By Daniel Foelber
Publication Date: 2026-03-23 07:55:00
During Nvidia‘s (NVDA 3.17%) financial analyst question-and-answer session at GTC 2026, CEO Jensen Huang and CFO Colette Kress fielded a question about Nvidia’s free cash flow (FCF) plans.
Huang answered first by saying that the primary uses of cash flow are the company’s growth and Nvidia’s ecosystem — from its integrated hardware stack to supporting software. Beyond that, Nvidia will still generate significant FCF.
Kress then said that the company expects to use at least 50% of its FCF to return capital to Nvidia shareholders through buybacks and dividends — especially in the second half of the year as Nvidia works through some of its more capital-intensive investments.
Nvidia didn’t explicitly say it was raising its dividend. But with so much expected FCF, it would make a ton of sense. Here’s why.
Image source: Getty Images.
Nvidia’s FCF is reaching unprecedented heights
In fiscal 2026, Nvidia earned $215.9 billion in revenue and $96.6 billion in FCF, which supported $41.1 billion in stock buybacks and dividends — a combined 42.6% of FCF. So Nvidia is already committing a larger percentage of FCF to buybacks and dividends with its 50% target.
Analyst consensus estimates call for $8.28 in fiscal 2027 earnings per share, up from $4.90 in fiscal 2026. As a rough estimate, if we take that same growth rate of 69% and apply it to Nvidia’s FCF, it would earn $163.3 billion in fiscal 2027 FCF. That translates to over $80 billion in projected buybacks and dividend…
