Management’s global technology fund, told CNBC the problem for Nvidia as a stock is that “insane” GPU demand has become the “bare minimum” expected of the company.

“There is a risk here … that Nvidia’s current overearning will begin to come to an end,” he said. “There’s considerable risk in this name at the moment. But it’s exciting,” he said.

Derren Nathan, head of equity research at Hargreaves Lansdown, said in emailed comments Wednesday that the dip in Nvidia’s share price “suggests even outstanding isn’t enough for some investors,” adding that he expects the stock to bounce back once markets open.

“NVIDIA’s generated stellar gains for shareholders over many years now, and right now it’s pretty hard to see any major holes in the investment case,” Nathan added.

Analysts are looking ahead to the much-anticipated launch of Nvidia’s next-generation chip called Blackwell. On the firm’s earnings call, CEO Jensen Huang said that demand for the chip is exceeding supply.

– CNBC’s Kif Leswing contributed to this report