When NVIDIA last reported earnings in February, its stock dropped 8.5% the next day. Will tomorrow be a repeat?
A good place to examine what Wall Street was concerned about (and led to the sell-off) is an analysis of what questions Wall Street asked about on NVIDIA’s earnings call.
1. Concerns about Margins
Main Questions From:
Why it’s a focus:
Analysts repeatedly questioned whether Q1 is the gross margin bottom and how NVIDIA can recover to the mid-70% range. Key drivers of concern include:
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Costs from ramping Blackwell systems (especially liquid-cooled and NVLink 72 variants).
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Complexity in system configurations.
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External risks like tariffs and export controls.
Implication for Today’s Earnings:
Expect scrutiny on margin guidance, cost reduction roadmaps, and any early signals of margin expansion or erosion.
2. Inference & Reasoning AI Demand Evolution
Main Questions From:
Why it’s a focus:
Analysts emphasized the growing compute demands from post-training and inference workloads, including:
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New scaling laws tied to “reasoning AI.”
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Use of Blackwell specifically for inference at massive scale.
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Demand for flexible infrastructure that can shift between pretraining, post-training, and inference.
Implication for Today’s Earnings:
Analysts will want updates on whether inference is becoming a larger revenue driver, how customers are architecting clusters, and whether Blackwell’s advantage in inference translates to stickier adoption. Remember, earlier we posted an except from a Morgan Stanley research note saying that hyperscalers have been surprised by the demand for inference across the board, so our expectation at 24/7 Wall St. is that NVIDIA will be very bullish about demand for inferencing in tonight’s call.
3. Supply Chain & System Ramp Execution
Main Questions From:
Why it’s a focus:
With complex systems involving 1.5M components and 350+ factories, analysts are probing:
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Whether NVIDIA can simultaneously ramp Blackwell and launch Blackwell Ultra on schedule.
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If supply chain execution risk could limit deliveries.
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Whether transition from Hopper to Blackwell introduces integration frictions.
Implication for Today’s Earnings:
Wall Street will look for signs that NVIDIA can sustain manufacturing at scale, smoothly transition between generations, and avoid production-related surprises.
Earlier in this preview we provided more analysis on reports that NVIDIA’s partners seem to have solved liquid cooling issues that have delayed the rollout of server racks at scale. This could lead to a larger Blackwell revenue ramp in the back half of the year.