Nvidia Reports Earnings Tuesday Without Jensen Huang for the First Time. It Promised $108 Billion, and the Stock Fell After 3 of Its Last 4 Reports
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On Tuesday afternoon, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) will report a quarter without Jensen Huang as its chief executive for the first time since he co-founded the company in 1993. Huang resigned on Thursday morning, effective immediately. Nvidia said in its filing that the third-quarter report comes out on November 17 “as previously scheduled,” with results at about 4:20 PM ET and the conference call at 5 PM ET.
Chief financial officer Colette Kress, now interim CEO while keeping the CFO job, has walked investors through Nvidia’s numbers for 13 years. The company has not said who will speak on Tuesday’s call. We covered what history says about companies left without a permanent CEO here.
Nvidia opened Thursday at $151.01, fell as low as $148.80 and was at $164.25 at 11:45 AM ET, down 5.5% from Wednesday’s close. That is 22% below the $209.66 it closed at on the day of its last report in August.
What Nvidia promised
In August, Nvidia said it expected third-quarter revenue of $108.0 billion, plus or minus 2%, a range of $105.84 billion to $110.16 billion. That would be about 12% more than the $96.2 billion it reported for the second quarter, when data center revenue alone was $89.0 billion. It guided to a gross margin of 74.0%, plus or minus half a percentage point, and said it was “not assuming any Data Center compute revenue from China in its outlook.”
Analysts expect a little more. MarketBeat’s consensus, as of Tuesday, was $108.80 billion of revenue and $2.47 a share in earnings.
How the stock has handled its last four reports
Beating the forecast has not been enough. Here is how Nvidia moved the day after each of its last four reports, measured from the report-day close:
- November 2025: down 3.2%
- February 2026: down 5.5%
- May 2026: down 1.8%
- August 2026: up 8.7%
The stock fell after three of the four. Before Thursday’s news, options traders were pricing a bigger move than usual: Bloomberg options data showed a possible 6.7% swing as of Monday, and Saxo put it at about 7.8% as of Wednesday’s close, against an average of 4.0% over the last eight reports. At $164.25, a 7.8% move is about $12.81 a share either way. Those figures were set before the resignation, and they have likely moved since.
What will matter Tuesday
Three things will get the most attention. First, whether revenue lands inside or above the $108 billion range. Second, the forecast for the next quarter, the first set without Huang. Third, anything the company says about leadership, the board’s search for a permanent CEO and the board’s investigation into Huang’s relationship with a former Megaspeed executive whom U.S. officials suspect of spying for China, a claim China calls groundless.
Analysts started cutting targets on Thursday. Stifel lowered its price target to $205 from $315, and Baird cut its target to $200 from $500 and downgraded the stock to neutral, according to reports.
What it means if you own Nvidia
Nvidia is worth about $3.97 trillion at Thursday’s price, roughly 6% of the S&P 500, so most index-fund investors will feel Tuesday’s move whether or not they own the stock directly. Selling before an earnings report is a bet on the result, and nobody knows it yet. The decision you can make now is size: add up what you hold directly and through funds, and if it is more than about 10% of your portfolio, trimming inside an IRA costs nothing in taxes.
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I've been writing about stocks and personal finance for 20+ years. I believe all great companies are tech companies in the long run, and I invest accordingly.
