Wall Street had its eyes set on Nvidia’s earnings report amidst the continuing frenzy surrounding artificial intelligence. The company, known for its powerful chips, released its earnings post-market on Wednesday, surpassing analyst expectations, which gave a 2% boost in post-trading activity. This modest gain suggests that Wall Street might have been harboring hopes for even stronger financial performance.
This earnings release marked Nvidia’s first since the emerging Chinese tech firm DeepSeek stirred the AI scene by announcing they had a large language model capable of rivaling major U.S. competitors without relying on the priciest chips. Following this announcement, Nvidia experienced a dramatic one-day plunge in market value, losing around $600 billion. Let’s delve deeper into Nvidia’s status with some key figures.
At the time of closing on Wednesday, Nvidia’s market valuation stood at a significant $3.215 trillion, just behind Apple’s top ranking in the S&P 500 at $3.611 trillion, while Microsoft was not far behind with just under $3 trillion. Two years prior, Nvidia’s market capitalization was under $600 billion, highlighting tremendous growth.
Following DeepSeek’s surprising announcement, Nvidia stock saw a sharp decline of 17% on January 27, challenging the earlier outlook of extensive investment demand for Nvidia’s technology and the surrounding AI industry. Nevertheless, the company witnessed a more than 170% increase in stock value during 2024.
Nvidia exceeded expectations for its fourth-quarter revenue, reporting earnings of $39.33 billion, marking a 78% increase from the previous year’s fourth quarter, showcasing robust growth.
For the fiscal year ending in January 2025, Nvidia reported impressive revenue figures, amassing $130.5 billion. It effectively more than doubled its earnings compared to fiscal 2024 and quadrupled from the year before that.
Remarkably, Nvidia accounted for about 22% of the S&P 500’s growth last year, as per S&P Dow Jones Indices, with Amazon contributing around 6%. Nvidia replaced Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in November.
To put Nvidia’s impressive market value into perspective, one could purchase 649 billion dozen eggs with its $3.215 trillion valuation, based on January’s average price of $4.95 per dozen according to the Federal Reserve. This comparison comes amidst a spike in egg prices, attributed to a bird flu outbreak that has affected supply in certain areas.
