NVIDIA’s Record Earnings, Falling Stock: Is the AI Rally Facing Reality?
1. Record-Breaking Performance Meets Market Skepticism NVIDIA, the world’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor company, recently delivered what many would call historic results. For its fiscal fourth quarter (November through January), the company reported revenue of $68.13 billion — a staggering 73% increase compared to the same period a year earlier. This figure exceeded Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $66.2 billion, reinforcing NVIDIA’s position as the dominant force in the AI hardware market. Yet, despite the impressive earnings beat, NVIDIA’s stock dropped 5.46% in regular trading on February 26 (U.S. time). After-hours trading showed little recovery, with shares hovering around the $185 level. The decline marked the steepest single-day drop since April of last year, when U.S. export restrictions on NVIDIA’s H20 chips to China triggered a nearly 7% sell-off. At first glance, the market’s reaction seems contradictory. How can a company post extraordinary growt...