Nvidia’s $81.6 Billion Quarter: Growth Unmatched, but Supply Chain Scrutiny Deepens
25.05.2026 - 18:12:46 | boerse-global.de
Nvidia has just delivered its strongest quarterly performance on record, yet the stock has struggled to hold its highs. The reason goes beyond profit-taking: the company’s spectacular AI-driven growth is increasingly entangled with export-control enforcement, raising questions about how its global distribution network can keep pace with geopolitical reality.
The numbers are hard to argue with. For the first quarter of fiscal 2027, ended April 2026, revenue hit $81.6 billion — an 85% jump from a year earlier. The datacenter segment alone generated $75.2 billion, up 92%. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.87, beating the analyst consensus of roughly $1.76. Free cash flow reached $48.6 billion, and gross margin remained robust at 75%.
That financial heft is being returned to shareholders in record fashion. The board approved a new $80 billion share buyback program, while the quarterly dividend is being raised from a token $0.01 to $0.25 per share, payable on June 26, 2026.
For the current quarter, Nvidia is guiding toward revenue of approximately $91 billion. Notably, that outlook explicitly excludes any contribution from Chinese datacenter compute sales — a clear reflection of how severely U.S. export restrictions are reshaping the company’s market access.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Nvidia?
Compliance Becomes the New Front
While the earnings story remains compelling, a parallel narrative is gaining traction. CEO Jensen Huang, speaking in Taipei, warned partners to strictly adhere to U.S. trade rules. His comments came as a U.S. legal case unfolds in which Super Micro co-founder Charles Liang and two others are accused of involvement in a suspected scheme to smuggle Nvidia-equipped servers to China.
The alleged shipments are valued at roughly $2.5 billion. Super Micro, which is not named as a defendant, says it is cooperating with investigators. In Taiwan, authorities are probing three individuals who are accused of using forged documents to export advanced Nvidia-powered servers to China — equipment that Taiwanese investigators classified as high-end AI systems subject to U.S. export controls. Twelve locations were searched by the coast guard.
Neither Nvidia nor Super Micro faces direct allegations in these probes, and both companies stress they comply with export laws. But the cases put the spotlight on the entire chain — from chipmaker to server builder to end customer — at a time when AI accelerators are treated as strategic assets.
The China Question and a New Platform
Huang maintained during his Taipei visit that China remains a “very important and very large” market. Around ten Chinese companies have obtained U.S. export licenses for the H200 chip, but actual deliveries are still pending because Beijing has yet to issue its own approvals. Nvidia’s guidance for the current quarter makes no room for datacenter revenue from China, but the long-term opportunity — and the regulatory friction — persists.
On the product side, Nvidia is pushing ahead with the next-generation “Vera Rubin” platform. First shipments are expected in the third quarter of 2026, with a full ramp in the fourth quarter. Compared with the current Blackwell architecture, Vera Rubin promises tenfold lower inference costs and a 75% reduction in GPU requirements for training certain AI models. Huang has highlighted the new “Vera” CPU architecture as a standalone growth driver, targeting an addressable CPU market worth $200 billion — including China.
A $2 Billion Bet on Marvell and Hyperscaler Spending
Alongside the platform upgrade, Nvidia is investing $2 billion in a deeper partnership with Marvell Technology. The goal is to integrate Marvell’s custom XPUs and networking solutions into Nvidia’s NVLink-Fusion platform for AI datacenters. Nvidia expects that capital expenditure from major hyperscalers will surpass $1 trillion in 2027, underlining the scale of the infrastructure build-out that is fueling demand for its chips.
Nvidia at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
Market Metrics: Still Room to Run?
The stock closed Monday at €189.06 in European trading, up 1.94% on the day, and has gained 17.36% year to date. That leaves it about 6% below the 52-week high of €201 reached in mid-May. On a trailing basis, the forward price-to-earnings multiple of roughly 25 to 33 sits below the sector median of around 34. The PEG ratio of 0.67 suggests the growth story is not fully reflected in the current valuation.
Analyst targets cluster between $278 and $307, implying substantial upside from current levels, and the consensus rating remains a firm “Buy.”
The tension is clear: Nvidia is generating record revenue, returning mountains of cash to shareholders, and building next-generation platforms — all while its supply chain faces unprecedented legal and political scrutiny. How well the company manages that dual challenge will likely determine whether the stock can break to new highs or remain tethered by regulatory uncertainty.
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