Nvidia announces financial results for first quarter fiscal 2025

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Earnings, Guidance & Market Reaction

  • Reported YoY: ~262% revenue growth, 461% EPS growth (629% GAAP), ~78.9% gross margin; ~18% QoQ revenue growth.
  • Many note the quarter “beat” already‑raised analyst expectations, yet the initial after‑hours price move was modest relative to prior quarters, interpreted by some as “already priced in” or mildly bearish.
  • Debate over valuation: some see current P/E (and forward P/E) as reasonable for a dominant, hyper‑growth tech company; others call it “insanely high” and unsustainable.

Stock Split, Dividend & Retail Access

  • 10:1 stock split and tiny dividend increase (yield ~0.02%) announced.
  • Split is seen as largely psychological but with real effects via cheaper options contracts, improved liquidity, easier access for small accounts and ESPP participants.

Business Model, Margins & Supply Chain

  • H100 margins discussed as extreme (claims of ~$3k cost vs $40k+ selling price).
  • Consensus that supply is still far below demand; TSMC fab and packaging are bottlenecks.
  • Debate whether TSMC should or could charge Nvidia more; some argue Nvidia’s bargaining power and second‑best‑customer status limit “shakedowns.”

Moat: CUDA, Software & Ecosystem

  • Strong view that Nvidia’s true edge is software (CUDA, libraries, enterprise stack) and 15–20 years of investment, not just chips.
  • Competitors (AMD, Intel, TPUs/NPUs) are seen as hardware‑credible but far behind on software, tooling, and reliability, especially at enterprise scale.

Competition, AI Arms Race & Sustainability

  • Some expect margins and growth to normalize as rivals, custom chips, and standardized AI hardware emerge.
  • Others think demand for compute could stay above supply for years, especially if AGI/ASI or ubiquitous AI materialize.
  • Comparisons made to past bubbles (dot‑com, Cisco, Zoom, crypto) and to “selling shovels in a gold rush.”

Investing, Insider Trading & Risk

  • Many anecdotes of profitable early Nvidia bets; countered by warnings about survivorship bias and luck.
  • Long thread on whether using knowledge of large GPU orders or backlogs counts as “material non‑public information”; views conflict and remain legally unclear in the discussion.
  • Repeated advice to diversify, favor index funds, and avoid overconfidence in stock‑picking—even with domain expertise.

Infrastructure & Power Constraints

  • Some argue future AI growth will be constrained more by electricity and data‑center capacity than by GPU availability, suggesting utility and generation stocks may also benefit.

Fiscal Year Confusion

  • Multiple comments clarify “fiscal 2025” refers to Nvidia’s internal fiscal calendar, not the calendar year.