Nvidia Posts Record $81.6 Billion Quarter, Hikes Dividend 25x, but Investors Focus on China Exit and Vera CPU Promise
23.05.2026 - 20:11:12 | boerse-global.de
The numbers defied every expectation — and still the stock slipped. Nvidia delivered its strongest-ever quarterly performance, unveiled a $200 billion addressable market opportunity, and announced an $80 billion buyback, yet shares closed the week at €185.46, down for four straight sessions after the earnings release. The disconnect between financial firepower and market reaction reveals a company navigating two powerful currents: unrelenting demand for AI infrastructure, and a China exit that has permanently reshaped its revenue geography.
Revenue hit $81.62 billion in the first fiscal quarter of 2027, a jump of 85% from a year earlier. The data center engine alone generated $75.2 billion, up 92% year over year, with the networking business roughly tripling to around $15 billion. Earnings per share came in at $1.87, also ahead of Wall Street forecasts. CEO Jensen Huang summed up the environment bluntly: “Demand has gone parabolic.” For the current quarter, Nvidia guided revenue to approximately $91 billion, implying another 95% advance from the prior year.
Yet the headline that reverberated beyond the balance sheet came from a CNBC interview, where Huang acknowledged that Nvidia has “largely ceded” the Chinese market for AI chips to Huawei. China once represented 20% of data center revenue; that share has collapsed under tightened US export controls. Huang advised investors to expect nothing further from Washington when it comes to approving advanced chip sales to China. The company’s counterpunch is a mammoth $80 billion share buyback authorization — on top of $38.5 billion remaining from earlier programs — and a dividend hike from $0.01 to $0.25 per share, a 25-fold increase. Free cash flow for the quarter stood at $48.6 billion, providing ample fuel.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Nvidia?
But the more forward-looking story may be the Vera CPU. Unveiled alongside the quarterly numbers, Vera is built specifically for agentic AI workloads where AI agents operate autonomously, while GPUs continue to handle heavy training. Huang sized the addressable market for that class of computing at $200 billion and projected Vera sales could reach $20 billion as early as 2026. The next chip generation, the Rubin systems, is slated for availability starting in the third quarter of 2026. This push into CPUs marks a strategic expansion beyond the GPU fortress, opening a new front against AMD and Intel in the data center.
On the analyst front, sentiment remains firmly bullish. The consensus among 52 analysts lands at an average price target of $303.27, while the 37 analysts tracked in a separate poll see a twelve-month target around $297 — both implying substantial upside from current levels. Morningstar recently raised its fair value estimate from $260 to $280, citing the wide moat built by the CUDA software ecosystem. Bernstein, Barclays, and Cantor Fitzgerald are among those with outperform ratings, though the stock is trading roughly 8% below its 52-week high.
Technically, the stock is approaching oversold territory. The relative strength index sits at 40.5, just above the 30 threshold that often signals a bounce. The pattern of post-earnings weakness is not new — the shares have slipped after each of the last four quarterly reports — but the fundamental underpinnings remain robust. Huang has projected total AI infrastructure spending of $3 trillion to $4 trillion annually by 2030, suggesting the supercycle is still in its early innings.
The market’s hesitation likely reflects two concerns: the concentrated customer base among hyperscalers, and the geopolitical ceiling on China revenue. Yet with $48.6 billion in quarterly free cash flow, a new CPU platform targeting a $200 billion market, and Rubin chips on the horizon, Nvidia has multiple levers to compensate for the lost Chinese business. The next major catalyst arrives when Rubin systems start shipping in the second half of 2026 and the Vera CPU begins contributing to revenue. Until then, the stock’s post-earnings drift may be more about elevated expectations than deteriorating fundamentals.
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