Nvidia Reports Results… And A Big Move In The Pharma Space 2/26/25

0:00Live from the Nasdaq market side in the heart of New York City's Times Square this is Fast money. Here's what's on tap tonight. NVIDIA on the move. Shares just turning higher after being sales and profit estimates. What is driving the volatility and what could it mean for the AI trade? Plus, magical madrigal. Shares of the pharma company hitting more than 12-year highs on the back of its results. The CEO will join us for more on the latest trial data and what's next for the name. And revving up, GM upping its dividend and buying back billions in stock. Is it enough to keep shares accelerating?

0:30How the traders are playing the auto giant right now. I'm Melissa Lee, coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Steve Rosso, Dan Nathan, and Guy Adami. We start off with an earnings alert on NVIDIA shares of the AI chipmaker volatile after its results. It's currently up at 2.6%. The conference call just kicking off. Let's bring in CNBC's Christina Parsnettles for more on the quarter. Christina. Well, you mentioned it. They beat on both revenue and profit, but growth is slowing. The guidance still came in above Wall Street expectations as well as buy-side expectations of$42 billion.

1:01That was a key number. Data centers remain NVIDIA's cash cow, generating over 80 percent of revenue. CFO Colette Kress noted they delivered$11 billion of Blackwell. That's the latest iteration of their, you can call it the architecture, GPUs, etc., data center products in Q4. And that's their fastest product ramp ever. It's also the first time we're actually getting a Blackwell number. CEO Jensen Wong in the actual press release saying AI is advancing at light speed, which may be easing some concerns about supply issues and show that demand fundamentals are still in play. But with the launch of new chips comes pressure on Q1 margins coming in below analyst expectations at 71 percent.

1:38Management had previously warned on the earnings call the last two quarters that margins would dip before recovering to mid 70s. So I think 75 percent in the second half of this year. You talked about shares first. They were up. Then they were down. It's the most active member of the Nasdaq 100, followed by Tesla at the moment. Melissa, Christine, I'm curious on the Blackwell revenue number. Was there a street consensus estimate for that? Was$11 billion sort of in line, or do we not know that? I only have it for data center, not specifically for Blackwell. For Blackwell. Okay. Christina, thanks.

2:09Christina Parts Nevelis. I ask that only because Blackwell has a higher margin than its other chips. But Guy, what do you make of the quarter? So last night, Gene was on, Gene Munster. He thought they'd beat by$2 billion and then guide higher by$2 billion. So they beat by about a little over a billion. Let's call it a billion and a half. So that was light. And the guide was a little bit light. And it's not an indictment. It's just not what Gene thought. But the one number that stuck out to me, Christina just mentioned, gross margins are starting to go, I think, the wrong way. Now, the stock is up.

2:36That's fine. There's nothing to not like about the quarter other than the fact that if margins start to decelerate, that's when these stories typically get long in the tooth. So that's the one thing that I'm watching here. Yeah, you've got to watch because they said they're going to accelerate, re-accelerate in the back half of the year, so 75%. So you've got to think about what does that mean for competition? that means they're going to have more pricing power or, to your point, they're not going to break out Blackwell right now, but that should be a higher margin ramp. I just think of the trade, and we talk about it all the time, like, has it stalled out?

3:04Well, NVIDIA hasn't gone anywhere in eight months. You know, if you look at Microsoft, Google, Amazon, they're all down about 10 % from their recent highs, some more than that. So the trade, and Taiwan Semi, I'll throw in there, the trade, for all intents and purposes, has stalled out. So what is going to be the catalyst, I think, to get it reaccelerated? I'm not so sure right now because I can't imagine on a sequential basis that NVIDIA is going to be able to kind of do better than they just did. And what they just guided revenues to up or down 2 % from here. I mean, maybe that's an easy thing for them to beat, but it's going to have to be a big beat to get the stock going back towards new highs.

3:36You mentioned the nine-month time frame. I mean, it's not pre-DeepSeek. I mean, DeepSeek was a real setback in terms of it trying to make some ground up. Yeah, although, you know, we've got a 30 % guide on CapEx for hyperscalers. I'm less worried about DeepSeek than I might be about where we're talking about this. But the question is, if the company's not expensive now, and that's maybe open for debate, but to me, trading at a discount to peers at 31 times, 32 times with a peer group that's probably 33, 34, nobody's even close. So in a world where, okay, NVIDIA relative to themselves and relative to the last two years, this is one of the greatest bars to have to heat.

4:09This would be a Fosbury, Dick Fosbury, by the way. He was a fan of the show. He passed away. Fosbury flop. Fosbury flop. But but again, a really respected guy and a big fan of the show. But the bottom line here is you've got a case where AMD is doing nothing. They've told you half over half. There's there's very little growth there. NVIDIA continues to extend its lead. It's a case where, to me, that's really the story. If you're worried about the secular trends in AI, OK. But if you're worried about NVIDIA relative to anyone else in the world, it's not even close. And to me, the stock's not expensive.

4:44So it was so I would just say, I wouldn't say oversold. I would just say the negativity going to this print was reasonably high. And to me, this is a bit of a relief. So I'm going to take the other side of that, only because I think the stock price looks like it's it's rolling over and their revenues are reliant on the four top hyperscalers. It's 46 percent of their revenue. If this price, if they cut back a little bit on that deep seek headline. So there's deep seek doing it for 5 million. Was that the number? It's a lot less. Let's just say it's 5 billion. I think it was 5 million. Let's just say it's a lot less.

5:24There's a lot of middle ground. So even if that deep seek was a lot of nonsense, people are going to start to think I can do this on the cheap. And maybe I don't need a Blackwell. Maybe I don't need a large language model. Maybe I just need a chip. So why not pick out an AMD or an Intel? Intel's up 17%. I get it. It's the sum of the parts that had Intel running this year. But when you look at NVIDIA, if two of those four cut back, you could see a revenue decline of 23%. We've already heard the hyperscalers confirm, to Tim's point, confirm their annual CapEx intentions. What are we worried about here?

6:07Well, we're not worried about anything in the near term. We're not worried about demand. And we're now not worried about supplies. So, again, if you get back to a stock that there's no disputing. Disputing. This has been a dead trade. No one needs to point this out. This has been obvious. And in fact, it's underperformed its peer group. It's underperformed the SMH by about 11 % since their last earnings. But you get back to there's a big argument out there that even in a post-deep seek world, that the demand story even increases and the elasticity of demand outstrips even the fall on the prices.

6:33That's the argument. And when Intel is nowhere even on the playing field right now and AMD isn't even close, NVIDIA is still the one that they're getting even their lower-priced chips from. So just just one little bow on this. So if you look at chips or what supply demand. Right. So you if now you have to if you have too much or you have enough, that's a glut. It's a commoditized pricing. They have to the guy where he kicked it off. Gross margins have to continue to come in. So for me, I don't see prices increasing. I don't see the price of the stock increasing. And I'm not fighting, you know, on the price level of stock.

7:10Like Tim said, it looks like it's rolling over. I think you're going to see much lower prices for NVIDIA. Listen, there's lots of puts and takes here. You could say Stargate. You could say there's a whole host of meta building out a new project. There's a whole sovereign. There's a whole host of things you could say. Maybe we're just getting started, right? This has been a digestion phase as far as the spend. Now we start to think about what inference looks like and what is applications being built on all this stuff and what is the adoption for a whole host of us. That's going to be the next step.

7:38When it starts, who knows? The flip side of that is Anthropic. This is one of OpenAI's biggest competitors. They have this Claude model. They just released a new one, 3.7. Supposedly, that one was traded on tens of millions, not billions or anything like that. So there's something for everybody. You know, DeepSeek has been widely explained as not that negative for an NVIDIA right here, right now. And so, you know, again, I just think there's a little something for everybody. But I just don't think this is going to establish a new range. I don't think we're going to have another leg higher anytime soon in this trade.

8:10In the context, though, of market psychology at this point in time, I mean, how is this going to be perceived? The puts and takes, is it going to be perceived positive or negative? Are you going to glass half full or glass half empty at this point? Because I would say glass half empty. What's that diagram? When dog goes one way, the other goes. Oh, not the Venn diagram. We all know what that is. When you can see one thing or the picture. Horshack. Or the dress. The dress. Do you see gold or do you see blue? That was a few years ago. Okay. You all know what I meant, by the way. TD was saying that Microsoft canceled a bunch of data center capacity leases.

8:45And the market's freaked out. I think the market, this is a sigh of relief, I think, in terms of the after. So I think in terms of the broader market, you know, we'll just focus on the things that we're concerned about. This sort of gets us through, I think, in terms of the concern about NVIDIA. However, and Tim is right to point out, on a price to earnings, the stock is cheap compared to where its peers trade and really compared to where it should be trading. If you think about the head start, the problem, I think, is price to sales is still expensive. And if margins come down, that price to earnings goes up very precipitously.

9:15So that's been my concern. Now, the market isn't worried about it, clearly. But again, margin deterioration leads to an acceleration of P.E. All right. For more on NVIDIA, let's bring in Susquehanna senior analyst Chris Rolland. Chris, great to have you with us. What's your take on the quarter and what's your take on that$11 billion Blackwell revenue number? Yeah, I thought it was fine. $11 billion for Blackwell. We were thinking it was going to be five or six. So this is a very healthy, good number. We were worried about the April quarter as it's kind of this hole in revenue between Hopper and GB200.

9:52So we think this is a fine result. What are you looking for on the conference call, Chris? What's going to be your first question, if you have that first question? If I have that first question, it's going to be around GB200, whether system developers are ready to go, and when can we really ramp this product? Chris, cut to the chase on the hyperscaler. Excuse me, CapEx intensity. Where are you on this? Yeah, CapEx is going up. We were thinking growth was about 20 % across those hyperscalers you talked about going into the quarter. Coming out of the quarter, it looks like it's more like 30 % year over year.

10:33So this number is going up on the back of AI. Real quick, Chris, given the beat in Blackwell, and as Mel said earlier, the higher margin chip theoretically, wouldn't you expect to see margins hang in there actually be better than expected or am I way off base? You can tell me I am because that's typically the case. Yeah, you're not off base, but the company has very well telegraphed and communicated that gross margins during this Blackwell ramp were going to be low. And so for whatever reason, the street was modeling closer to 73%. That was off. It should have been closer to that 71%. So this is exactly as the CFO has, in fact, telegraphed.

11:22Chris, as you talk to investors, I'm just curious where there is skepticism. We were talking about how the stock has really not done too much over the past nine months. Is there skepticism around the forecast of hyperscalers that they're actually going to stick with those raised guidance numbers throughout the year? I mean, where is sort of the question marks? Where do they focus on? Yeah, I think there was some turbulence around DeepSeek. We're still trying to figure out efficiencies that came from that model and whether it decreases total spend or not. I think that's of less concern now, certainly, than it was a month ago.

12:01But really, people want to know timing around GB200. This is supposed to be the big product, not B200. It's GB200, racks of 72 GPUs. And it seems like these are coming a little bit later. Are there still problems? Are there still problems with liquid cooling? there's a lot of stuff that are going to come into these complicated systems and are they ready to go in time and if not is there a small hole in revenue in between and so that I think is probably the biggest concern for investors right now. So where do you want to see that launch Chris in the year? So I want to see it coming after the April quarter so their July quarter and I want to see it in earnest.

12:49Okay. Chris, we're going to leave it there. Thanks, as always, for your analysis on the heels of these numbers. And do not miss a CNBC special report on NVIDIA's results. John Fort will be speaking with CEO Jensen Huang about the numbers, his AI strategy, and more at 7 p.m. Eastern time right here on CNBC. So there's still a big question mark about an even bigger product than Blackwell to come potentially in the July quarter. Sure. Ruben, I can't wait. You know, Well, here's the thing. Tomorrow night, we're going to get Dell, right? So Dell makes the servers that a lot of these GPUs go into, that a lot of these servers go into the data center.

13:22So it'll be really interesting to see what they have to say. They've been growing kind of quickly when they reported in November. It was disappointing. I mean, PCs are not particularly great. We know that end market is really bad. So it'll be interesting to see what they have to say on servers tomorrow night. So this thing, we're all waiting for NVIDIA. It was a big nothing. You know, we've been waiting for like two months now. And so now we're going to put some other pieces of the puzzle together. Tim, famous Rubens for 500. Reuben Kincaid. Of course, you have to go Reuben Kincaid. Even I know Reuben Kincaid.

13:48Well, not my favorite sandwich. It's very greasy. Very greasy. Reuben Sierra actually had a pretty nice run with the Yankees. Reuben Kincaid. Do you have any salient points to make? Not particularly. I mean, but this is what happened last quarter as well, if you recall. There was no movement in the stock. The next day it made a new all-time high and then closed precipitously lower, had this engulfing pattern. So we'll see how it plays out over the next 24 hours. Might I also say that Jensen Huang is a master at speaking to the markets, speaking to investors, delivering what they want to hear. And John Ford's going to be speaking to him tonight at 7 o 'clock on CNBC.

14:24And the picture might not only change on the conference call, which is going on right now, but also change on the heels of this interview. It's going to be a fascinating interview. It's probably a must watch because I think the dynamics on sewing some of these pieces of uncertainty together, certainly I think the message is going to be positive. I think for the markets, this is positive. I think this was an overhang. I think this was something the markets wanted to get through. I mean, think of the price action. Think of also where Options Expring was on Friday. And a lot of people were betting against things getting kind of ugly into this print.

14:52There's all kinds of stuff going on around it. Well, let's talk about the context of the markets because we snapped a losing streak today. The S &P as well as the NASDAQ. You're ending a four-day losing streak. So what does this do? You were saying that this is a sigh of relief. Yeah, I think so. So, I mean, again, I think you've got a case where if you look how mega cap tech has been underperforming and there's been a bit of an indictment against all the cap spending against all the hyperscalers. So if we get reaffirmation that this is money well spent, I'd see meta turning around most immediately.

15:22So people, you wanted to see a rebound here and you and the market can't really do anything without Max 7. We've seen the equal weight outperform. We've seen Russell outperform. But when you look at the names that people hold the most of in their portfolios, it's these MAC7 names. People wanted to see them bounce. They got flushed out. RSIs dipped. I think you give it a couple of days, and I think you see this group probably roll over again. Give it a couple days, and you get PCE on Friday morning. And I think it's going to be really interesting to see where the 10-year yield has gone over the last few weeks from 4.8 % to 4.3%.

15:54Let's see if that's a hot number. We've seen some hot prints over the last few weeks or so. And I think that put and take. You want hot? I love that. Seriously, do you want hot? I honestly don't know. What's the game guy that we play every once in a while on this show? If you do. We're going to tell you what happened. We play a lot of games. I'm trying to think of which one applies in this case. It's definitely not traded or failed. One thing I'll just say, if you guys were worried about, if you think NVIDIA, the overhang is off the market, I'll tell you two things that I'd be worried about right now.

16:21Bitcoin, you know, below$85 ,000, the way it sold off, the way it continued today. And the other one's Tesla. It sold off. It was down 10 % at one point yesterday. It was down almost 5 % today. And that just tells you a little bit of some of the extreme risk-taking that has been going on, especially as the AI trade has gone sideways. But those weren't leaders, right? I mean, I hear what you're saying. I think a lot of the losses come from leaders. They're sentiment leaders. Sentiment leaders. Okay. For like FOMO, for risk-on sort of thing. Well, Bitcoin is definitely risk-on, so I agree with that.

16:50When you see this fluff come out of it, and today I think was the biggest outflow. He had a billion dollars coming out of. And last year, let's remember ETFs, 80 percent of the inflows into ETFs were Bitcoin related. I mean, gold. Yes. The pullback in gold. Right. I mean, people are looking to lock in their biggest winners. And for what? For safety. Feels that way. I mean, we've seen a couple of gold sell-offs on the back of broader market sell-offs before. It's not unprecedented. I do think the gold trade is intact. I think Bitcoin is absolutely something to watch. We have talked about it. if the average price of strategies holdings get to the point where Bitcoin is trading, that's going to be problematic.

17:29And the VIX is showing signs of wanting to do something on the upside. Closed low today, I get it, but north of 19 is something to watch. Have we seen a gold pullback? A little bit. What are you talking about? We're 50 bucks from an all-time high. That's a little bit of a lot. After the move we've had, you're calling this a pullback? Don't call this a pullback. Who am I calling this? It's a Rorschach test. All right, coming up, we're dialed into the NVIDIA call. We'll bring you all the headlines as we get them. And there's a lot more earnings action to come. Salesforce, eBay, Paramount, and much more on the move.

18:00The details and numbers out of the quarters straight ahead. But first, a GM jump. Shares driving higher as the company hikes its dividend and kicks off a big buyback program. Can the stocks stay in the fast lane? Don't go anywhere. Fast money is back in tune.

18:20Welcome back to Fast Money. Shares of General Motors getting revved up on news that the company is hiking its quarterly dividend by 25 percent and initiating a$6 billion share buyback, GM ending the day up nearly 4 percent. Our Phil LeBeau joins us with the story. Phil. Melissa, this is not the first time that General Motors has said, you know what, we're coming off of record profits. Let's put that money to use by buying back our shares and increasing the dividends. So here's what the company announced today. As you mentioned,$6 billion stock buyback. By the way,$2 billion of that is part of an accelerated stock retirement program.

18:55So it'll all happen in the second quarter. They're raising the dividend by 25%, jumping it up$0.03 to$0.15 a share. As you take a look at shares of General Motors, keep in mind that the outstanding shares, It's come down by about 400 ,000 shares since the beginning of 2023. That's how many they've retired. They also have an outstanding balance in terms of total shares of about 998 million, maybe a billion shares, roughly speaking, depending on how the share repurchasing is going day to day. So that's a big drop compared to where they were just at the beginning of 23, Melissa. All right, Phil, thanks.

19:35Phil LeBeau on GM. GM? Positive, definitely. I mean, the dividend increase. The bears will say they've got no EV business and that this is a sign of weakness, that this is all they can do with their money. But if you're GM and you have the history that GM has, this is great news. This is a company that's now, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt. We're not talking about one or two quarters. We're talking about four years. Coming out of COVID, this is a company that obviously, and even before COVID, some of these trends were in place, but the profitability we've seen on free cash flow is extraordinary.

20:05This stock should re-rate. I understand that there are headwinds that are going on in the auto space, but this stock should be re-rating and clearly should trade. And again, it is a car company, unlike others that are not. And by the way, they are going to spend more than$8 billion on research and product development. So they're not investing. They're not not investing in their business. $6 billion buyback is not insignificant. A$48 billion company, number one. Number two, the move from$61 down to$45, which we've seen over the last couple months, got us right back to the October low, which is where we took off from, if you recall, in the fall.

20:34So I'm with Tim on this one. If you want to play a little stock market, I think GM has some upside here. But how about the tariffs? March 4th. She's not complaining about them. We only had Farley complain about the tariffs. She seems like she's navigating the seas a lot better than Ford has. And the interesting part of their services business is they have 4.2 subscribers. 4.2 million subscribers. That's not many. Ford has 650 ,000. So when you look at it, it's basically 25 % of the vehicles that can have that service plan that are on the road right now. So if you're going to invest in a car company, GM is definitely over Ford.

21:11Although Ford seems like there could be a dead cow bounce at this because I don't agree with the way that Farley has been running the company. But I'm not a Ford CEO, so I have to just bite my tongue. Everybody's going to, I mean, maybe Ford will feel more of an impact, but everybody will feel an impact of 25 % tariffs. There's no question, and there's no question there were a lot of people running down in Florida that weekend, and there's a lot of people in the auto industry that have been lobbying very hard, and I think there will be a compromise found. I think ultimately U.S. auto, if you think about it, if we're fighting for U.S.

21:42steel, we should be fighting for the big two that are left in Detroit. Good point there. Coming up, we are diving back into tonight's after-hours action. Salesforce, eBay, Paramount, and more, all reporting results, numbers in the quarters next. And speaking of earnings, a major move in the pharma space, Madrigal surging after its Q4 report this morning. The CEO will join us next to dig into the numbers and its latest drug trial data. You're watching Fast Money live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. Back right after this.