On Thursday morning, NVIDIA, the global AI computing chip leader, officially released its financial report for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2025 as of April 28, 2024. The first and second quarter performance guidelines exceeded analyst expectations. Specifically:
Nvidia achieved a revenue of $26 billion in the first quarter, a year-on-year increase of 262%, far exceeding market expectations of $24.7 billion; Among them, the core business of computing power - data center revenue was 22.6 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 427%!
The net profit for the first quarter was 14.88 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 628%! Higher than expected $12.9 billion.
In addition, the company has provided guidance on its second quarter performance, predicting sales of $28 billion in Q2 2025, with a 2% fluctuation, higher than the market's expected $26.6 billion.
It is worth noting that Nvidia disclosed in its financial report that, The Blackwell platform has entered full production. CEO Huang Renxun stated that with the launch of the next generation of Blackwell architecture chips, the company is preparing for the "next wave of growth".
As a leader in the field of AI computing power, Nvidia's new quarter performance represents a benchmark for the development of the computing power industry chain. This performance has exceeded expectations comprehensively, confirming the strong demand for AI computing power. The second quarter guidance has been raised, indicating that the expected prosperity of computing power is improving. Driven by this, The A-share computing power industry chain has opened up high.
In addition, in March of this year, Nvidia unveiled the new generation GPU Blackwell at the GTC2024 conference and plans to launch the GB200 supercomputing chip based on Blackwell architecture later. It is understood that, The AI performance of GB200 has reached an astonishing 2 billion floating-point operations per second, which is a significant improvement compared to the previous generation product H100's 4 billion floating-point operations per second, equivalent to a 5-fold increase in performance. This means that GB200 has stronger capabilities in processing large-scale data, running complex algorithms, and driving deep learning.
Supported by the dual buff of supercomputing chips and explosive performance growth, Nvidia's US stock market has been performing wildly, continuously reaching new highs, which has also driven the sentiment of the US technology sector. The Nasdaq 100 index has also performed exceptionally well, with the Nasdaq ETF (513300) rising by over 15% this year.
What kind of impact will Nvidia's performance press conference have on the capital market?
On the one hand, Nvidia's performance meets or even exceeds expectations, indicating that the demand for AI computing power is indeed continuing the previous strong trend; On the other hand, GB200, known as the strongest computing power chip in history or a major highlight of outstanding performance, if the mass production time of GB200 is determined, aside from such a high-value computing power chip, the demand and value of higher performance servers, switches, optical modules and other equipment required for it will also be very considerable. The combination of the two is expected to bring about a simultaneous increase in both quantity and price in the computing power industry chain. This is reflected in the capital market, and the sentiment of domestic computing power links related to Nvidia's industry chain is expected to be reignited.
A securities firm has stated that with Nvidia's comprehensive financial reports exceeding expectations, the market's recognition of computing power will further increase. With the upgrading of Nvidia's B-series products, the market is starting to look forward to the second half of the year or even 25 years, and the valuation side is expected to gradually switch to 25 years. At the current time point, the core targets of computing power are Zhongji Xuchuang, Xinyisheng, Tianfu Communication, Industrial Fulian, and Shanghai Electric Power Co., Ltd. And after the valuation switch of the core target is optimistic, open up imagination space for other computing power varieties.
In terms of related ETFs, the top ten holdings of 5G communication ETFs (515050) are Zhongji Xuchuang, Lixun Precision, Industrial Fulian, ZTE Communications, Xinyi Sheng, Zhaoyi Innovation, Ziguang Shares, Shanghai Electric Power Co., Ltd., Tianfu Communication, and Sanan Optoelectronics, accounting for a total of 53.89%.
CITIC Securities pointed out that currently, the three major domestic operators have started purchasing training type AI servers, and it is expected that they will also conduct bidding for inference type AI servers in the future. And it is recommended to continue to pay attention to investment opportunities in the AI sector, including optical communication and domestic computing power sectors, and gradually expand to large models and application fields.
Guosheng Securities pointed out that the overall development speed of AI is still faster than the supply speed of computing power, and the market pattern will continue to maintain a state of supply shortage in the short to medium term; China International Capital Corporation (CICC) stated that it actively promotes the flywheel effect of "upgrading computing power, reducing costs, and continuously increasing demand", The demand for AI hardware is still in a high prosperity stage.