NVIDIA beats Q1 estimates, guides $91bn Q2, adds $80bn buyback
▼ Summary
– Q1 revenue was $81.6bn, up 85% year-on-year, with data centre revenue of $75.2bn beating analyst estimates.
– Net income for the quarter was $58.3bn, up over 200% year-on-year, driven by the AI chip boom.
– The board authorized an additional $80bn in share buybacks, the second such program in three quarters, and raised the quarterly dividend from one cent to 25 cents per share.
– Q2 revenue guidance of about $91bn exceeds the analyst consensus of $86.84bn, with the Street viewing it as conservative against hyperscaler capex commitments.
– Nvidia’s data centre market share remains dominant, as alternative chips from Tenstorrent and Alibaba have not yet shipped at volume to impact growth.
Nvidia delivered a first-quarter revenue beat on Wednesday, reporting $81.6bn in sales for the period ending in April, an 85% jump year-over-year and a 20% gain from the prior quarter. The company guided second-quarter revenue to approximately $91bn, plus or minus 2%, surpassing the analyst consensus of $86.84bn.
The board also authorized an additional $80bn share buyback and raised the quarterly dividend from one cent to 25 cents per share. Following the earnings release, the stock ticked up before settling roughly flat in extended trading.
Data-center revenue came in at $75.2bn, beating the average analyst estimate of $72.8bn, marking the dominant beat of the quarter. Net income for the February-April period reached $58.3bn, up 37% sequentially and more than 200% year-over-year. Al Jazeera’s coverage framed this as “record profit and revenue amid the AI chip boom.”
The buyback authorization is the second $80bn program the board has approved within three quarters. Combined, the company has authorized over $160bn in repurchases against a market capitalization that has traded above $4tn for most of the past quarter, based on the May 20 close.
The quarterly dividend increase from one cent to 25 cents is mathematically small relative to the buyback envelope, but it signals a balance-sheet posture that has shifted decisively from growth-financing to capital-return on the discretionary-cash margin.
The Q2 revenue guide implies sequential growth of about 12% from the Q1 base. Wall Street’s read is that the guide is conservative relative to publicly visible hyperscaler-capex commitments for the second half of the year. AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Meta have collectively guided to roughly $470bn of 2026 capex, the majority of which clears through Nvidia silicon.
The $115bn-plus Meta capex line, the AWS GB200/GB300 NVL72 deployments, and the Google-Blackstone $25bn TPU-cloud joint venture provide visible demand-side scaffolding for the Q2 and Q3 prints.
On the competitive front, Nvidia’s data-center share against the AI-accelerator alternative cohort remains the structural story. Tenstorrent’s takeover conversations with Intel and Qualcomm, along with Alibaba’s T-Head Zhenwu M890 announcement, represent the two visible non-Nvidia compute paths: the US-side RISC-V/x86 alternative and the China-side domestic accelerator track, respectively. Neither has shipped at volumes that would dent the data-center growth line. The Trump-Xi licensing track on H200 sales to Chinese customers remains the swing variable for the FY27 second-half guide.
Nvidia did not disclose the time horizon for executing the new $80bn buyback authorization, the geographic breakdown of Q1 data-center revenue (US versus rest of world), the specific Q2 GB300 NVL72 shipment volumes baked into the guide, or the H200-licensing revenue within the China line.
Chief executive Jensen Huang framed the AI infrastructure build-out as “still in the early innings” during prepared remarks on the call, a standard formulation for the company.
The next visible proof point will be the FY27 Q2 print, with the accompanying Q3 guide serving as the more closely watched data point on whether second-half capex commitments translate cleanly into Nvidia revenue.
(Source: The Next Web)
