Nvidia recorded no China sales revenue for H20 chips and reported revenue that narrowly beat Wall Street targets in the second quarter, as the AI chipmaker reported financial results on Wednesday.
The results, while confirming that demand for AI infrastructure remains solid, left investors underwhelmed and shares of Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, declined 4% to around the $175 mark in extended trading Wednesday evening.
“[The stock movements are] probably just an initial reaction to a so-so number,” Scott Bickley, an advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group, told Fortune before the earnings call. “Which is kind of insane that we’re viewing $46.7 billion in a quarter as ‘so-so,’” he said.
Nvidia’s revenue increased 56% from the same period a year ago to $46.74 billion, exceeding Wall Street’s projection of $46.52 billion, per data compiled by Visible Alpha. Profits came in at $26.4 billion, a 40.8% increase from $18.78 billion last quarter. Nvidia posted diluted earnings per share at $1.08, beating projections of $1.02 for the second quarter. Nvidia’s gross margins grew to 72.4%, up significantly from 61% last quarter.
Nvidia has been navigating trade restrictions on H20 shipments to China since April. The U.S. government began issuing licenses for approved buyers in China in July, and Nvidia said a few of its China-based customers had received such licenses. But no H20 chip revenue to China was included in its second-quarter revenue, Nvidia said (It noted that some H20 chip inventory was sold outside of China in the second quarter, adding a $180 million benefit to the topline).
While the Trump administration announced plans earlier this month to allow Nvidia and AMD, a rival chipmaker, to sell certain AI chips to approved Chinese buyers while giving the U.S. government a 15% cut of the proceeds, Nvidia said nothing concrete has yet come of it.
“To date the USG has not published a regulation codifying such requirement,” CFO Colette Kress said on the company’s earnings call.
Nvidia said it was not including H20 in its financial forecast for the current quarter, though it estimated that $2 billion to $5 billion worth of H20 chips could be shipped to China if “geopolitical” issues were resolved. The company also repeated its call for the U.S. government to allow it to sell a modified version of its more advanced “Blackwell” generation of products to China.
“Production of Blackwell Ultra is ramping at full speed, and demand is extraordinary,” CEO Jensen Huang said of the tech behemoth’s next-generation AI chip, which is used in data centers globally, in the earnings release. “The AI race is on, and Blackwell is the platform at its center.”
Nvidia’s datacenter revenue, which accounts for the bulk of its business, grew 56% year-over-year, and 5% sequentially, to $41.1 billion. The company’s automotive and robotics segment grew the most at 69% year over year.
“Expectations were sky-high, but Nvidia exceeded them again,” Michael Smith, senior portfolio manager and head of the growth equity team at Allspring Global Investments, told Fortune. Allspring owns Nvidia in some of its funds. “Margins are rising as Blackwell ramps; China remains a massive untapped opportunity post–export controls; and a $60 billion buyback is an extra sweetener amid record free cash flow.”