Nvidia's AI-Powered Earnings Beat and Revenue Guidance Crushed Wall Street's Estimates
Key Points
Fourth-quarter revenue and adjusted earnings per share (EPS) soared 73% and 82%, respectively, year over year, easily surpassing Wall Street's expectations.
Q1 revenue guidance of $78 billion crushed the analyst consensus estimate of $72 billion.
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Shares of Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) are hovering between being down less than 1% and up less than 1% in Wednesday's after-hours trading as 8 p.m. ET approaches, following the artificial intelligence (AI) tech leader's release of its report for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 (ended Jan. 25).
The quarter's revenue and adjusted earnings per share (EPS) easily beat Wall Street's estimates, and Q1 guidance for the top line crushed the analyst consensus estimate.
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Investors always have extremely high expectations for Nvidia, so even if it turns in a fantastic quarter, its stock may not rise much, or even at all.
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Nvidia's key quarterly numbers
| Metric | Fiscal Q4 2025 | Fiscal Q4 2026 | Year-Over-Year Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $39.33 billion | $68.13 billion | 73% |
| GAAP operating income | $24.03 billion | $44.30 billion | 84% |
| GAAP net income | $22.09 billion | $42.96 billion | 94% |
| Adjusted net income | $22.07 billion | $39.55 billion | 79% |
| GAAP earnings per share (EPS) | $0.89 | $1.76 | 98% |
| Adjusted EPS | $0.89 | $1.62 | 82% |
Data sources: Nvidia and Y! Finance. Q4 fiscal 2026 ended on Jan. 25. GAAP = generally accepted accounting principles. EPS = earnings per share.
GAAP numbers include one-time items. Investors should focus on the adjusted numbers, which exclude one-time items. Wall Street was looking for adjusted EPS of $1.54 on revenue of $66.23 billion, so Nvidia exceeded both expectations. It also sprinted by its own guidance, which was for adjusted EPS of $1.50 on revenue of $65 billion.
For the quarter, GAAP and adjusted gross margins were 75% and 75.2%, respectively.
Platform performance
| Platform | Fiscal Q4 2026 Revenue | Year-Over-Year Change | Quarter-Over-Quarter Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data center | $62.31 billion | 75% | 22% |
| Gaming | $3.73 billion | 47% | (13%) |
| Professional visualization | $1.32 billion | 159% | 74% |
| Automotive | $604 million | 6% | 2% |
| OEM and other | $161 million | 28% | (7%) |
| Total | $68.13 billion | 73% | 20% |
Data source: Nvidia. 'OEM and other' is not a market platform.
The data center platform's performance was driven by two massive, ongoing (and somewhat overlapping) computing shifts -- toward graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated computing and toward GPU-enabled artificial intelligence (AI)-powered computing, Colette Kress said in her CFO commentary. Nvidia dominates the market for GPUs, which are a type of semiconductor.
Kress shared positive news about customers. She said that while hyperscaler (operators of massive data centers) revenue increased, and this group remained Nvidia's largest customer category at slightly over 50% of data center revenue, "growth was led by the rest of our data center customers as revenue diversified."
Investors should not be concerned about the 13% decline in gaming revenue from the prior quarter. This was due to sales channel inventory moderating following a strong holiday period. Kress said that the company expects "supply constraints to be a headwind to gaming in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 and beyond."
Professional visualization posted powerful growth, which Kress said was "driven by exceptional demand for Blackwell [products]." Blackwell is the company's new GPU architecture platform.
The auto platform's steady growth is being driven (pardon the pun) by continued adoption of Nvidia's platform for developing self-driving vehicles.
Guidance for the first quarter
For Q1 of fiscal 2027 (ends in late April), management expects revenue of $78 billion, representing a year-over-year growth rate of 77%. This outlook does not assume any data center compute revenue from China.
Unlike its usual practice, Nvidia did not provide the expected tax rate for the first quarter, but just for the full year. This means it's not possible to calculate its Q1 adjusted EPS outlook based on the inputs provided.
However, to provide investors with a ballpark figure, I'm going to assume the tax rate for Q1 will be the same as Nvidia expects for the entire year. Using this assumption, Nvidia's Q1 adjusted EPS guidance is $1.71, representing 111% growth.
Going into the report, Wall Street had been modeling Q1 adjusted EPS of $1.68 on revenue of $72.03 billion, so the company's revenue outlook crushed expectations, while what I estimated to be its adjusted EPS outlook came in slightly ahead of expectations.
Another fantastic report
In short, Nvidia delivered yet another report with fantastic quarterly results and guidance.
Don't conflate the stock's initial reaction with the report's strength. Nvidia's stock remains a long-term winner with a catalyst on the horizon: Its annual GTC (GPU Technology Conference) in March, the world's largest AI conference.
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Beth McKenna has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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