Wednesday, August 26, 2026 |
|
The Last Page.
The last page, first.
|
|
Nvidia’s Own $91 Billion Number Gets Tested Tonight
Wall Street wants growth with a nine in front of it again. Michael Burry wants you watching the financing behind that growth instead, and calling it this decade’s Enron.
|
|
The story
Nvidia reports tonight after the closing bell. This one carries more weight than an ordinary earnings call.
The stock is worth about $5.2 trillion now, more than any other company on earth. Tonight’s print reaches your 401(k) whether you trade a single share or not.
The gap between promise and proof is the whole story.
Nvidia telling customers it would raise server prices sent chip stocks lower Monday. Wall Street still wants $92 billion tonight, 97% more than a year ago.
Nvidia set that pace itself, guiding to $91 billion back in May.
Wedbush’s Matt Bryson says Nvidia has “the best supply position in the industry” and puts a $330 target on the stock. Michael Burry calls the $500 billion financing behind it “a Wall Street stunt.” He says it has “shades of Enron’s effort to make wholesale power an investable class,” and he is short.
Last quarter Nvidia beat a number like that by $2.8 billion. The stock still fell 5% the week after. Beat and all.
|
|
$2.3 trillion
What Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon and Google have told investors they will spend on AI infrastructure, combined.
|
|
$1 trillion
Nvidia’s own order book for chips already committed through 2027.
|
|
$253 billion
What Nvidia actually billed over the last twelve months, the number tonight has to keep growing into.
|
|
|
If tonight clears the bar
November 2026
|
If tonight merely holds
November 2026
|
|
|
Best case
NOVEMBER 2026. Nvidia’s third earnings call of the year lands on a Wednesday again. This time the stock does not fall the week after. Revenue clears the guidance again, by enough that nobody argues about it this time.
Gross margin holds instead of slipping, and the memory-cost worry from August never shows up in the print. The four hyperscalers start converting their backlog faster than the pace they promised in the spring. No board in this industry wants to be caught short on chips twice.
Your index fund closes November up on the same stock that carried it in August. Bryson’s 60% target stops looking like a reach. The backlog stories from August stop sounding like marketing and start sounding like math.
Finally.
|
|
Worst case
|
NOVEMBER 2026. The guidance held again, but only just. Barely has stopped being good enough three quarters running. Gross margin gives up two of today’s 75 points, down under 73.
Memory chips cost more this fall than they did in spring. Nvidia eats part of the difference to keep customers buying. One of the private-credit deals financing smaller data-center builders gets restructured without a press release, just a rate that resets higher.
Burry’s August line, that “off-balance-sheet liabilities today are putting both 2000 and 2008 to shame,” starts showing up in other people’s notes, uncredited. The stock that carried your index fund higher in August now drags it down two days out of three. Nobody at the golf club wants to talk about the position anymore.
Bryson keeps his rating. Number, trimmed.
|
|
|
How it ends
You get the boring buildout unless tonight’s forecast breaks the pace this company set for itself in May.
Whatever tonight says lands in your account before the market opens tomorrow. That is true whether you own one Nvidia share or just the index fund that owns it for you. It is likely the largest single holding in that fund already.
Yours, like it or not.
The buildout does not need Nvidia to blow the doors off tonight. It needs the company to hold the pace it already promised. That is the whole reason last quarter’s beat did nothing for the stock.
The real fight is the one Burry picked on August 11, not tonight’s print. He is betting that the financing behind Nvidia’s revenue eventually comes due. The loans to customers, the equity stakes, and the value guarantees behind those chips are what he thinks cannot get paid back. That is what happened to Enron’s off-book deals in 2001.
Both sides get paid while the case stays open. Nobody has to be right yet for either check to clear. That is the whole business model for both of them.
|
|
|
This quarter Nvidia guided to $91 billion for 97% growth. Tonight’s forecast for the quarter that ends in October is the hinge. A number that keeps that pace alive keeps the backlog story alive too.
|
|
|
The Last Page shows up once every weekday morning with one story, finished. If this is not the letter you want most mornings, the door below is always open.
|
|
The Last Page.
The last page, first. Reply and name the story you want finished.
|