Wall Street holds its breath. Will Nvidia's earnings report tonight bring good news or bad news?

Source: Jinshi Data

Nvidia will release its fourth-quarter earnings report after the U.S. stock market closes on Wednesday, and it faces huge challenges.

As the world's second-largest company, Nvidia needs to prove to investors that demand for its next-generation Blackwell chips remains strong and will not be impacted by the DeepSeek AI model.

Last month, DeepSeek sparked concerns among U.S. stock investors that data center demand for computing power may be lower than initially expected, which would lead to a reduction in Nvidia's GPU sales. However, Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun believes that DeepSeek's efficiency improvements will only accelerate the adoption and development of AI.

Foreign media data show that analysts on average expect Nvidia's revenue to grow 73% this quarter to $38.2 billion, compared with revenue of about $20 billion in the same period last year.

Here's Wall Street's take on Nvidia's upcoming earnings:

Mizuho Securities: Expect some 'growing pains' in the short term

Analysts at Mizuho Securities said that while they expect Nvidia to report an "in-line" earnings report, they also expect some "growing pains."

"Our checks suggest that while DC (data center) revenue in the January quarter was in line with expectations, the April quarter is likely to level off as growth remains modest in the near term given the power/cooling requirements of the GB200," Mizuho Securities said in a note last week.

DC refers to Nvidia's data center revenue, which covers its GPU chip sales.

For Mizuho Securities, the focus is on the second half of the year as it expects strong Blackwell growth to make up for any lost revenue in the first half of the year.

“We continue to see NVDA leading the industry with its CUDA ecosystem and its integrated hardware platform with strong customer relationships,” Mizuho Securities said, adding that major customers Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet are expected to accelerate purchases of Blackwell GPUs later this year.

Mizuho Securities gives Nvidia an “outperform” rating with a $175 price target.

Wedbush Securities: Good news expected

Analysts at Wedbush Securities said the biggest question in the upcoming earnings report is whether this will be another quarter of “beating expectations by $2 billion and raising earnings expectations by $2 billion.” The firm thinks they can.

Wedbush Securities said, "We expect Nvidia to perform strongly again and 'clearly exceed expectations and raise expectations', which should ease investor concerns as Huang will explain the huge demand drivers from Blackwell and AI capital expenditures that are driving the fourth industrial revolution."

Wedbush Securities said that according to its channel survey, individual AI enterprise deployments have not slowed or changed due to DeepSeek. Wedbush Securities said, "No customer wants to 'lose their place in the queue', as we understand, this is the case with Nvidia's next-generation chips."

Bank of America: The next catalyst is the GTC conference

Analysts at Bank of America expect Nvidia to exceed analyst expectations and said they expect the company's data center revenue to grow 60% year-on-year in the 2025 calendar year.

Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya said in a report earlier this month that "although DeepSeek's optimizations are considered 'revolutionary', so far there has been no change in spending intentions from Nvidia's large customers (including Microsoft and Meta)."

Arya said that hardware and software optimizations are "key parts of computing," so he does not expect DeepSeek's efficiency improvements to lead to a decline in the company's sales.

Looking beyond the earnings report, Arya said that Nvidia's GTC conference in March is the next important catalyst. At that time, investors' attention to Nvidia may shift from Blackwell to its next-generation products, including Rubin GPUs and autonomous driving robot solutions.

Bank of America gave Nvidia a "buy" rating with a target share price of $190.

Bloomberg Intelligence: Blackwell on track

Bloomberg Intelligence technology analyst Kunjan Sobhani said last week that Nvidia is likely to meet fourth-quarter revenue expectations and raised first-quarter expectations on the back of "significant Blackwell GPU ramp."

Sobhani said Nvidia has overcome some recent supply chain delays and concerns about hyperscale demand, as evidenced by its stock price fully recovering the losses incurred by DeepSeek.

"Initial shipments to key customers began in the fourth quarter and will continue through the first quarter of 2026," Sobhani said. "Increased capital expenditure guidance from Meta, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Google strengthens our confidence in near-term sales."

Encouragingly, Sobhani said Nvidia's margins could "rebound to the mid-70s" in the second half of the year due to Blackwell production ramp."