TLDR
- Nvidia’s Q4 fiscal 2026 results arrive Wednesday after market close, with Wall Street projecting $61B in data center sales—a 70% year-over-year surge.
- Analysts forecast adjusted EPS of $1.53, representing a jump from $0.89 in the prior-year quarter.
- Gross margin takes center stage—consensus targets ~75%, with any decline potentially indicating eroding pricing strength.
- Competitive pressures mount as Meta inks a substantial AMD GPU agreement and major cloud providers build proprietary AI silicon.
- Since October, Nvidia shares have climbed merely 3.4%, lagging AMD’s 32% rally over the identical timeframe.
Nvidia will unveil its fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 financial results following Wednesday’s market close on February 25.
Investors are paying close attention. Wall Street analysts surveyed by FactSet anticipate $61 billion in data center sales for the quarter—representing a 70% year-over-year acceleration.
For context, Nvidia generated merely $3.6 billion in data center revenue during Q4 2023, coinciding with ChatGPT’s emergence. The expansion trajectory since has been extraordinary.
Adjusted earnings per share projections stand at $1.53, climbing from $0.89 in the comparable year-ago period—marking a 72% gain.
Yet the metric analysts emphasize most isn’t top-line growth or earnings. It’s gross margin.
Gross Margin Takes Center Stage
Wall Street consensus places Nvidia’s gross margin near 75% for the quarter, climbing from 73% twelve months earlier. Under GAAP accounting, the estimate sits at 74.8%.
This metric carries weight because it reveals whether Nvidia maintains premium pricing leverage for its graphics processing units.
Two factors have preserved that pricing authority: the exceptional performance delivered by Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell GPU architectures, and persistent demand that exceeds available supply.
Should Nvidia project fiscal 2027 gross margins in the 74–75% range or above, market participants would interpret that favorably. It would indicate customers remain willing to pay premium rates for forthcoming offerings like Blackwell Ultra and the Vera Rubin GPU platform.
Conversely, should gross margin guidance fall into the low 70s or beneath, that narrative changes—signaling competitive forces may be gaining traction.
Rivals Gaining Ground
The competitive environment has evolved considerably in recent months.
Tuesday brought news that Meta Platforms finalized a significant agreement with AMD to deploy its GPUs across select data centers. This marks AMD’s second major contract recently—OpenAI reached a comparable arrangement last October.
In both instances, AMD provided warrants enabling purchase of approximately 10% equity stakes at one cent per share, contingent on performance benchmarks. While Nvidia maintains relationships with both Meta and OpenAI, it hasn’t extended similar equity incentives.
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are each engineering proprietary AI processors for customer deployment. Multiple AI chip startups are likewise vying for market share.
AMD’s data center revenue still represents less than one-tenth of Nvidia’s scale and demonstrated slower growth when AMD disclosed its Q4 performance earlier this month.
Despite substantial AI infrastructure spending forecasts for 2026, Nvidia shares have essentially stagnated since October—advancing just 3.4% versus AMD’s 32% appreciation across the same window.
Nvidia concluded Tuesday’s trading at $192.85, posting a 0.7% daily gain.
CEO Jensen Huang will participate in an analyst conference call at 5 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday after the earnings announcement.
