Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Says Chip Sales Could Double Next Year

Zacks Investment Research released its Q3 earnings preview, projecting S&P 500 earnings will rise 24% from a year earlier, the eighth straight quarter of double-digit growth for the index. Fourteen of the 16 Zacks sectors are on track for positive earnings growth, with five set for double-digit gains: Aerospace up 159.3%, Energy up 111.9%, Tech up 41.9%, Basic Materials up 31.2%, and Transportation up 15.1%. Conglomerates is the only sector expected to post lower earnings, down 35.4%, while Consumer Staples is seen flat. Excluding Energy, S&P 500 growth drops to 20%, and excluding Tech it falls to 14.4%. Nvidia's Q3 earnings are expected to rise 90% year over year on 91.2% higher revenues, while Micron's earnings and revenue growth rates are seen at 938% and 348.6%, respectively; excluding those two companies, Tech sector earnings growth is cut by slightly more than half. The season's spotlight falls on the big banks reporting October 13, though the cycle began with September 10 releases from Oracle and Adobe, followed by Lennar; six more index members report this week, including Costco, AutoZone and Darden. The three S&P 500 members that have reported so far show earnings up 22.6% on 14.9% higher revenues, with 33.3% beating EPS estimates and 66.7% beating revenue estimates.

Advanced Micro Devices reported Q2 FY2026 revenue of $11.54 billion, up 50.11% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $1.66 beating the $1.61 consensus, as Data Center revenue doubled 107% year over year to $6.72 billion and now represents 58% of total revenue. Management guided Q3 to roughly $13 billion, up about 41% year over year, and expects data center segment revenue to more than double year over year in 2027 on the back of Helios rack-scale systems, MI450 GPUs, and Venice EPYC CPUs. 24/7 Wall St. set a 12-month price target of $510.66 on the stock, which trades at $559.82 after a 254.5% one-year rally, implying roughly 8.78% downside, with a hold recommendation at 90% confidence. The firm's bull case above $616 rests on anchor customers including Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft Azure, and OpenAI, while its bear scenario points to $399.25 on risks including HBM memory constraints, U.S. export controls, and NVIDIA's CUDA moat. NVIDIA trades at a P/E of 45 with 75% non-GAAP gross margin and Data Center revenue of $89.02 billion, up 117% year over year, while Intel's DCAI segment grew 59% to $6.26 billion in Q2 2026.