By Adam Clark

Nvidia has delivered knockout earnings again but the chip maker's stock wasn't budging much early Thursday.

Nvidia shares were up 0.7% in premarket trading following its fiscal first-quarter report after the market close on Wednesday. The stock has risen 19% over the past three months.

It's not that there was anything wrong with the numbers. Nvidia's April-quarter sales of $81.6 billion were up 85% from the same period a year earlier, and ahead of the $78.9 billion forecast by analysts. It also expects growth to accelerate to 95% in its fiscal second quarter.

But with a market valuation above $5 trillion and a healthy run up already in recent weeks, investors seem disinclined to chase Nvidia stock higher immediately.

"Time and time again, Nvidia obliterates expectations and consensus; it delivered exactly on what people wanted, especially regarding Data Centers. But, the market doesn't always act as you would expect," said David Wagner, head of Equity and portfolio Manager at Aptus Capital Advisors. "Investors are likely to question whether what is already priced into the market is sustainable."

The big issue facing Nvidia is whether the lead it built up in artificial-intelligence hardware via its specialty of graphics-processing units (GPUs) will last as the market shifts from training AI models on GPUs to running them on a much wider variety of hardware, including central-processing units (CPUs) and custom chips.

During the first-quarter earnings call, CEO Jensen Huang said that the company's CPUs would bring in $20 billion this year, possibly making it the biggest server CPU seller in the world.

"We believe management's pivot towards non-CSP [cloud service provider] customer mix and server CPU momentum will increasingly be a key focus for the market," wrote HSBC analyst Frank Lee in a research note.

Lee has a Buy rating and $325 target price on the stock.

Nvidia was a recent Barron's stock pick.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 21, 2026 06:24 ET (10:24 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.