(Bloomberg) -- Two chipmakers reporting earnings in the coming days will give investors insight into how demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure is holding up a few weeks ahead of Nvidia Corp.’s results.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is set to report results Tuesday after market close while Arm Holdings Plc will give its earnings figures postmarket on Wednesday. Though chipmaking stocks have taken hit this year — the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is down 14% — underlying results may show a stronger foundation for the AI trade than recent stock performance indicates. AMD shares slipped as much as 3.1% Tuesday, while Arm fell more than 3% before paring most of those losses.
Part of that is because the engine for AI infrastructure — spending from the biggest technology companies racing to build to utilize AI — hasn’t slowed down. Companies including Meta Platforms Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have pledged that they’ll either keep up previously announced spending or plow even more into AI as the look to assuage investor concerns that an uncertain macroeconomic backdrop would see them trimming capital expenditures instead.
Meanwhile, Palantir Technologies Inc. boosted its 2025 revenue outlook, saying demand for its AI software was a “ravenous whirlwind.” Its shares, which had soared more than 67% over the last month alone, slumped as much as 15% intraday Tuesday as analysts continued to question its lofty valuation.
“Nobody’s stopping their CapEx,” Paul Marino, chief revenue officer at Themes ETFs, said of recent earnings reports from big tech companies. “I sound like a broken record when I say all this stuff, but not only are they not stopping it, they’re increasing it.”
Wall Street analysts covering AMD and Arm see both growing revenue in the quarter they’re reporting — AMD is expected to report $7.1 billion in revenue, a 30% increase, while Arm is expected to report $1.23 billion in revenue, up 33% in the same period.
“You would have to think that Nvidia is gonna do extraordinarily well if those other two have any kind of decent earnings,” Marino said.
Nvidia’s results, which come at the end of the earnings season, have outsized importance due to the company’s place at the helm of AI hardware and its size and weightings in the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq 100 Index. Even with this year’s 15% slump, Nvidia is the third-largest company in both indices, meaning that moves in its stock can influence the entire market.
Top of mind will be AMD and Arm’s outlooks, especially given the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s tariff policies. AMD said in mid-April that it expects to take an $800 million charge from restrictions on semiconductor exports to China, which could amount to a potential revenue impact of $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion, or about 20% of its expected full-year fiscal 2025 AI sales, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis. AMD said it would seek licenses to export to China, but receiving them is uncertain. Nvidia said the same limits would cost it $5.5 billion.
“China’s restrictions could crimp 2H GPU sales, with full-year AI revenue expectations already having come down before the sanctions news,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kunjan Sobhani wrote in a May 2 earnings preview for AMD.
Marino said he will also be looking for any news that AMD is growing sales of GPUs. In last quarter’s earnings, the company gave a disappointing outlook for data center business, a key area of growth. It’s also an area where AMD competes with Nvidia.
Arm has a recent history of forward guidance sending shares lower following results. In its last few earnings reports, shares have slumped on tepid revenue forecasts. That makes what it reports, and what Chief Executive Officer Rene Haas says about its outlook, important.
“They are going to continue to talk about their AI applications, how the demand is, and then we have to see what he says about tariff implications going forward,” said Jay Woods, chief global strategist at Freedom Capital Markets. “If they can thread that needle like some of these other companies have, like Microsoft did with great performance and a guide that wasn’t cloudy like Meta, then I think they’ll be ok.”
If the results don’t exceed investor expectations, it could bode poorly for Nvidia when it reports at the end of the month, Woods said. But, Nvidia is still by far the most important stock in the AI trade, and given its dominant market share and size, it could buck a trend of weak reports from some of its chip peers.
“Nvidia will give us a clearer picture as to how the semi space is really doing,” said Woods.
Tech Chart of the Day
DoorDash Inc. reached an agreement to buy the UK-based food-delivery platform Deliveroo Plc for about £2.9 billion ($3.9 billion), as the US company pushes into more overseas markets. DoorDash has offered 180 pence in cash for each Deliveroo share, the company said in a statement on Tuesday, confirming the terms of an offer announced on April 25. Deliveroo’s 2021 initial public offering priced the shares at 390 pence apiece. At its peak, the company was valued at more than £7 billion, but dropped dramatically after growth slowed when Covid-19 lockdowns ended.
Top Tech Stories
Palantir Technologies Inc. dropped as much as 15% Tuesday after its results failed to live up to investors’ loftiest expectations for a company whose stock has led the S&P 500 in gains this year.
Microsoft Corp. expanded its deal to buy carbon removal credits from heat-plant operator Stockholm Exergi AB, increasing volumes first agreed last year by more than 50%.
California Governor Gavin Newsom called for federal tax credits of at least $7.5 billion and a partnership with the Donald Trump White House to help bring more filmmaking to the US.
After months of public pressure, OpenAI walked back part of its effort to create a more conventional for-profit company, but its restructuring plans still have not received the blessing of a major stakeholder: Microsoft Corp.
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., the world’s largest maker of batteries for electric vehicles, began gauging investor interest for a share sale that may fetch $5 billion and will probably be Hong Kong’s biggest listing in years.
Earnings Due Tuesday
Earnings Premarket:
Axcelis Technologies Inc. (ACLS US)
Datadog Inc. (DDOG US)
Gartner Inc. (IT US)
IPG Photonics Corp. (IPGP US)
Leidos Holdings Inc. (LDOS US)
Novanta Inc. (NOVT US)
Earnings Postmarket:
Cirrus Logic Inc. (CRUS US)
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD US)
Arista Networks Inc. (ANET US)
Atomera Inc. (ATOM US)
Aviat Networks Inc. (AVNW US)
BlackLine Inc. (BL US)
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA US)
Gen Digital Inc. (GEN US)
Kimball Electronics Inc. (KE US)
Lumentum Holdings Inc. (LITE US)
Mercury Systems Inc. (MRCY US)
Qualys Inc. (QLYS US)
Super Micro Computer Inc. (SMCI US)
Synchronoss Technologies Inc. (SNCR US)
Teradata Corp. (TDC US)
TechTarget Inc. (TTGT US)
Varonis Systems Inc. (VRNS US)
--With assistance from Subrat Patnaik and Yazhou Sun.
