Nvidia Reports Results… And Cracker Barrel Loses Its “New” Logo 8/27/25

0:00Live from the Nasdaq market site in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is Fast Money, NVIDIA edition. NVIDIA out with results. The stock on the move down. We'll get the numbers and the analysis straight ahead. That is much of the show, but it is not all of the show. We've got that plus a streaming showdown. The deal drama that could threaten Fox channels on YouTube TV plus financials flying high. The next move in nuclear and the cracker barrel bump. thanks to the company's rebranding, unbranding. Hi, everybody. I am Brian Sullivan in for Melissa Lee tonight, coming to you live, as always, from Studio B right here at the NASDAQ.

0:41On your desk tonight on a big show, Steve Grasso, Dan Nathan, Guy Adami, and Danny Moses, founder of Moses Ventures. Danny, welcome. Good to have you on the program. Well, let's not get carried away. All right. It's better than average to have you on the program tonight, Danny. Stocks a little better than average tonight, by the way. Markets up across the board, not huge gains today. S &P, Dow, and NASDAQ, all about two-tenths of 1%. But again, Guy Domi, I'm not a math whiz, but when you're at a record and you go up, you get what? New record. See, that's that Georgetown education paying off. We'll get more on that later on, but we're going to start now with NVIDIA.

1:19The stock down a little bit. Some people might say there was lighter data center revenue. Maybe some questions over the future of the China business. Listen, NVIDIA did beat on the top and the bottom line, at least against estimates. The conference call kicked off moments ago. Christina Parts and Evolas, we're thankful that you're on set with us here tonight. Here's the thing about NVIDIA. It doesn't matter if they beat on this or they beat on that because the estimates, the whisper numbers, are so high that it can't just be like a little beat. They need a big beat on NVIDIA. We didn't get that.

1:53Yeah, so the whisper number represents institutional buyers, and that was at$55 billion. And what we saw was$54 billion for the guide. The other interesting thing, too, is that the company said that they did not include any H20 China chip sales for that guide, very similar to what AMD did. So they're just being conservative right now. Why, you know, put a number to something they are still unaware if they're going to get licenses? And especially when the next iteration, this Blackwell chip for China is coming out and most likely will get approval. So why wait on that? You also have the gross margins coming in at 73.5, higher than anticipated.

2:26That is some strength, showing that the company is inching closer and closer back to that mid-70s level they promised at 75 percent. The CFO did point out, too, that Blackwell demand was led by cloud service providers. They contributed 50 percent of data center revenue, to your point, which technically missed estimates for the second quarter in a row, but ever so slightly. So that could be playing a role. Were we expecting some China news in this quarter? In the guide, there was, there's Mizuho, Morgan Stanley. A few of them were citing saying that the$55 billion number should have included something to do with China.

3:02And that's not the case. Right. And that's likely to come out on the call. It's going to change. Yeah. So we talked about that data center, right? We know who they are. They're big hyperscalers, that sort of thing. And so do you think, as Sully just said, were the expectations getting that high based on what we just heard from all those companies with their CapEx? You know, like they probably came in and got a little bit more muted. Like, I'm trying to make the case that maybe they weren't as high as some might expect. I know that not much of a miss. You know what I mean? What do you mean they're not as high?

3:28Well, the expectations heading into the print. With the run-up in the stock outperforming the S &P. What I'm saying is the stock's only down 2.5%. If they were really high, the stock would be down 10 % right now. That's all I'm saying. And I agree. The expectations were high in terms of why the stock isn't. Maybe people realize the disconnect between the earnings report and what Jensen says on the call. He's a great storyteller, and he's going to talk about the fact that the Blackwell ramp is going to continue, the Blackwell Ultra, which did increase their inventory level, by the way, and then the Rubin for next quarter.

3:56So all of these factors will help change that narrative, and he's very good at that. And I think, Steve Grass, I know you've got something to say, but I will ask you also a question. Everybody chime in. It's an open table. It's like the Adami family Thanksgiving. We're all just going to talk at the exact same time. Well, they have turkey parmesan, by the way. Turkey parmesan. See, that's an ethnic joke. So, Steve Grass, so here's the thing about it. To that point, I think Dan's point was that the expectations and the actual number were a little more in line with each other. In the last number of quarters, we've seen these huge whisper number expectations that are billions and billions and billions of dollars more than the official estimates.

4:36Chime in on that and other points on NVIDIA. If you start to get that close of gap, then people are not going to be paying for NVIDIA. NVIDIA is known for that huge gap where people set a target and they wound up hitting it. What I'll ask, Christina, is does the story feel like China is being substituted for sovereign at this point? No, I don't think that would be the expectation. But NVIDIA hasn't been talking up sovereign as much as you would hope, because why? There's no number to actually put to sovereign, right? You have the promise to spend, you know, on, you know, 500, was it 500 million or something chips in from just certain sovereign countries.

5:13But overall, I feel like we don't have an actual number to offset the weakness in China. And then also they're going to have to speak to that 15 percent tax on China revenue, too. Like, how are they going to mitigate? They were able to recoup that right down of five billion or mitigate it at least to the to maybe three point nine billion. Well, the rumor is they're also going to increase the prices to offset that. And that's going to upset China even more. Yeah, so China's paying for that tax. And before Guy Domi jumps in, I think you're calling it a tax. Some people might call it something. It's OK.

5:41I saw the face. Can I call it a tax? A 15 percent. Don't call it a comeback. What Christine is referring to, folks, I'm sure you're aware of this. If not, here you go, is that the Trump administration has basically said we will allow you to sell some of your chips to China. But you've got to give us 15 percent back. Maybe call it a VIG. Dan might call it something else. Either way, either way, it is a tax on those sales guide up, which I read the Constitution. I took a class and it's actually unconstitutional. But OK, I'll play the game with you. I look at the quarter and Christina can speak to this.

6:16People got really excited. I think it was two years ago. Dan probably has the date when NVIDIA guided from seven and a half billion dollars to north of 11 billion dollars. I can do that percentage. It was like a 50 percent beat in terms of revenue guide. People were so excited they were tripping over themselves to buy the stock. The numbers have grown without question. I mean, we're 5x what that was, but the percentage beats are getting smaller. 56 % year-over-year. So when do you think the market starts to care? And I'm not looking to put you on the spot. When do you think the market starts to look at this and say, we've rewarded them for the absolute numbers.

6:54Now we're going to penalize them for the deceleration in revenue growth. Well, then the market would have already penalized them because it's been just decelerated for quite some time. Exactly. Then what's that threshold? Danny Moses on the desk. At what point? Well, Kate, I'll pose it to Danny. Two years ago when this whole thing kind of started, if you had said that these would be the numbers and the margins would hold here, you would think that was pretty bullish here. I'm probably the last guy that should be talking about tech. But this is really interesting to me. So they're on an off-reporting quarter, right?

7:21Their quarter ended the first month of the third quarter for many of the other companies in the space. It's always interesting to listen to what they say about the current momentum, because that's a clue into what the order rates look like the last 30 days. So I'd be curious if they've mentioned that or will they mention that on the call? It started at 5.01. Oh, will they mention it? Will they mention it on the call? I'm going to go back and read the transcription and listen, but I would assume that they're going to speak to demand for the hyperscale. They're also going to mention neoclouds like CoreWeave.

7:48CoreWeave, an example. Go find out. Then you're kicking me off set. I enjoy spending time with you. It's Christina Partson late for this. I'm hearing that I need to go. No, she doesn't have to go. No, she doesn't have to go. She classes up the joint. But I want to ask Danny Moses a follow-up. Is there any part of you at all, Danny? You're known for subprime and what I was here at the NASDAQ in 99, 2000. Is there any part of you at all, maybe even on the margin, that feels that the AI hype is just a little bit overdone? It's still in a secular growth. It has not become cyclical as of yet. But listen, it's 8 % of the S &P almost.

8:17That's kind of scary. We've never had that. But it's way more than that when you think about it. All the ETFs that it's in. 670 ETFs. There you go. That's why we have a good team here. But I'm concerned about the concentration. But I will tell you, the secular growth still looks like it's there. So I would not short it, Brian. Well, you get your face ripped off. You could have said the same thing in January. No, you don't get your face ripped off all the time. As a matter of fact, look at the move. Go back to January. Can you short NVIDIA? Could you? Pull up a chart. You could have shorted NVIDIA at least five or six months.

8:50How expensive is it to short it? I can't speak to that. I don't have it in front of me. I'll say this. In January, the stock made an all-time high of 153 and change. We had an engulfing pattern. We talked about it on this desk. We said, pull the ripcord. Did I think it was going to 90 in April? Absolutely not. It went down to 90 in April. That was a significant move to the downside. So it's not like this stock is a straight line, lower left, upper right. It does have pullbacks. We've seen them before. And as magnificent as this quarter is, the size of the numbers are unbelievable. The magnitudes of the beat are getting smaller.

9:23They're already being rewarded for it in terms of price to sale. So that's in the stock already. So you better hope margins hold in there. You better hope what they're saying comes to fruition because when it decelerates, that's really the time that things get. All right. Let's bring in somebody that follows NVIDIA for a living. That is Chris Rollins, senior analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group. Chris, we appreciate you joining us. You've been listening to what we've had to say. You've had some time to kind of chew on the numbers. What's your take on the quarter and whatever else you've read or heard?

9:51Yeah, I think there's probably a knee-jerk overreaction. These numbers were just fine. The quarter was perhaps a little light, but the guide was absolutely fine. Also, Colette, the CFO, has already been speaking to the China opportunity. Now, once they do get official requirements around China and what they can ship, they expect to do another$2 to$5 billion in H20 revenue to China. So put that on top of the Q3 revenue guide, which was just fine. These revenue numbers, and I want to really highlight this for the audience. Everybody around the table knows this. Annual revenue for NVIDIA was about$17 billion four years ago.

10:47About four years ago, I'm looking at Capital IQ, about$17 billion. It's now estimated to be what,$150 billion, Chris? Yeah, going higher to$200 billion total. So$17 billion to$200 billion in four or five years. I don't know if we've ever seen that. NVIDIA has added a trillion dollars, a trillion dollars of the T, in market cap this year. That's 10 Starbucks or five Qualcomm's worth of value for one company in eight months. How long can that trend, that growth rate, continue? It will slow, but the chat GPT moment in 2022 changed everything. And the value has accrued to NVIDIA, who is powering everything, at least 80 % of everything AI right now.

11:48And so that will slow, but$250 billion is a reasonable expectation for next year. and we'll be working on$300 billion, we think, in the years after. Yeah, so let's just talk about that deceleration we're talking about. Again, these are high-class problems, right? So last year they were growing earnings in sales over 100 % a year. This year it's going to look like maybe 55 % or something like that, even just taking this guidance right here. It's not likely that much more. Maybe China does that maybe in the last quarter or so. What do you think, though, Chris, when you think about, let's say, expectations for 33 % earnings and sales growth next year, trading about 30 times that.

12:27Is this stock starting to look cheap on consensus or do you think consensus is too low? Just curious to see where you're at because I know a handful of other folks who think that that consensus earnings and sales is way too low. I think eventually we will hit some sort of a wall when it comes to this deceleration. I don't know if it's next year, but eventually we're going to have a flat year and everyone's going to freak out and think that the P multiple might even be too high. But it's been a meteoric rise. I'm not getting off the train just yet. There's still a lot of growth here, whether you're talking about hyperscale capex, we've seen incredible improvement, but there's probably still another 20 or 30 percent to go there over the next few years.

13:18We have sovereign ahead of us. We have China ahead of us. There's still some opportunity here. Well, speaking of China, Chris Rolland, stay there. We have some news coming out of the call. You might have heard this. You might not have, but I'll give it to our viewers and listeners as well as the desks. Forgive me for looking down. Nobody wants to see the bald spot, but here you go. NVIDIA could ship two to five billion dollars of H20 chips in the third quarter if geopolitical issues subside. This is coming from the conference call and the CFO of NVIDIA. NVIDIA CFO said that some China-based customers have received H20 licenses, but NVIDIA has not shipped to them yet.

13:57And the U.S. government, as we talked about that 15 % tax, whatever you want to call it, U.S. government has not codified requirements for NVIDIA to give it 15 % yet of China sales. In other words, NVIDIA is fine, I guess, paying the government, Chris, but they're not really sure how it's going to work. But forget about that. Two to five billion of H20 sales in the third quarter. How would that stack to maybe what I know there's no official numbers for China and NVIDIA, but how would that go against your expectations? Yeah. First of all, that's not in their official guidance. So that would be on top.

14:34This is new news. Yep. And then secondly, if they did get that requirement, I believe they could start the supply chain up and they would do better than that two to five. In fact, they probably could have done 10 if they really had that supply chain going. So there's still upside here from China probably could do 25 billion a year to China if they wanted to. Chris, the last line you said before Brian jumped in with news was you're not getting off the train yet. I think the most helpful you could be to viewers right now is what would be the red flag? What's the signal for when Chris decides to get off the train?

15:14Let's see the hyperscale CapEx. Let's see that hit a wall first. How would you define hitting a wall? What would our viewers and listeners have to see or hear from NVIDIA that would be, quote, the wall? Every time these guys have reported CapEx, that number has gone higher. If you see a revision lower or no revisions higher, that might be the first yellow flag. Chris Rolland, we're going to say goodbye to you. We're going to hit banks in a second, but I've got monitors that our viewers don't have. And I could see a monitor. Christina Parts and Elvis went from our set to some nook below us. She's wildly genuflecting.

16:00Gesticulating. Gesticulating. Genuflecting is when you do like a kneel for religious. I saw her doing that. So, Christina Parsonnevles, first comment on the China news, and then why were you waving your hands so aggressively? You guys could see me. I was trying to let the producers know that I have some comments. I'm turning red. In terms of what they are, they said that they should, they have not included the H20 in their guide because of geopolitical issues. But the CFO is saying we should ship$2 to$5 billion in H20 revenue in Q3. So she's actually giving a number. She also spoke more so about the Blackwell ramp, saying that the more specifically, well, let me switch to Rubin because that's the next iteration.

16:42Chips of the Rubin platform are currently in fab. So they're currently in fabrication. And for that, that's pushing towards the timeline. So those are the two things I have right now. And then Blackwell, she did talk about ramps, but I'm missing that quote right in front of me. Don't worry about that. Let me ask you one more. We got to go to banks. Let me ask you one more very quick question. Can they manufacture all these chips? We're talking about all these. Chris Rollins is like$250 billion,$270 billion. It's like the price is right. Can they make all the chips to sell that much? Well, of course, if she's blatantly stating that they're going to sell$2 to$5 billion, they must know they have the capacity to build those chips.

17:19And it's not even about the chips. After that, it's the racks that are made at Foxconn. But Foxconn is saying that they're going to expect their supply to triple in terms of racks. So things are improving across the board for the supply game coming from NVIDIA. That's no doubt. That's something they've been saying for the past several months. Christina, appreciate that. Thank you very much. All right. Also, we're going to get more NVIDIA throughout the show. But it was a historic day for bank stocks because the S &P Financials ETF hitting an all-time high. It's now up 20 % over the last 52 weeks.

17:50Some notable gainers in the space. You got Morgan Stanley. You got Goldman Sachs hitting record highs. Citigroup, Bank of America hitting their highest levels in more than 15 years. So where exactly do bank stocks, Dan Nathan, go from here? Well, they appear to be going higher, Sully. And they're one of the groups that actually led off the bottom in April, right? And so, you know, when you think about the health of, let's say, corporates, you think about the health of consumers, I think that the stocks and the way they've acted kind of reflect the fact that we're probably doing better despite unemployment, the labor market weakening, that sort of thing.

18:21And we didn't hear anything from those major bank CEOs, especially the money. were suggesting the consumer is weakening. What we heard from, let's say, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley was that all they could see was a pickup in capital market activity. There was a lot of good trading. M &A was starting to come back. So this is a sector that's been acting very well. There's actually been no warning signs, at least from what I can tell, over the last three to four months. Citi is a name we've talked about, and everybody looks at J.P. Morgan. It's expensive on price-to-book, price-to-tangible book.

18:49Citi is still cheap. Jane Frazier's done a great job. I think you're going to be hearing more about the story, the turnaround at Citi. We have said this now for tens of dollars for many, many months. The Citi goes higher from here, and it should be trading up to about somewhere between$106 and$110. I like it. All right, Guy Dami, Danny, thank you very much. Coming up, it is not just NVIDIA. There is a lot of stuff happening right now. You've got earnings out of CrowdStrike, Snowflake, and more. We'll get the trade. We'll get the reaction. Also, a nuclear orgy? I'm not saying that. Danny Moses is saying that.

19:25And we're going to talk about uranium ahead of, I said uranium, ahead of a key conference next week. Change a couple letters. We're going to genuflect into the break. We're back right after this.

19:42All right. Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike tumbling. Despite reporting a top and bottom line beat, Steve Kovac listening in on the call. He's got maybe the reason why the stock is down 6.5%. Yeah, just piling on to the crummy month this stock has been having there. So let me just go over, like you said, Brian, EPS was a beat, 93 cents versus 83 cents. Revenue, barely a beat,$1.17 billion. Street was looking for$1.15. But look, all other metrics look pretty good, too. Annual recurring revenue, four-year guidance, and so on. We still see the stock sliding 6.5%, 7 % after hours. The only thing I see here that could be a drag, a slight miss on revenue guidance for the current quarter.

20:22CrowdStrike also announcing an acquisition today. It's Onum, O-N-U-M is the name of the company. It's a data management company for an undisclosed sum. We see shares here still off 6.5 % or so. I'll let you know if anything big happens on the call, Brian. There's a show on prior to ours, Brian, and they believe they call it the OT. You familiar with this show? Overtime. Yeah. Closing bell overtime. time. I was on with John Fort. Love John, by the way. We had a conversation about the crowd strike yesterday. And what we talked about was the valuation was ridiculous. And that's a very good chance if our crack staff in EC can go back to August of last year when the stock traded down to 224, it was going to trade down to an uptrend line that's been in place since that point.

21:04This level-ish gets you right to that trend line, that uptrend line. So tomorrow, if you've been waiting. This is a pretty interesting level to dip your toe into CrowdStrike, I believe. Interesting level to dip your toe into CrowdStrike. If I asked you what the percent of revenue, I'm going to, it's rhetorical. Oh, thank God. So what the percent of revenue that the U.S. government gives to CrowdStrike is 68 percent. Would you be shocked at that? Yeah. I was shocked at that. That's high. And Palantir. I was going to say that's Palantir. Is 55. It's higher than Palantir. Yeah. Yeah. So when you look at it, I thought it was a misprint.

21:40When you look at it, it really starts to make you think they have to really have great relationships with this government. And I'm sure that they do because they're still getting the large majority share of their revenue. I agree with Guy on the technicals. It brings it down to that ascending trend line. If you're going to take a dip in it, buy 20 percent of whatever position that you want and take a look. Well, stocks in a downward trend. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, it's been going down, but there's an uptrend line that's in place. We need to stretch out that chart then. I asked the crack staff to do that back from August of last year.

22:15August 4th, I believe. I want to see said upward trend line of which you refer because the stock. Do you think that I'm lying to you? No, I don't think you're lying. Do you think I'm making this up? Now I can see the trend line. There you go. See it now? I can't. Yes, the dress is blue and black. Are you going to genuflect now? Another name that is on the move right now is Snowflake. Snowflake going the other way. It is soaring on a top and bottom line of beat. It's up 13.5 % and operating margins coming in well above Wall Street expectations. Snowflake also giving some strong guidance. Anybody here with a hot take on Snowflake?

22:54This is one of those ones that was left out of this kind of AI trade. When you think about what they do, it's not anything particularly sexy, right? And so, you know, for the company that doesn't break out generative AI, you want to see that sort of growth that they have. and certain platform groups or whatever that's kind of bolted on within there. And so, you know, that sort of raise, you know, it kind of goes the other way to the crowd strike. You're talking about a stock that's trading 100 times earnings. If it's not perfect, then you're going to see the stock trade off like this. This was obviously good quarter, good guidance.

23:22They beat on the metrics that really mattered to investors, and it doesn't matter that's trading at 150 times earnings. I mean, that's at least what the stock's telling you right here. If you're a stock that trades at this type of valuation, you better beat, you better guide up. And it looks like it was a good quarter, so they're getting rewarded for it. So probably low expectations there. and higher expectations. Go a little deeper into that, Danny. I love your idea because you're not a software expert, but you know trading, you know markets. Correct. Margins are the number one. So where does a name like this have to come in to be hot or not?