Nvidia stock slips even after earnings beat Wall Street estimates

Nvidia may have exceeded Wall Street estimates as its profit jumped — buffeted by the chipmaking dominance that has cemented its place as the poster child of the artificial intelligence boom — but investors seemed less than impressed.

The company reported a net income of to $16.6 billion. Adjusted for one-time items, net income was $16.95 billion. Revenue rose to $30 billion, up 122% from a year ago and 15% from the previous quarter.

By comparison, S&P 500 companies overall are expected to deliver just 5% growth in revenue for the quarter, according to FactSet.

However, Nvidia shares slipped nearly 4% in after-hours trading.

Nvidia has led the artificial intelligence sector to become one of the stock market’s biggest companies, as tech giants continue to spend heavily on the company’s chips and data centers needed to train and operate their AI systems.

But the company’s capacity to surpass estimates faces increasingly greater challenges as each success prompts Wall Street to raise their targets even higher.

2:45 Business Matters: Nvidia stock slides after unveiling ‘world’s most powerful chip’ for AI

The company reported second-quarter adjusted earnings per share of 68 cents per share, up from 27 cents a year ago.

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Demand for generative AI products that can compose documents, make images and serve as personal assistants has fueled sales of Nvidia’s specialized chips over the last year. In June, Nvidia briefly rose to become the most valuable company in the S&P 500. The company is now worth over $3 trillion.

Through the year’s first six months, Nvidia’s stock soared nearly 150%. At that point, the stock was trading at a little more than 100 times the company’s earnings over the prior 12 months. That’s much more expensive than it’s been historically and than the S&P 500 in general.

That’s why analysts warn of a selloff if Wall Street sees any indication that AI demand is waning.

The Santa Clara, California-based company carved out an early lead in AI applications race, in part because of founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s successful bet on the chip technology used to fuel the industry.

The company is no stranger to big bets. Nvidia’s invention of the graphics processor unit, or GPU, in 1999 helped spark the growth of the PC gaming market and redefined computer graphics.