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Should You Invest in NVIDIA (NVDA) Stock Ahead of Q2 Earnings?

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NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA - Free Report) is set to report second-quarter fiscal 2025 results on Aug 28.

For the fiscal second quarter, the company expects revenues of $28 billion (+/-2%). The Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at $28.24 billion, which indicates a whopping 109% increase from the year-ago reported figure.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for quarterly earnings has remained unchanged at 0.63 cents per share over the past 60 days. This suggests year-over-year growth of 133.3% from the year-ago quarter’s earnings of 27 cents per share.

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Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Earnings of the pioneer of the graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated computing surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the trailing four quarters, the average surprise being 18.4%.

NVIDIA Corporation Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

NVIDIA Corporation Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

NVIDIA Corporation price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | NVIDIA Corporation Quote

Let’s see how things have shaped up before the announcement.

Factors Shaping Upcoming Results

The continued strength of its Datacenter business on the increasing adoption of cloud-based solutions amid the growing hybrid working trend is expected to have boosted NVDA’s second-quarter revenues. An increase in Hyperscale demand and growing adoption in the inference market are likely to have been tailwinds in the to-be-reported quarter.

Additionally, the Datacenter end-market business is likely to have benefited from the growing demand for generative AI and large language models using GPUs based on NVIDIA Hopper and Ampere architectures. The strong demand for its chips from large cloud service and consumer internet companies is anticipated to have aided the segment’s top-line growth in the to-be-reported quarter. Our second-quarter revenue estimate for the Datacenter end market is pegged at $24.51 billion, which indicates robust year-over-year growth of 137%.

Moreover, NVIDIA’s second-quarter performance is likely to have benefited from the recovery across its Gaming and Professional Visualization end markets. The Gaming end market’s last four quarters’ results had shown signs of recovery as inventory with channel partners reached normal levels. The company also registered strong demand across most regions for its gaming products.

Revenues from the Gaming end market increased 18% year over year to $2.65 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2025. Our second-quarter revenue estimate for the Gaming end market stands at $2.77 billion, which implies an 11.5% increase from the year-ago quarter.

NVIDIA’s Professional Visualization segment performance also reflected recovery, with revenues increasing 45% year over year in the first quarter. We believe that the trend is likely to have continued in the second quarter for the end market. Our second-quarter revenue estimate for the Professional Visualization end market is pegged at $475.7 million, which suggests a 25.5% increase from the year-ago quarter.

Further, the company’s Automotive segment showed an improvement in trends in seven of the last eight quarters. The positive trend is likely to have continued in the fiscal second quarter, mainly due to increasing investments in self-driving and AI cockpit solutions. Our second-quarter revenue estimate for the Automotive end market is pegged at $294.6 million, which indicates year-over-year growth of 16%.

Price Performance & Valuation

Year to date, NVDA stock has skyrocketed 159.4%, outperforming the Zacks Semiconductor – General industry’s growth of 112.5%. Moreover, NVIDIA shares have outpaced the gains of major chip makers, including Micron (MU - Free Report) , Marvell Technology (MRVL - Free Report) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD - Free Report) , which have registered an increase of 26.8%, 18.6%, and 6.9%, respectively, YTD.

YTD Price Performance

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Now, let’s look at the value NVIDIA offers investors at the current levels. NVIDIA is trading at a premium with a forward 12-month P/S of 23.02X compared with the industry’s 18.97X, reflecting a stretched valuation.

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Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

GenAI to Drive Growth

Over the past year, NVIDIA’s revenue growth has been fueled by robust demand for chips needed for generative AI model development. NVIDIA dominates the market for generative AI chips, which have already proven their usefulness across multiple industries, including marketing, advertising, customer service, education, content creation, healthcare, automotive, energy & utilities and video game development.

The growing demand to modernize the workflow across industries is expected to drive the demand for generative AI applications. The global generative AI market size is anticipated to reach $967.6 billion by 2032, according to a new report by Fortune Business Insights. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 39.6% from 2024 to 2032.

However, the complexity of generative AI, which demands vast knowledge and immense computational power, means that enterprises will need to upgrade their network infrastructures significantly. NVIDIA’s AI chips, including the A100, H100 and B100, are the top choices for building and running these powerful AI applications, positioning the company as a leader in this space. As the generative AI revolution unfolds, we expect NVIDIA's advanced chips to drive substantial growth in both its revenues and market presence.

Conclusion

As a leading player in the semiconductor industry, NVIDIA has benefited from its dominance in GPUs and strategic expansion into AI, data centers and autonomous vehicles. This Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) company's strong product portfolio, leadership in AI and relentless innovation present a compelling investment opportunity. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

While NVDA stock’s premium valuation might be perceived as a risk, the premium is justified due to its consistent financial performance and substantial growth prospects in emerging sectors such as automotive, healthcare and manufacturing. The company enjoys high market esteem, and savvy investors should consider leveraging NVDA’s potential for sustained long-term growth.

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