Nvidia (NVDA) Stock: What Wall Street Expects From Q1 Earnings Today

TLDR

• Nvidia reports Q1 fiscal 2026 earnings on May 20, with Wall Street expecting EPS of $1.76 on revenue of $78.75 billion.
• Data center revenue is projected at $72.85 billion, roughly double the $39.11 billion posted in Q1 last year.
• CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia’s China market share has dropped to zero as Beijing pushes domestic chip development.
• The next-gen Vera Rubin platform is on track for production shipments in the second half of 2025, with samples already sent to customers.
• Q2 guidance will be closely watched — Wall Street expects around $87 billion; anything below that could weigh on the stock.

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Nvidia is about to deliver one of the most watched earnings reports of the year. The company is expected to post $78.75 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $1.76 for Q1, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates. That compares to $44.06 billion in revenue and $0.96 EPS in the same quarter a year ago.

NVIDIA Corporation, NVDA

The stock closed at $220.61 on May 19, down slightly on the day, but is still up around 19% year to date. It touched an all-time high closing price of $235.74 on May 14.

Data center revenue is expected to carry the load again, with analysts projecting $72.85 billion from that segment alone. Of that, $60.53 billion is expected to come from compute, and $12.45 billion from networking. Gaming is forecast at $3.64 billion, down about 3%.

What to Watch Beyond the Headline Numbers

The Q2 outlook may matter more than Q1 results. Wall Street is sitting at around $87 billion for next quarter. If management guides below that number, even a strong Q1 beat may not be enough to hold the stock.

There’s also a change in how Nvidia will present its financials this quarter. Starting now, the company is including stock-based compensation in its non-GAAP figures, so comparisons to prior quarters will need to account for that shift.

The Vera Rubin platform is another focal point. Nvidia’s next-generation rack-scale system succeeds Blackwell and is positioned as a generational step up in performance-per-watt. CFO Colette Kress confirmed in the last earnings call that first samples had already shipped to customers, with full production expected in the second half of the year.

China: From 90% Market Share to Zero

The China question hangs over the report. CEO Jensen Huang recently said Nvidia has gone from roughly 90% market share in China to zero. The company’s Q1 guidance explicitly excluded any data center revenue from the country.

There’s been some movement on policy. In mid-January, the Trump administration eased export restrictions on Nvidia’s H200 chip, allowing case-by-case approvals with a 25% tariff. Huang told Bloomberg this week that “over time, the market will open.”

Whether Nvidia reflects any optimism about China in its Q2 guidance or stays cautious is one of the bigger unknowns heading into the call.

Competition is also building. Cerebras held its IPO last Thursday and sells a different AI processor it claims offers faster overall performance. AMD is preparing a rack-scale server system later this year. Amazon’s chip segment now runs at more than $20 billion annually, and Google unveiled new TPU 8i and TPU 8t chips at Google I/O on Tuesday.

At GTC in March, Huang projected $1 trillion in sales from Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips combined. Combined capital spending from Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta is now expected to hit around $725 billion in 2026, up from roughly $410 billion a year earlier.

Nvidia reports after the close on Wednesday, May 20.