Nvidia: Stage set for crucial earnings update amid US tariffs
Investors are poised for a crucial update on Nvidia’s earnings after the AI chip maker has been caught up in the fallout of Donald Trump’s trade policy overhaul.
The US technology giant will unveil its financial results for the first three months of 2025 on Wednesday.
As the second most valuable listed company in the world, behind Microsoft, Nvidia is watched closely by global traders.
Nvidia was among global technology firms to suffer sharp drops in their share price following Mr Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcements last month.
However, they have rallied since and most of the losses suffered on Wall Street in the wake of the announcements have been regained.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said that analysts will “doubtless” look for comments from Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, on tariffs.
He added that they will also be closely watching for an update on the impact of the US government tightening rules on chip exports to China, after the company warned over a $5.5bn (£4.1bn) cost hit from the move.
Nvidia said it has been informed by the US government that it needs a licence to export its H20 AI chip to China, including Hong Kong, for the “indefinite future”.
Mr Huang recently blasted the country’s wider export controls as a “failure”, saying they had backfired against US companies by spurring on Chinese developers.
Meanwhile, the boss has tried to soothe investor concerns about Chinese AI firm DeepSeek emerging earlier this year as a lower-cost rival to the US giant.
“Trump’s tariffs and trade policies are blotting out many other issues right now, but this one is yet to go away,” Mr Mould said.
“The (DeepSeek) product challenged the consensus view that AI required more – more chipsets, more computing and server power, and more energy – and AI-related stocks have yet to fully recover their poise.”
“Nvidia did offer fairly cautious guidance for the first quarter, which runs from February to April, but it has had the happy knack of beating estimates for the quarter,” he added.
Nvidia is expected to report sales of about $43bn (£31.9bn) for the first quarter, about two-thirds higher than the $22.1bn (£16.4bn) generated this time last year.
Press Association