By Tobias Burns
Publication Date: 2026-08-26 16:13:00
Consensus estimates on earnings are a bit of a mug’s game when it comes to Nvidia , the chipmaking behemoth at the heart of the artificial intelligence buildout. Jensen Huang’s company’s consistent beat-and-raise behavior, along with its outsized macroeconomic importance to the computing infrastructure boom, has loosened the tie between its quarterly performance and analysts’ expectations. What Wall Street really pays attention to are the so-called whisper numbers that reflect Nvidia’s history of outperformance and the level of demand for emergent AI technology. Ahead of Wednesday’s earnings, the Nvidia whisper numbers are substantially higher than the formal, written estimates that are based on official guidance from the company. NVDA 6M mountain NVDA 6 months Formally, Wall Street is expecting Nvidia to post second-quarter sales of $92.3 billion, second-quarter earnings-per-share of $2.09 and third-quarter sales guidance of $104.1 billion, according to FactSet. Higher still The whisper numbers are higher still, with analysts and traders thinking third-quarter sales guidance could reach $107 billion to $108 billion, and even as high as $110 billion. “FQ3/Oct revenue bogeys do seem closer to $110b vs. the $107b – $108b range Tim Arcuri believes they will guide to,” traders at UBS wrote in a Tuesday desk note, referring to projections from the bank’s lead semiconductor analyst. Analyst Kevin Cassidy at Rosenblatt told CNBC on Monday that markets would respond positively to…