Nvidia Reports Results… And Target Misses The Mark 11/19/25

0:02Live from the Nasdaq market side and the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is Fast out of the U.S. Saudi Investment Forum and the stocks most impacted by the news. Plus, Target misses the mark on earnings. Bitcoin treasury companies sink as the crypto continues the fall. And Stealthy Cat, the industrial giant, quietly becoming the best performing Dow stock of the year. How it's leveraging AI to boost its business. I'm Melissa Lee. Coming to you live from Studio B at the Nasdaq on the desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Karen Feinerman, Dan Nathan and Guy Adami. We start off with that big NVIDIA bounce after Our shares are now higher by just about four to a half percent.

0:50After the semi-giant beat earnings and revenue estimates raise its forecast, the conference call kicking off at the top of the hour. Our own Christina Parts Nevelis has got the latest. She's here on set. Christina. Two of the biggest numbers for this earnings beat and why you're seeing the stock actually swing quite dramatically has to do with the Q4 revenue guide, which came in higher not only than what the street was estimating, but higher than buy side numbers. So at$65 billion, the buy side for JP Morgan and sorry, Morgan Stanley Bank of America was$63 to$64 billion, so already higher there.

1:18And then gross margins. The company, Collette, CFO, did say that they were going to exit the year at 75 % mid-70s, and they were able to do that despite higher input costs. Like from memory, we're talking about this offline, and there were some concerns that gross margins would come down. So I think that is a huge, I guess, positive, and why we're seeing a positive reaction. Of course, Jensen Wong is going to speak to all of the strength, selling off the charts for quarters and quarters to go. We can't keep up with demand. But I think these numbers really justify perhaps that short-term move on the earnings call, though.

1:49We will expect to hear more about the$500 billion order backlog that they spoke about through 2026. He said it in October. It was very surprising that he gave that type of guide, you know, before earnings. And so far into the future, they don't normally do that. So that's going to be one. And then, of course, OAI financing is going to be another factor, too, as well as the sustainability, the general sustainability of demand. Yeah, I mean, the numbers were great. And the words, the terminology that Jensen has used on the call so far in guidance, it's virtuous AI cycle right off the charts. Everybody's computing everywhere.

2:24I mean, can't get any better than this guy. No, and we had JC on Monday. Let's say Wednesday, Monday. Jim Cramer. Yeah, Jim Cramer. And we asked him about margins. He thought margins would be OK, and he was right about that. Tim was just on the overtime and he talked about it. He did crush it. You talked about a muted response, and I think I would agree that this is somewhat a muted response. I'll say this. Yes, the margins are good. Good for them. But again, the magnitudes of the beaten percentage terms continue to get smaller and smaller, and they continue to be, in my opinion, rewarded the way they might have been a couple years ago.

2:57Now, this move, we'll see what happens in the after hours. I think it's a great quarter. We'll see how it sort of plays out in terms of the stock. Yeah, I'd probably broaden it out, like, to their customers. Like, should Meta, Microsoft, Google, some of these others, Should they be trading up off this? If you see margins improve sequentially, do they have more pricing power if they're sold off, if they're sold out of Blackwell, that sort of thing? So it's interesting because, you know, Meta, we saw the reaction to their spend, and obviously a lot of that is going to NVIDIA, so good on you. And we already heard, as Kay Parch just said, you know, like that GTC, you know, a few weeks ago.

3:31I mean, we already knew this. We knew it was going to be good. Listen, there's nothing to poo-poo here. They beat. They guide higher. The margins are better. You know, they're sold out of their main product. But I guess I'm more focused on their customers because, to me, some of those, Microsoft and Meta have barely seen an uptick since they reported a few weeks ago. And they're not seeing much of an uptick in the after-hour session on the back of this. I mean, you could say that for every dollar that NVIDIA makes, it's a dollar taken away from the hyperscale. It's reinforcing that notion that maybe that there is this massive spend with a questionable ROI at this point.

3:58Right, that's the part, the questionable ROI. But I agree. I don't think that the hyperscale, they are, they knew there was demand because they're demanding, right? And they knew how much capacity they could get or whether they get scaled back. I mean, Christina brings up the very important part, that$500 billion number is such a big number. And it's such, and it's for a year out, right? So that's a surprising amount of clarity for what could be, I don't know, maybe a difficult time. I do think what's changed from the last month is the demand is absolutely still there. But what is more expensive now is building the data centers, if for no other reason than because of the debt has gotten more expensive.

4:43So to the extent that, well, maybe money isn't limited in this space. Who knows? But if there's only so much money to go around and more of it is spent on interest, then somewhat less of it has to be spent on the rest of the AI build. So are you questioning the quality of that$500 billion guidance? One other thing I want to say about Jensen. Nobody manages the street for better than Jensen. Every single word you would want to come out of his mouth has come out of his mouth so far. It's like he used AI to say what is the absolute best thing that I can say. What can juice the stock higher? Virtuous cycle.

5:19Off the charts. It's textbook. But is that what you want him to say? I mean, I don't and I think we've talked about it because I remember on GTC Day, it was virtuous cycle was was the quote. But I don't know. I guess I feel like I'll just talk about the stock in a vacuum. Well, not relative to the market, but the stock by itself. What's going to happen here is you now have an analyst community that can upgrade the stock. That 500 billion plus for 26 was something that we heard. We liked it was nice. But we all know that the street was probably 30 percent or more lower than that. You're going to see follow through on upgrades.

5:54I also just don't think I know it sounds crazy to say that there's not a lot of momentum in NVIDIA stock, but there's more momentum in other parts of the market than an NVIDIA stock. I think the stock's going higher on this independent of the market. I realize we have some important stuff coming down the pike, including a Fed and some other things. But NVIDIA on its own, this was enough to take the stock higher. I'd like to join two of your comments. You talked about pricing power. Actually, it's quite strong. The average selling price, especially for the Rubin, The next generation is much higher, and that's helping them maintain margins.

6:23But then that goes to your point with hyperscalers, right? That gets more expensive for all of these hyperscalers that have to spend$4.8 million on 72 chips in a Rubin rack versus, you know,$3 million for Blackwell. That is a huge discrepancy when you're talking about buying millions and millions of, or I should say, many and many racks. The other thing, too, is the halo effect right now. We're seeing a positive on AMD Micron TSMC big contractor for these chips. So it is having somewhat of a positive effect on the market. And lastly, to your point about the 4 % swing, most people thought this stock wouldn't move that much given it's gone sideways.

7:00So isn't that quite impressive for a$4.5 trillion company? It takes a lot. I think given the – Karen talked about this the other night. I mean, given the setup into this earnings release, to me it makes sense. You know, we sold significantly off the all-time high, back and filled a little bit. So it does make sense, but I get what you're saying. I'll say this as well. Well, look at Facebook over the last three or four weeks. They're being penalized because of the spend. If more and more companies start to get penalized because of the spend, what are they going to start to do? They might say, you know what, maybe we shouldn't be spending.

7:30So that number you just mentioned, maybe it's not etched in stone. But does Marky Mark really care about Marky Mark? Marky Mark, who else? Is the funky bugs the hyperscalers? Do you remember Guy interviewed Marky Mark? I did. Yeah. He did. The guy's a big fan of Mark Wahlberg. He's a fan of Mark Wahlberg. And who wouldn't be? Having said that, you've got a case here where I don't think at times Facebook or Meta, whatever we're calling them these days, really cares. They're going to do what they have to do. They're going to spend for where they think their business should be tomorrow, and they're going to block that out.

8:06So I don't think they're going to stop spending just to goose the stock price. I think they believe they need to continue to spend, and I don't think they're going to stop spending. I agree with that. I think the last time they stopped spending wasn't because of the stock price so much, which was a lot of pressure on them and heels of Cambridge Analytic and all of that. It was because the promise of the metaverse turned out not to be there. Right. So I think they will continue to spend. It's been penalized. I mean, the stock hit 800 intraday. It's 590 now. So this is maybe, I don't know, 400 billion dollars.

8:36Value territory. I think it's value territory. Yeah. So I sold some puts yesterday, which the same is getting long. But one thing, though, I really we got to listen to the call and we got to listen to the questions. Right. So they're going to say what they want to say, but we'll see where they get really get pushback and how they respond to that. And do you want Jensen saying all these things? Yes, because every single time in the past, he's always done it. And he's been right. And he's been right. Let's think about this. The barbell of or bookends, let's say Meta just lost in market cap what they have committed to spend.

9:09in CapEx. More, more, more. A month and a half ago, Oracle actually gets this revenue, right, that is going to be realized over the next few years, and their stock realizes that in market cap terms immediately. AMD did the same thing. So when you think about this$500 billion backlog that Jensen spoke about, they just invested$100 billion in OpenAI. What do you think OpenAI is going to do with that$100 billion? Half of it, at least, is going to NVIDIA, back to them, buying Blackwell, buying It's$10 billion per gigawatt. So I think the$100 billion is an arbitrary number that they may never actually follow through.

9:44I get the point. They're throwing out these numbers. They've invested hundreds of billions of dollars in this ecosystem. But they have the free cash flow. The neoclides and stuff like that. But it's coming right back to them. Sure. Excuse me. Inmedia at this point is up by more than 5%. That's a gain of about$250 billion in market cap. Oracle, since we were talking about it, is up 3 % in the after hours. Makes sense. I mean, that's a relief rally. You know, Christina mentioned free cash flow. That number missed by five. The street was looking for$27 billion, came in at 22. I don't think anybody cares about that, given the other numbers we're talking about.

10:16But you mentioned it, so I'll just throw it out there. Christina, thank you. Keep us posted on the call. Christina Parts and Nebulas. Meantime, let's bring in NVIDIA Bull. Chris Rowland, Susquehanna's senior semiconductor analyst. He upgraded his NVIDIA price target last Thursday to$230 a share from 210. Chris, great to have you with us. What do you want to hear from the conference call? It seems like Jensen's saying all the right things so far. Yeah, I mean, the tone was incredibly upbeat. I expect more from Colette, who's speaking now, and Jensen soon to come. I think the biggest question, and you guys talked about it earlier, that$500 billion, what is that exactly?

10:54Could there potentially be upside to that$500 billion? We would love some more details. Upside as opposed to down. We are talking about the 500 billion in the context of potential downside. What you're talking about in terms of potential upside on that number. Yeah. Is there upside potentially to that number? If that is backlog, can they get extra components together, extra sales, et cetera, and exceed that 500 billion? Currently, we're only at$450 billion in our model after this report. So there's still a 10 percent margin there to that$500 in street models. So we do think there is still upside over the next two to call it three quarters in terms of beats and raises.

11:43Chris, speaking of margin, let's talk about gross margin. Let's talk about the numbers that, again, they hit. They got where they wanted. I saw your notes. You wanted to see mid 70s. You got there. Tell us where you think this number is going and how much is that really the delta in your valuation? Yeah. So there was some buy side skepticism that they were going to hit that mid 70s. They did hit that in the guide. There was actually some adverse kind of numbers and inputs and takes in there as well. So this was really healthy. I could see this going high 70s. I don't think we'd get into the 80s, though, at this point.

12:25Gross margin is not as big a story from this point forward as revenue. Karen, thanks for being on tonight. So the$500 billion, the upside that you are hopeful would come, Has that come from adjacents like networking and software? That all GP? Where does it come from? Yes. So the 500 billion number includes networking already. So that's compute, Blackwell, GPUs, but also all of the associated networking. That is a big number. That was above the street. not quite the 30 % that Tim was talking about, but perhaps 20 or 15%, we were still below that 500 number. But is that 500 number static? That seems to be a backlog number.

13:17If they could get increased component availability of things like memory, let's say, or front-ended TSM, could they potentially exceed that? And so these are the kind of details that we're waiting for on the call. Chris, before Christina left, she mentioned free cash flow. It came in at 22 and changed. The street was looking for a little over 27. Is that a thing or just sort of brush it aside? There are a lot of puts and takes here. They increased inventory because of this component dynamic that we're talking about, this memory shortage that we're seeing out there. So there's lots of puts and takes here.

13:53I don't think that's important for right now. Chris, we're seeing the stock at after-hours session highs pretty much. It's 6.2%. The CFO is addressing the life of a GPU. And Karen, you flagged this headline. Being extended, and NVIDIA says it had got$2 billion of revenue for older hopper chips. What's your thought on this sort of, I don't know, big question mark about depreciation? Yeah, so everybody's focused on useful life. And I think that the really big change should be a change to accelerated depreciation as opposed to a conversation about useful life, because these do have a useful life of perhaps 10 years.

14:36But all the value is really in the first two. So what does that how does that affect the conversation around the sector, Chris, then? What that means is that the profitability is being overstated currently overall, including the cloud GPU vendors. Okay. Chris, if you can, keep us posted on what's going on. We'd love to hear your take on things, especially as a Q &A gets underway. I don't know if you're in queue to ask a question, Chris, but what is your first question before we let you go? What would that question be? It would be the details around the$500 billion for sure. OK, Chris, we'll speak to you soon.

15:18Thank you. Chris Rowland, Susquehanna. What's your take? I think that's right. I mean, what's the how do you have that? I mean, listen, they clearly have that kind of clarity. The details around that 500 billion. I mean, that's a significant number that we're talking about. And I think the stock is that's why the stock is where it's trading right now. We'll see what happens on the call. And the other thing that hasn't really been discussed is China. And because we can't really you know, it's not the first thing you start talking about. But there are a couple of comments that are coming through on the tape where, again, the CFO is talking about sales that didn't happen in the third quarter because of China.

15:49Significant sales. And is that either a positive because that's pent up demand that we know is there and will find a way to work itself out? A lot of talk today about the sovereign kind of AI trade and where that's going and why I think that's a huge dynamic for NVIDIA and at least other parts of the world that we're now friendly with. Or does that sort of underscore the notion that we are being, or not we, American chipmakers are being kept out of the Chinese market and there may evolve an ecosystem without us, basically, in China? Yes. I guess that's sort of a worry for down the road a little bit.

16:26Because right now they have taken those numbers out. Yeah, they've sat on the model completely. So to Tim's point, anything we do get on that front is upside. But I don't know. It'll be the 500 billion is such an extraordinarily big number. I mean, why put it out there? Why go out on a limb and put it out there? I'm going to say what you normally say. Because it's more like 700. For sure. That's right. And that's why there's the upside potential. Yes. Yes. That's why I say, OK, he says it because he feels good about it. And that's why Chris wants more than 500 now. It's so funny. I mean, it's like if he's saying 500, it's really 650.

16:59Then he has to know it's bigger. You know what's interesting? So the stock about a month ago was at$180, right? And it went up to, what's the number, guy? 206, close. And then it came all the way back to$180. If this stock was trading at 206 with this guide and this result, I just don't think the stock would be doing anything. Now, what I think is more important about how the stock reacts is, like, how does the whole ecosystem react? We've been spending most of this year talking about this bubble, and then all of a sudden folks over the last couple months really started saying, oh, maybe there is a bubble.

17:28And they started trimming their holdings. And when you think about this, Tim just said this on the OT. Didn't you say this about, like, 30 minutes ago? A lot of smart things are said on the OT. All right. So there I was. So what did you say? Half the Mag 7 is under. Three of them are unchanged in the year. Apple underperforms it. There's just a different sentiment here. And so I guess my point is, it's like I'm more interested, again, as I started this conversation. I want to see how all these other folks are trading in and around this. And NVIDIA is not nearly as important to me as I think about the market or the NASDAQ.

17:58So the Qs are up a percent on the back of NVIDIA's big gain. But, I mean, to see the hyperscalers pretty much, at last check at least, not move too much. Right. Does that tell you? I don't think they should. I do think that AMD should, right? If there's that much demand for compute, who else is going to benefit from that? We know there's the demand because we know the cloud numbers have been the growth. But it's not that easy because, you know, what Jensen keeps saying is that we have this software platform. We get people hooked on. Once they had Hopper, then they're going to have Blackwell. Then they're going to have Rubin.

18:28They're going to use Hopper for inference, and it's going to continue to go that way. And people keep stretching out the depreciation. It sounds like a great deal. So AMD really doesn't have that. When you think about how they're going to be able to compete on many levels, it's going to be on price. The most important thing to me over the last few weeks is that the market is discerning between hyperscalers. Just because they're spending doesn't mean they're in it. In terms of the Q's up a little over 1%, simple math, we can all do this. If it's 9 % and it's up 6.5%, there's 70 bps of the 1 % that it's up.

18:58So it's mostly NVIDIA. Math. Thank you. Math. That's the math that you learned. That's going to be any math. The Georgetown taught you well. A little bit. We will, of course, keep you posted on everything that comes out of the NVIDIA conference call. We're 19 minutes in on that call. So we're up 6 % on the stock. Meantime, let's get to the broader markets here. Eking out gains to end the day. The Dow and the S &P both snapping. Four-day losing streaks. The Nasdaq rose 6 tenths of a percent. The gains coming even as minutes from the last Fed meeting cast further doubt on the possibility of a recut in December.

19:27Quote, many officials saying no more are needed, at least this year. Markets now pricing in a one in three chance. The central bank will move next month per CME FedWatch. Of course, the last meeting took place amid a dearth of economic data due to the government shutdown. Well, we will get the long-delayed September jobs report tomorrow. The BLS saying today the October report will not be released. So, that leaves us in still the data purgatory that we have been in. For a while. Well, and you probably got to get until January, February of next year to sort of even things out and figure out where everything stands.

19:59But, you know, a couple of things still to me are first and foremost, the move in Bitcoin, I think we need to talk about. That's clearly a risk off thing. It can't get out of its own way. Number one. Number two, we talked about this, Jim, the other night. Dollar yen continues to move higher. One fifty seven now at the same time their yields are going higher. Something's going to break there. And the other thing, yields here are stubbornly around this four eleven, four twelve level. And I think they're headed higher. Those things are not manifesting themselves in the market yet. But the fact that the VIX is, and again, now north of 22-ish, and Karen talked about it the other day, sort of no man's land, on what have been rather benign days historically, I think is a little concerning.

20:36By the way, we also won't get the November jobs report until after the Fed meeting in December. So they will be meeting amid the same dearth of information that we are in right now. Yeah. And we went into this NVIDIA number with at least just some more comments out of the Fed in these Fed minutes that these these folks are not really aligned. And we know where the Fed's going to maybe be in May. But until then, not sure. Yeah. So I think if they don't cut, it's just to cut delayed, not denied. Right. And we that window gets closer and closer. I know the mark will be a little disappointed, but I don't know in the end how much it matters.

21:12Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, remember the long and variable lags of, you know what I mean? And so when you think about it, OK, maybe those rate cuts that we got at the end of 24, maybe they helped a little bit. We did see a reacceleration in Q2 and Q3 of this year in GDP. Obviously, the Q1 was kind of messed up a little bit into the tariffs. But again, the market really hasn't had a problem one way or another with these rates being pushed out. I think what's going on, the volatility that we've seen, the grind in the markets over the last few weeks or so, has really been about this AI trade, not really about data or what the Fed's going to do.

21:46Coming up, crypto crushed once again. Bitcoin dropping back towards$90 ,000. And the crypto treasury companies are faring even worse. What's in store for the space heading into next year? Next. Plus, you can't spell Caterpillar without AI. Is that right? Wait a second. We're still there. They're not next to each other. Oh, there you go. There they are. They're both in there. There they are. Poly-Industrial Heavyweight is reshaping its business amid the tech surge. And why hyperscalers are taking notice. Do not go anywhere fast when he's back in June.

22:19So good. Welcome back to Fast Money. Crypto treasury company is taking a sharp leg lower today. Strategy dropping nearly 10%, hitting its lowest level in over a year. Mara Holdings, Riot, even Coinbase coming down with it. That is Bitcoin prices dip back below 90 ,000. The crypto hitting a new seven-month low. Dan, you're remarking about the treasury companies. Yeah, I mean, one thing I just mentioned is, like, these became meme stocks, right? And I think that's why, just like they overshot to the upside, they have the potential and they will likely overshoot to the downside. And, you know, a friend of the show, Tom Lee of Funstrat, he joined.

22:52Let's just pull up Bitminer. It's B-M-N-R. And I think it's amazing for this company. They get a talent like Tom to join that company. But look what it did on June 30th. That was the day that it converted. No, that he joined. It went from five. And then a week later, it's 160. And now here it is at 29. And it's probably going lower. So the question is, is because somebody like this joins your company to do this strategy, does the stock deserve to have now an$8 billion market cap? Tim, you can do the math. What was it? I mean, it's facts. When the stock was 160. What? So my point is that they became memes.