MW Super Micro's stock tanks and Nvidia could be the reason why

By Emily Bary and Therese Poletti

Super Micro warns of much lower-than-expected revenue and earnings for its fiscal third quarter

Super Micro Computer Inc. saw its stock tumble nearly 17% in after-hours trading Tuesday, after pre-announcing a big March-quarter shortfall - and the transition to new Nvidia Corp. chips could be the reason why.

Super Micro $(SMCI)$ blamed "delayed customer platform decisions" as it warned that results for its latest quarter will be much lower than expected. It also cited much lower-than-anticipated earnings per share, due to higher inventory reserves, resulting from older-generation products.

The San Jose-based server maker said it now expects $4.5 billion to $4.6 billion in revenue for the March quarter, below the $5.0 billion to $6.0 billion that it previously forecast. Additionally, Super Micro expects 29 cents to 31 cents in adjusted earnings per share for the period, below the 42 cents to 62 cents that it was originally targeting.

"The GAAP and non-GAAP gross margin for Q3 was 220 basis points lower than Q2 primarily due to higher inventory reserves resulting from older-generation products and expedite costs to enable time-to-market for new products," the company said in a statement.

That is likely a reference to customers transitioning to the new Blackwell product family from Nvidia Corp. $(NVDA)$, its latest and higher-performing platform for AI computing. Nvidia has said it has sold all its available inventory of the Blackwell family, which debuted earlier this year.

Super Micro may be having to take an inventory write-down to account for older Nvidia GPUs, such as its Hopper family, or some other products that do not run with Blackwell, such as older forms of memory. Blackwell runs with high-bandwidth memory chips.

Super Micro said it will report its fiscal third-quarter results on Tuesday, May 6, after the market closes. Officials at Super Micro and Nvidia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This is a developing story.

-Emily Bary -Therese Poletti

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April 29, 2025 17:23 ET (21:23 GMT)

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