Nvidia recorded no China sales revenue for its H20 chips and reported revenue that narrowly beat Wall Street targets in the second quarter as the AI chipmaker reported financial results on Wednesday.
The results, while confirming that demand for AI hardware remains solid, left investors underwhelmed and shares of Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, declined 4% to around the $175 mark in extended trading Wednesday evening.
“[The stock movements are] probably just an initial reaction to a so-so number,” Scott Bickley, an advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group,
told Fortune before the earnings call. “Which is kind of insane that we’re viewing $46.7 billion in a quarter as ‘so-so.’”
Nvidia’s revenue increased 56% from the same period a year ago to $46.74 billion, exceeding Wall Street’s projection of $46.52 billion. Profits came in at $26.4 billion, a 40.8% increase from $18.78 billion last quarter.
Nvidia posted diluted earnings per share at $1.08, beating projections of $1.02 for the second quarter. Gross margins grew to 72.4%, up significantly from 61% last quarter.
Nvidia has been navigating trade restrictions on H20 shipments to China since April. The U.S. government began issuing licenses for approved buyers in China in July, and Nvidia said a few of its China-based customers had received such licenses.
But no H20 chip revenue to China was included in its second-quarter revenue, Nvidia said. (It noted that some H20 chip inventory was sold outside of China in the second quarter, adding a $180 million benefit to the topline.)
While the Trump administration announced plans earlier this month to allow Nvidia and rival AMD to sell certain AI chips to approved Chinese buyers while giving the U.S. government a 15% cut of the proceeds, Nvidia said nothing concrete has yet come of it.
Not that it’s slowing down the company. As CEO Jensen Huang said on an investor call: “The AI race is on.” —
Nino Paoli