What happened
Shares of Nvidia (NVDA -1.99%), the semiconductor giant, climbed higher in Monday trading -- up 3.7% as of 11:30 a.m. ET -- as investors began looking forward to the potential of a positive earnings surprise when Nvidia reports Wednesday evening.
Analysts predict that Q4 earnings, when they come out, will see Nvidia reap the rewards of a 48% year-over-year increase in sales and a 58% increase in profits, and a positive earnings report from archrival AMD earlier this month is reinforcing that view.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Adding to the excitement, this morning, Nvidia announced that its upcoming GTC (Graphics Technology Conference) 2022 in March will feature "a news-filled keynote by its founder and CEO Jensen Huang."
Greg Estes, vice president of developer programs at Nvidia, told investors: "There's a mother lode of content" that will be unveiled at GTC 2022, including news on "accelerated computing, deep learning, data science, digital twins, networking, quantum computing and computing in the data center, cloud and edge."
Now what
One thing investors will be particularly looking forward to is news of the company's long-awaited RTX 3090 Ti graphics chip, which the company discussed at last month's 2022 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Analysts present at the conference reported that the new chip is supposed to be "roughly 11% faster than its non-Ti RTX 3090 variant." Nvidia promised more details on the chip in February but hasn't yet delivered on that promise. In a note this morning, TheVerge.com characterized the new chip as "still missing" and complained that Nvidia "refuses to say what's going on," wondering whether "BIOS and hardware issues have...led to delays."
When earnings come out Wednesday, you can expect analysts to pepper Nvidia with questions about the new chip in the postearnings conference call. How Nvidia stock responds to the earnings news might depend to some extent on how well the company fields those questions -- or tells analysts they'll need to wait until March for their answers.
