By Rashika Singh
Feb 26 (Reuters) - Nvidia's shares fell on Thursday as investors looked past strong earnings, wary that the chip designer continues to channel capital into expanding the AI ecosystem, the payoffs for which are still unclear, rather than boosting shareholder returns.
Its shares slid 4% to $187.6 and dragged other chip stocks including Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices lower. The stock closed at a three-month high on Wednesday.
The bearish reaction reflects growing concerns about whether
Nvidia's record-setting momentum can hold as rivals push new AI accelerators, hyperscalers invest in custom silicon and the broader AI spending cycle becomes more uneven.
"Nvidia once again exceeded expectations but the competitive picture is also shifting as companies like Meta diversify toward AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) and the big cloud players invest more in custom silicon," said Jacob Bourne, analyst at eMarketer.
"This puts a focus on Nvidia's guidance for what the future holds in terms of maintaining its dominance as the AI buildout matures and questions around enterprise ROI (return on investment) intensify."
Hyperscalers including Meta Platforms - a major customer - have forecast total capital expenditure of at least $630 billion in 2026, with most of it earmarked for data centers and processors.
Nvidia's shares also fell below technical support levels around their 50- and 100-day moving averages, which could be indicative of more selling pressure.
To an analyst's question during a post-earnings call on whether the company was looking to give back shareholders some of the $100 billion cash it was likely to generate this year, Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said the company wanted to keep investing in the AI ecosystem.
The world's most valuable company said it expects fiscal first-quarter sales of $78 billion, plus or minus 2%, compared with analysts' average estimate of $72.60 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
"For about the 5th time in the last 3 years, there appear to be generalist concerns that growth will slow, despite near-term acceleration and the clear increase in model usage that is starting to have a major impact on productivity," Morgan Stanley equity strategist Joseph Moore said in a note.
Massive demand from AI infrastructure has also fuelled concerns about a global memory chip supply crunch.
Nvidia dismissed questions on whether supply shortfalls at its chip contract maker TSMC would hamper growth, stating it had secured enough chip inventory and capacity to meet demand beyond the next several quarters, but did reveal that it will affect its gaming business.
The company's price-to-earnings (PE) ratio is currently 24.5 times forward earnings, down from 34.6 on October 29 when it hit $5 trillion in market capitalization for the first time, as per LSEG DataStream. It is also well below Advanced Micro Devices' PE ratio of 28.8 and Intel's 81.4.
(Reporting by Rashika Singh and Kanishka Ajmera in Bengaluru, Danilo Masoni in Milan; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle, Arun Koyyur and Maju Samuel)
