Why Nvidia’s record 265% revenue growth is moving the whole stock market

Nvidia, on Wednesday, posted record Q4 revenue of $22 billion, boasting a 265% increase from the same quarter the prior year and earnings that blew past expectations. Yet, in the immediate aftermath of those earnings, the stock fell 3% in the after-hours market.

That dip didn’t last, it’s worth noting. And it’s less a commentary on Nvidia’s earnings and more one about the extraordinarily high expectations investors have for the artificial intelligence market. As of 5:15 p.m. ET, Nvidia shares were up 8% in after-hours trading and had gained as much as 10% at one point.

The reaction to Nvidia’s earnings had a ripple effect. Shares of Super Micro Computing also soared nearly 8% in after-hours trading. Arm Holdings was up 5%. And AMD gained over 3%.

The strong Nvidia beat—and the comments of the company about sustained demand for microprocessor chips—gave the market a collective sigh of relief. The trading Desk at Goldman Sachs has called Nvidia the “most important stock on planet earth.”

That, in some ways, makes Nvidia president Jensen Huang the new E.F. Hutton: When he speaks, people listen. The real turnaround in the after-market came after Huang said in an earnings release that, “Accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point. Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations.” Also, as investors noted the data center segment of the business beat expectations and posted a 409% year over year increase, despite Colette Kress, the company’s CFO, saying “data center sales declined significantly (emphasis ours) in the fourth quarter due to U.S. government licensing requirements.”

The post-market roller coaster ride for Nvidia’s stock shows just how high expectations are for this company—and for AI.

For instance, Wall Street officially was expecting the outlook for the first fiscal quarter of 2025 to come in at $22 billion. Nvidia announced it was expecting that to be $24 billion– a solid beat. But buy-side traders were informally expecting guidance of $23 billion (or more), which lessened the impact and initially took a little wind out of the company’s sails.

“Few things are more certain than death, taxes, and Nvidia beats on earnings,” said Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group. “The bar was set quite high and incredibly they’ve once again stepped up and hit a home run. Revenue up 265% is incredible and shows that their AI business is simply booming more than even the most optimistic analyst expected.”

Nvidia has been a leading tech company for some time, but so far in 2024 it has been a monster. Now the third largest company in the U.S., it’s responsible for one third of the Nasdaq 100’s gains this year. And when the stock sees volatility, so does the rest of the tech market. (Look no further than the performance of the Nasdaq this week, which has dropped as investors dabbled in some Nvidia pre-earnings profit taking.)

What’s crucial to other tech companies is that Nvidia isn’t expecting things to slow down anytime soon. Kress, on a call with analysts, said that although the company had improved supply of its AI GPUs, it was still well short of overall demand. Demand, meanwhile, for the B100, Nvidia’s next-generation chip, expected to ship later this year, was even stronger.

That will likely keep the investor feeding frenzy going—a rising tide that lifts all boats in the chip and tech world.

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