The chip maker's results are unlikely to be much of a catalyst for the stock as investors look forward to the GTC in March, one analyst says.

NVIDIA's earnings report on Wednesday should carry a "quite positive" tone, according to a BNP Paribas analyst. But that's no guarantee of a strong stock reaction.

Stellar earnings results from Nvidia (NVDA) have been met with shrugs - or worse - in recent quarters, and some analysts aren't sure that this next report will be any different.

One reason is that Nvidia already offered a compelling financial figure recently. The chip maker said late last year that it has visibility into $500 billion of revenue through this year, and BNP Paribas analyst David O'Connor said he expects Nvidia to save any particularly market-moving updates for its annual GTC in March.

Nvidia's stock has been relatively muted so far this year, up just 2%, and lagging the PHLX Semiconductor Sector SOX, which is up 16% in that period.

Meanwhile, Nvidia has been central to a slew of concerns recently rocking the artificial-intelligence trade. When it comes to Nvidia specifically, investors have questioned the durability of its dominance in the AI chip market, especially given recent market interest in custom-chip projects like Google's tensor processing units that are codeveloped with Broadcom.

HSBC analyst Frank Lee said that he expects demand for Nvidia's graphics processing units to remain strong, and for the chips to account for a bulk of AI capital expenditures from hyperscalers. Altogether, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Microsoft are planning to spend $650 billion this year on AI infrastructure.

Nvidia's results are a critical health check on AI spending, Andrew Rocco, a stock strategist at Zacks Investment Research, said in emailed comments. The numbers will also offer a hint into how its neocloud partners such as CoreWeave and Nebius are performing, he added.

Another critical issue is how Nvidia is dealing with sky-high prices for memory components. Investors will be listening for management commentary around its ability to sustain gross margins despite the increasing prices, BNP's O'Connor said.

Nvidia is expected to report adjusted earnings of $1.54 per share on revenue of $66.1 billion for the fiscal fourth quarter, according to the FactSet consensus. Data center-segment revenue for the January quarter is expected to come in at $60.7 billion. For the full fiscal year, analysts tracked by FactSet are looking for revenue of $213.8 billion.

Looking ahead, analysts are eyeing revenue of $72.9 billion for Nvidia's fiscal first quarter.