Nvidia Earnings Brush Off AI Bubble Fears — For Now

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1:48Show! Welcome to Prof G Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is November 20th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The major indices all climbed for the first time this week ahead of NVIDIA's earnings. Meanwhile, the dollar rose after the BLS said it will not release jobs data for October. Traders seem to think that announcement increases the odds the Fed will cut rates in December. And finally, Bitcoin dropped below$90 ,000 once again. OK, what else is happening? The world's most valuable company has defied expectations yet again. In a highly anticipated report that kept the markets on edge all week, Nvidia delivered a record$57 billion in third quarter revenue.

2:33Data center sales also hit a record up 66 % year over year, and the company provided stronger than expected guidance for the fourth quarter. Revenue was now projected to hit$65 billion this quarter. In the earnings report, Jensen Huang put it simply. He said, quote, Blackwell sales are off the charts and cloud GPUs are sold out. The stock rose as much as 6 % in after hours trading. Okay, joining us to break down these earnings and what it means for the AI economy. We are speaking with Gil Luria, head of technology research at DA Davidson. Gil, great to see you again. Happy NVIDIA Day. Happy NVIDIA Day to you too.

3:16It's the Super Bowl of the quarter. Absolutely. so uh massive earnings um nvidia beat expectations revenue up to 57 billion dollars it's up 62 percent from last year this has been kind of a precarious week for ai we've seen tech stocks sliding we've seen a lot of concerns and then nvidia just comes out of the gates with this crazy quarter um what does this mean for for the ai trade Well, tomorrow, all the AI stocks will be out. But we still have to keep the same level-headed approach that we've had before, which is there's real winners. There's companies that are engaged in real economically valuable activity.

4:02And then there's the companies that are engaged in some other unhealthy behavior. They're going to benefit tomorrow, but that doesn't mean the problems are solved. So from NVIDIA's perspective, the fact that they have customers that are borrowing a lot to buy chips is great. And that's why NVIDIA is doing so well is because they have real customers, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Elon, that are buying chips mostly based on their cash on hand and cash flow. But they also have all these customers borrowing money to buy chips. So for NVIDIA, that's great. For those companies borrowing money, for the financial institutions that are lending them money, this isn't good news.

4:43This just means that that's contributing to NVIDIA's grow. So we have to be careful. Tomorrow, we should buy the stocks that are building actual businesses around AI, and we probably shouldn't buy the ones that are just borrowing money to perpetuate. When you look at the earnings that we saw, I mean, there were so many positive signals. Is there anything in particular that investors are most excited about? If you were worried about the bubble, as an example, and then you see these earnings and you decide, no, I'm not worried anymore. What are you citing as your evidence? Mostly the fact that the Jensen Wang and Collette, the CFO, are willing to go out further on guidance.

5:28This is a company that famously only guides one quarter at a time. And we've gotten used to that in spite of the fact that we know that they have a book of business well past next quarter. But they've been pretty consistent with doing that up until a couple of weeks ago and then again today, when they talked about$500 billion of Blackwell and Rubin chips that they intend to sell between this year and next year. That gives us visibility five quarters out. That's the first time we've had that since the beginning of the AI era. And that's what really should make investors feel more comfortable, that NVIDIA already has all these orders so far out that we're good for next year.

6:12What happens after that is it really depends on how good the models get and how quickly we adopt them. But in terms of the data center build-out as we speak right now, we're going through the end of 2026. That's the most important thing. It's better than just this quarter, next quarter being good. It tells us that the build-out is continuing. You said something interesting there that, you know, this is a great quarter. These are great earnings. We're going to see AI stocks on the up tomorrow and throughout the day. but it doesn't necessarily put the AI bubble conversation to bed. That, to me, is the big question mark in the markets right now.

6:52Could you say more about why exactly it doesn't put that conversation to bed? Why isn't it the case that we should all be long AI now? We should be long parts of AI because the models are very performant. They're adding more and more value to our lives every day, to our personal lives as consumers. to our work life as employees. That's the good part. We should continue to invest in that. But we've talked in the past about the round tripping, the closed party transactions, the circular relationships that NVIDIA has with a customer like CoreWeave, where they invest a dollar. CoreWeave turns around and borrows$9 and then it has$10.

7:33It uses eight of those to buy NVIDIA GPUs. That's great for NVIDIA. They invested a dollar and sold$8 of GPUs. but then CoreWeave is stuck paying a dollar a year of interest and they only make 50 cents of profit. So that increase in leverage in financial debt is what we're looking at. And we've probably crossed the$100 billion mark of loans being made to build data centers at mostly high interest expense. That's what's going to come to bite us. If we keep down that path, that's where bubbles burst. when we have hundreds of billions of dollars of debt and all of a sudden we'll get to a point where we have all the compute we need, which we will get to, and then the price of the compute declines.

8:22All these data centers can't pay the interest expense. Not only will they go bankrupt, all that debt will default. And that'll drag everybody down with it. That's what we're trying to avoid. We're not at a bubble, but we're inflating a bubble. And if we don't stop now, And I think the market maybe started being a little more rational the last couple of weeks. What I'm afraid is the exuberance comes back tomorrow, and we lend another half a trillion dollars into this ecosystem, which, again, at some point down the road, two, three years down the road, will come back to bite us. Yeah, it's a really interesting point.

8:59And just to use CoreWeave as the example, I mean, if we're worried that CoreWeave is borrowing and spending more than it can actually afford, I mean, we're seeing that played out in these earnings. I mean, the reason NVIDIA is making so much money is because, yeah, CoreWeave is borrowing and spending more than it can afford, and it's landing on NVIDIA's income statement. So just to play that out further, it seems as though you believe, and I would agree with you, that this doesn't put the conversation to bed. if we continue to see this level of borrowing from a handful of companies into the future, it could end in not a great situation, certainly for them.

9:42But then also, perhaps for NVIDIA, because if CoreWeave can't keep spending and CoreWeave can't keep borrowing for whatever reason, then that's going to hurt NVIDIA's earnings too. Is that something that you would also flag as a concern? It's something to be aware of. The rules of gravity haven't changed. Semiconductors are a cyclical industry. There's a lot of demand. It goes up. It peaks at some point and it rolls over until you have the next wave of demand. This is no different. All we've learned is that the peak of the cycle is probably more than a year out. But what happens with these cycles is it's one thing when there's natural organic demand that drives the cycle.

10:27When you start levering that up, you make the eventual decline worse. So instead of just having a gradual ascent and then somewhat of a decline, we're exaggerating the ascent, which will exaggerate the decline. Now, the reason we're not as worried about NVIDIA, even with that timeframe in mind, is that its current valuation reflects a cyclical nature. So if NVIDIA is trading at 40 or 50 times earnings as it has previously, then we'd say, you know, it's trading like this is secular growth and there's never going to be a cycle. Even with the aftermarket price, it's trading at probably 28 times next year's earnings.

11:08That's where it has traded in the past in previous cycles. It's actually more in the middle of the range of their multiple range, which tells us investors have implicitly acknowledged that NVIDIA is in a cycle. So we're exaggerating the cycle, but the valuation for NVIDIA reflects that it is still a cycle, which is why from the NVIDIA investment specifically, we're less concerned. The valuation reflects the fact that there will be a reckoning in two or three years. Yeah. So the concerning companies, just if we could rattle them off, CoreWeave sounds like is one of them. Oracle, I would assume, is one.

11:48What am I missing? Blue Owl is building the same special purpose vehicles for Meta. And, you know, Meta will get the compute they need. And when they're done getting the compute they need, they'll leave those shareholders and debt holders in the lurch. And other companies in the AI trade that are marginal companies, like Oklo or some of these quantum stocks that have gotten bitten up on no to very little revenue or little to very little revenue. So those are the places where I would, again, I would caution that we don't need to invest in those. Microsoft and NVIDIA will do well in a wide range of scenarios.

12:27So will Amazon, so will Google. There's a lot of infrastructure software companies that will ramp up with the demand for AI. We talk about Snowflake and Datadog. There's plenty of places to invest that are not companies that are borrowing 90 to 100 % of their capital to build what is still a speculative asset and are not generating enough profits to pay the interest expense that they owe. All right. Gil Luria, Head of Technology Research at DA Davidson. Gil, always appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Rob. After the break, Meta wins its antitrust case. If you're enjoying the show, give Prof G Markets a follow.

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16:16We're back with Profit New Markets. Big Tech just won yet another major antitrust battle. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that Meta's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp did not create an illegal monopoly in social media. As a reminder, the FTC sued Meta five years ago, accusing the company of anti-competitive behavior. In this week's ruling, the judge explained that the social media market has continued to expand since those acquisitions and cited its competitors like YouTube and TikTok. Okay, for the latest on this ruling, we are speaking with Jonathan Cantor, former Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the U.S.

16:57Department of Justice. Jonathan, great to see you again. Always a pleasure. So we want to get your reactions to this antitrust decision on Meta. Meta is not an illegal monopoly. That is according to the judge, James Bosberg. Give us just like a summary of the case here before we dive into the details. What was the FTC's argument? What was Meta's argument? And where did the judge end up landing? Yeah. So the FTC, the case when it was initially filed in the first Trump administration was a bit broader. It involved the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp and documents that Facebook created essentially saying that they were buying them to eliminate potential competitive threats.

17:44And so the evidence here was pretty devastating for Facebook at the time. There were also a bunch of things known as API restrictions, essentially allegations that Facebook was making it difficult for Vine and other smaller players to compete. And all of this kind of goes back over 10 years, like 2012, 2014. So in 2020, the FTC files a case essentially saying that Facebook broke the law through the acquisitions in addition to those API restrictions. The court cut back the case, said that the API restrictions claim was no longer valid. And so really, by the time it got to trial, it was about whether Facebook broke the antitrust laws, entrenched its monopoly power by acquiring these nascent threats at the time in Instagram and WhatsApp.

18:37up. Facebook said, wait, we don't have a monopoly, TikTok and YouTube. And so the court essentially said, OK, I'm going to hear that evidence, even though TikTok and YouTube didn't exist in there, or at least TikTok didn't exist in 2012. And YouTube was a very different company back then. And ultimately, what happened here is the court listened to the evidence and said, well, well, I have to look at the world as it exists now, not as it existed when the anti-competitive conduct took place, or for that matter, when the case was filed. And today, looking at the evidence, I think TikTok and YouTube are competitors.

19:17Therefore, Facebook doesn't have a monopoly. Therefore, they didn't violate the antitrust laws. So it's so interesting because it sounds like what you're saying is similar to what we saw with the Google case, where there's this recognition of, yeah, you were a monopolistic entity, at one point, but now things look a little bit different and it's harder to say that. I mean, as you say, the evidence was devastating. I remember reading those texts from Zuckerberg to employees basically saying outright, yeah, we need to buy up the competition, otherwise they're going to outcompete us. So, I mean, does this basically mean that you can be monopolistic in the past so long as you're not monopolistic in the present?

20:00Like, how does that make sense? Well, that's one way to read it, but it doesn't make sense. So in comparing it to the Google case, the first thing I'd say is there is a big difference, which is that at least in the search case, the DOJ won, right? The court found that Google had an illegal monopoly and that it had a monopoly power and it violated the law. The court declined to go big on remedies because it said that AI was disrupting the market and wanted to wait and see what happened. Right. That's different than saying Facebook never violated the law in the first place or meta as we as the artist formerly known as Facebook is now called.

20:38So there is a significant difference there. But it also I mean, it's a head scratcher, right, because this case was filed five years ago and the court waited five years to reach a decision and then said, oh, well, maybe five years ago it was illegal, but now it's not. And I think there are a number of lessons here. First of all, the FTC should have blocked both of these deals in 2012 and 2014, respectively. All the devastating evidence was there for the FTC when they reviewed those transactions. Instead, and this was in the Obama administration, they waved those deals through. And one of the lessons is, okay, we need to block deals in real time.

21:14And I think that's an important lesson to learn now when we see all these circular investments in AI. Waiting down the line and trying to deal with it, you know, 10 or 15 years later is probably not the smartest move. The second is we need to push these cases to go to trial faster. And so at DOJ, when we filed our ad tech case, we were in court in the rocket docket. And by the time we got, you know, it was under two years by the time we got to trial. And so it was a much faster, more than half, in less than half the time, or more than half the time. So, you know, it was under two years, whereas it took five years for the Facebook and Google search cases.

21:56So these cases need to move faster. And I think courts need to give us justice faster in these cases. Yeah. Just going back to the decision itself. So he says it isn't illegal. They didn't do anything illegal because TikTok's here. I still don't fully understand that because it doesn't seem to make sense to say you never did anything illegal because of what's happening in the present. Am I getting that right? Is that? No, I agree with you. It doesn't make sense. The court is saying that, OK, for since 2012, you have illegally monopolized the market. But because 10 plus years later, somebody else came along that happens to be owned by China.

22:38We're not you're going to say you're not a monopoly. Yeah. Monopolis. And you're not going to be held accountable for what you did wrong back then. I think that's an inaccurate and correct reading of the law. The FTC could try to appeal that, but it also defies common sense. It also defies common sense to suggest that TikTok is the answer. One, notwithstanding the act of Congress, it's still run by the Chinese government. And so the alternative for friends and families is going to a platform that essentially is spying on you. uh and and two like it's just if you actually use the products facebook's different right you interact with your family and friends in a more personal way on facebook yeah whereas you consume video and you're entertained by celebrities and sometimes family and friends on tiktok and so while those differences um to a boomer might seem insignificant i think to people who actually use the product the differences are quite significant just as an observer of what is happening here We've seen two separate cases in the same year against big tech where there was overwhelming evidence that illustrated in great detail how these companies are running monopolies.

23:51And in both cases, the judge looked at it, seemed to recognize all of the illegal behavior, but then said in so many words, it's not really a big deal. Or we're not going to deal with that right now because, you know, it's different now than it was before. As an observer, it appears that these judges have maybe compromised in some way. Maybe it's that they're corrupt or maybe big tech has an influence that is distorting their judgment. I'm not making those claims. I'm just saying I'm watching what's happening. And as a consumer of the news, that's kind of what it looks like. What would be your reaction to that?

24:33Yes. So I both Judge Boesberg and Judge Mehta are decent people. They're well-intentioned judges. They're not corrupt. They're doing what they believe is right, even if what they said is wrong. So I think both can be true at the same time. And I want to be very clear about that. They are they are noble jurists who are trying to do the right thing. and they've, you know, I think they both fucked it up, but they are good, well-intentioned judges and it's not a function of corruption. It's a function of a process that has been corrupted. And the process is that there's this, you know, massive deference to companies and markets in ways that average individuals don't have.

25:17You don't see criminals on the street or getting the same kind of deference as companies are white-collar criminals. And I think that's a big problem in our system. And it's broken. And unless there's accountability, we're never going to see the kind of compliance with the antitrust laws or any other law for that matter. And so I think it is up to courts to stiffen up their spine a little bit and hold these companies accountable, especially when they've clearly broken the law. Again, the Google case is a little different. There are two of them. There's the search case where court found they broke the law, but said, hey, I'm not going to do much about it because of AI.

25:57And then there's this case that said, I'm going to ignore what I saw for 12 years and then just rely on the presence of TikTok today. I think we need to do better. I think courts need to do better. And, you know, but I'm cautiously optimistic. The state of the law today is better than it was 10 years ago, five years ago. And I think the agencies need to keep bringing these cases. the thing they should learn from this is don't wait 10, 15 years to bring the case. Google search behavior could have been addressed in 2012. The Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions could have been addressed in 2012 and 2014.

26:35The acquisition of DoubleClick by Google could have been addressed in 2007, 2008. Live Nation Ticketmaster could have been addressed over 10 years ago. A lot of the problems that we're trying to clean up now in antitrust were addressable back then. We have now the present right before us. We're seeing these massive MAG-7 companies with incredible interlocks and circular investments creating the same kind of trust that gave rights to the antitrust laws over 100 years ago. There's an opportunity to intervene now while it's meaningful to do so. Do you think that the FTC or the DOJ will intervene?

27:12We will see. I think there, I'm hopeful somebody along the way, whether it's the federal feds or the states will do so. But I think this administration seems to be very enamored of the big tech companies. They seem to be selling the naming rights of the White House to big tech companies. And I don't know that they have the will to do it. Yeah. The judge said, you know, maybe there was monopolistic behavior in the past, but now it's not a monopoly because of TikTok and that Meta does not have a monopoly on social media. Just as an expert in the field, do you think that Meta has a monopoly in America right now?