Nvidia's Insider Sales and the Sub-17 Multiple: A Giant Repriced
Published on 09/23/2026 at 14:10 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Something unusual is unfolding in the chip sector this late summer of 2026. Nvidia keeps posting numbers that would have once sent its stock into orbit, yet Wall Street is treating the company less like a high-flying disruptor and more like a mature industrial heavyweight.
Revenue for the most recent second quarter reached $96.22 billion, and management is guiding for a further 70% revenue increase in fiscal 2028. On paper, that is the profile of a growth machine. On the trading floor, however, the story reads differently: the forward price-to-earnings ratio, based on expected earnings over the next twelve months, has slipped below 17 — a level not seen in more than a decade. Bloomberg data shows the multiple has halved versus 2025 and sits far below the 50 recorded in 2023.
A "Growth-Value" Label, and the Debate Behind It
CEO Jensen Huang has coined a phrase for the paradox, calling his company "the world's first and only growth-value stock," and arguing that the market simply misreads the business model. Not everyone buys that framing. Eli Horton, a portfolio manager at asset manager TCW, points to the shrinking multiples as a sign of mounting doubt about how durable these profits really are. For years, investors paid extravagant premiums for every cent of future growth. Now they want hard evidence that the enormous spending by tech giants will flow permanently into cash-generating end markets. The question on many minds: how long can the big cloud providers keep pouring such vast sums into new computing infrastructure before marginal returns visibly flatten?
Cloud Customers Chart Their Own Silicon Paths
A structural shift in the semiconductor industry is sharpening that pressure. The major cloud customers — for years Nvidia's most loyal buyers — are aggressively pushing their own architectures. Whether it is Amazon's Trainium, Microsoft's Maia, or Google's TPU line, the market for custom application-specific processors is expanding fast. According to a UBS industry analysis, Nvidia's share of advanced CoWoS packaging demand is set to fall from 65% in 2025 to an estimated 49% in 2027, while customer-owned ASICs and rivals gain meaningful ground.
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Cost curves are adding headwinds of their own. Gross margin stood at a comfortable 75% in the second quarter, but the company has signaled a decline to below 72% for the fourth quarter. Rising costs for high-performance memory and complex manufacturing steps are taking their toll. The realization is slowly sinking in among market participants that even technological feats like the new Vera Rubin platform do not grant Nvidia unlimited pricing power.
Insider Activity Draws a Closer Look
Transactions from the innermost leadership circle have added to the reflective mood. Director Mark Stevens parted with 1.4 million shares in mid-September, realizing roughly $300 million. Combined with earlier sales, Stevens closed out a series totaling $947 million within a single month. Even though the long-serving director still holds stakes worth billions, such massive sales without a fixed trading plan leave traces in the market.
The picture is more nuanced elsewhere in the executive suite. On September 16, 40,747 shares were withheld from CFO Colette Kress to cover obligations from vesting restricted stock units. The following day, Kress sold an additional 34,918 shares for around $7.65 million. That sale was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan established on June 16 — a mechanism designed to steer executive disposals automatically, independent of current corporate news. Such moves are common practice at technology companies when share-based compensation comes due and the resulting tax burden is settled directly through stock, yet they still draw attention because investors watch management signals closely after prior price gains.
Platform Expansion and a Multibillion-Dollar Acquisition
Alongside the internal developments, the company is pressing ahead with its technological buildout. On September 14, Nvidia announced an expansion of its open-source CUDA-Q platform. With the CUDA-Q Logical orchestration layer, the company is targeting applications in fault-tolerant quantum computing.
At the same time, Nvidia is preparing to close a multibillion-dollar acquisition. Just over three weeks ago, the company agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. The purchase price comprises $11.9 billion for existing shareholders plus a further $1 billion in stock as an employee retention bonus. Management expects the transaction to close in the first half of 2027.
Where the Stock Stands
In European trading, the shares are currently quoted at EUR 199.54, sitting just 1.5% below their 52-week high of EUR 202.50. Pre-market, the stock trades at EUR 200.25, a gap of 1.1% from that same high. The price level remains elevated, but the character of the investment has changed. The phase of pure imagination is over; Nvidia is now valued like a fully grown industrial giant that must hold its own against margin pressure, powerful customers, and cyclical swings. For investors, that is no swan song — but it does mark the end of easy money in the chip sector.
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