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Shares of Nvidia closed up 2.3% at an all-time high, topping $504 on Monday. The record comes ahead of the company’s fiscal third-quarter results on Tuesday, when analysts are expecting to see revenue growth of over 170%.

If that’s not astounding enough, the company’s forecast for the fiscal fourth quarter, according to LSEG estimates, is likely to show an even bigger number: almost 200% growth.

Heading into the Thanksgiving holiday, Wall Street will be closely scrutinizing the company that’s been at the heart of this year’s artificial intelligence boom.

Nvidia’s stock price has ballooned 245% in 2023, far outpacing any other member of the S&P 500. Its market cap now sits at $1.2 trillion, well above Meta or Tesla. Any indication on the earnings call that generative AI enthusiasm is cooling, or that some big customers are moving over to AMD’s processors, or that China restrictions are having a detrimental effect on the business could spell trouble for a stock that’s been on such a tear.

“Expectations are high leading into NVDA’s FQ3’24 earnings call on Nov-21,” Bank of America analysts wrote in a report last week. They have a buy rating on the stock and said they “expect a beat/raise.”

However, they flagged China restrictions and competitive concerns as two issues that will capture investor attention. In particular, the emergence of AMD in the generative AI market presents a new dynamic for Nvidia, which has mostly had the AI graphics processing unit (GPU) market to itself.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said late last month that the company expects GPU revenue of about $400 million during the fourth quarter, and more than $2 billion in 2024. The company said in June that the MI300X, its most advanced GPU for AI, would start shipping to some customers this year.

Nvidia is still by far the market leader in GPUs for AI, but high prices are an issue.

“NVDA needs to forcefully counter the narrative its products are too expensive for generative AI inference,” the Bank of America analysts wrote.

Last week, Nvidia unveiled the H200, a GPU designed for training and deploying the kinds of AI models that are powering the generative AI explosion, allowing companies to develop smarter chatbots and convert simple text into creative graphical designs.

The new GPU is an upgrade from the H100, the chip OpenAI used to train its most-advanced large language model, GPT-4 Turbo. H100 chips cost between $25,000 and $40,000, according to an estimate from Raymond James, and thousands of them working together are needed to create the biggest models in a process called “training.”

The H100 chips are part of Nvidia’s data center group, which saw revenue in the fiscal second quarter surge 171% to $10.32 billion. That accounted for about three-quarters of Nvidia’s total revenue.

For the fiscal third quarter, analysts expect data center growth to almost quadruple to $13.02 billion from $3.83 billion a year earlier, according to FactSet. Total revenue is projected to rise 172% to $16.2 billion, according to analysts surveyed by LSEG, formerly Refinitiv.

Based on current estimates, growth will peak in the fiscal fourth quarter at about 195%, LSEG estimates show. Expansion will remain robust throughout 2024 but is expected to decelerate each quarter of the year.

Executives can expect to field questions on the earnings call related to the massive shake-up at OpenAI, the creator of the chatbot ChatGPT, which was a major catalyst of Nvidia’s growth this year. On Friday, OpenAI’s board announced the sudden firing of CEO Sam Altman over disputes about the company’s speed of product development and where it’s focusing its efforts.

OpenAI is a big buyer of Nvidia’s GPUs, as is Microsoft, OpenAI’s top backer. Following a chaotic weekend, OpenAI on Sunday night said former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear would be leading the company on an interim basis, and soon after that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Altman and ousted OpenAI Chairman Greg Brockman would be joining to lead a new advanced AI research team.

Nvidia investors have so far brushed off China-related concerns despite the potential significance to the company’s business. The H100 and A100 AI chips were the first to be hit by new U.S. restrictions last year that aimed to curb sales to China. Nvidia said in September 2022 that the U.S. government would still allow it to develop the H100 in China, which accounts for 20% to 25% of its data center business.

The company has reportedly found a way to keep selling into the world’s second-biggest economy while keeping compliant with U.S. rules. The company is set to deliver three new chips, based on the H100, to Chinese manufacturers, Chinese financial media Cailian Press reported last week, citing sources.

Nvidia has historically avoided providing annual guidance, preferring to look ahead only to the next quarter. But given how much money investors have poured into the company this year and how little else there is for them to follow this week, they’ll be listening closely to CEO Jensen Huang’s tone on the conference call for any sign that the buzz in generative AI may be wearing off.

WATCH: EMJ’s Eric Jackson expects a good report from Nvidia

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MongoDB shares sink after company issues weak guidance

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MongoDB shares sink after company issues weak guidance

Dev Ittycheria, CEO of MongoDB

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

MongoDB shares sank 16% in extended trading on Wednesday after the database software maker issued disappointing guidance.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $1.28 adjusted vs. 66 cents expected
  • Revenue: $548.4 million vs. $519.6 million expected

Revenue increased about 20% from a year ago in the quarter that ended on Jan. 31, according to a statement. The company generated $15.8 million in net income, or 19 cents per share, which factors in stock-based compensation. In the same quarter a year ago, MongoDB had registered a net loss of $55.5 million, or 77 cents per share.

MongoDB added 1,900 customers in the quarter, bringing the total to 54,500. But the company ended the quarter with about $360 million in deferred revenue, below the StreetAccount consensus of $370.4 million.

MongoDB is seeing slower growth than it had hoped for in new applications using its Atlas cloud-based database service, Srdjan Tanjga, MongoDB’s interim finance chief, said on a conference call with analysts. Meanwhile, MongoDB is hiring rapidly to pursue more deals with large companies, while pulling back on mid-sized businesses, Tanjga said.

During the quarter, MongoDB acquired artificial intelligence startup Voyage for an undisclosed sum.

“We want to capitalize on a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” CEO Dev Ittycheria said.

For the fiscal first quarter, MongoDB called for 63 cents to 67 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $524 million to $529 million in revenue. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had expected 62 cents of per-share earnings and revenue of $526.8 million.

MongoDB said it expects adjusted earnings per share of $2.44 to $2.62 and revenue of $2.24 billion to $2.28 billion for fiscal 2026. That implies 12.7% revenue growth, which would be the slowest rate at least since the company went public in 2017. Analysts were anticipating $3.34 per share of earnings and $2.32 billion in revenue.

Prior to Wednesday’s after-hours move, MongoDB shares were up 13%, while the S&P 500 was down about 1%.

WATCH: MongoDB shares fall more than 10% as non-gross margins come in lighter-than-expected

MongoDB shares fall more than 10% as non-gross margins come in lighter-than-expected

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Digg founder teams up with former Reddit rival to buy and revive website

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Digg founder teams up with former Reddit rival to buy and revive website

Alexis Ohanian

David A. Grogan | CNBC

Content aggregator Digg is making a comeback with the help of an unlikely partner: Reddit co-founder and rival Alexis Ohanian.

Ohanian and Digg founder Kevin Rose acquired the platform for an undisclosed sum. The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six. The partnership was announced Wednesday in a video post to the company’s X account in which Rose called the partnership a “team-up he would have never imagined 20 years ago.”

Digg was founded in 2004 and rose to prominence as a major outlet for trending news because it allowed users to rate stories. Rose made what became an infamously goofy appearance on the cover of Businessweek in 2006 as the kid who “made $60 million in 18 months.”

The company said in a release that it aims to differentiate itself in the social media market by “focusing on AI innovations designed to enhance the user experience and build a human-centered alternative.” Digg said it will also create a platform that “prioritizes transparency, rewards human effort, and fosters enriching discussions.”

Ohanian also teased the collaboration, telling X followers on Wednesday that he was “working on something new… but also old… but also very new” and is “excited” to be partnering with Rose.

At its peak in 2008, Digg was reportedly valued at about $160 million. But the rise of Facebook and other social sites caused traffic to Digg to plummet. Meanwhile, Reddit, which was founded a year after Digg by Ohanian and current CEO Steve Huffman, emerged as a direct rival to Digg by forming communities around types of content and letting users similarly rate news stories.

In 2012, Digg’s brand and website were acquired by tech incubator Betaworks for about $500,000.

Reddit has continued its ascent, reporting nearly 102 million daily active users at the end of the fourth quarter. The site gained widespread attention when it became the center of the 2020 meme stock craze as retail traders inflicted huge pain on hedge funds shorting stocks using a subreddit known as Wallstreetbets.

Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange last March at $34 a share and has seen its stock nearly quintuple. Shares are up about 1% year to date and added 4% during Wednesday’s session.

Ohanian has moved on to other projects since he stepped down from Reddit’s board in 2020. He’s currently partnering with billionaire Frank McCourt in a bid for TikTok after President Donald Trump extended the initial deadline for the company’s Chinese-parent ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a ban.

Rose said in a post on X that he and Ohanian “dreamed up features that weren’t even possible with yesterday’s tech.”

“The new @digg brings some great nostalgia, but we’re not here to just rebuild the past or clone a competitor,” he wrote.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

WATCH: Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is going long on women’s sports

Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is going long on women's sports

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CrowdStrike slumps 9% on weak earnings outlook, overhang from outage costs

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CrowdStrike slumps 9% on weak earnings outlook, overhang from outage costs

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz speaks at the Wall Street Journal Tech Live conference in Laguna Beach, California, on Oct. 21, 2019.

Martina Albertazzi | Bloomberg | Getty Images

CrowdStrike shares dropped 9% after issuing weak earnings guidance as the company signaled ongoing pressure from its global IT outage that rattled businesses in July.

The cybersecurity software provider said it expects fiscal first-quarter earnings to range between 64 cents and 66 cents per share, versus the average Factset estimate of 95 cents. CrowdStrike is projecting earnings for the year to range between $3.33 and $3.45 per share, excluding items. That fell short $4.42 expected by analysts polled by LSEG.

For the fiscal fourth quarter, CrowdStrike posted a net loss of $92.3 billion, or 37 cents per share, versus net income of $53.7 million, or 22 cents per share, in the year-ago period. The company also reported $21 million in costs from incident-related expenses and $49.9 million of tax expenses connected to acquisitions.

The company also said it anticipates another $73 million in expenses for the first quarter resulting from its July update that spurred a global information technology outage, grounded flights and disrupted businesses. CrowdStrike projects an additional $43 million in costs due to some deal packages offered in its wake.

The outage has also weighed on free cash flow margins, which CrowdStrike said on a conference call with analysts Tuesday it expects to return to 30% or more in fiscal 2027.

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Many on Wall Street expect headwinds from the July issue to start abating in the new fiscal year, with Bernstein’s Peter Weed expecting a pick up in CrowdStrike net retention rate in the new fiscal year.

“Although FY26 guidance marked a conservative start to the year, in our view, we expect management is setting the stage for a return to a beat-and-raise cadence we saw before the outage,” wrote JPMorgan’s Brian Essex.

CrowdStrike’s disappointing guidance offset better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter results. The company posted adjusted earnings of $1.03 per share on $1.06 billion in revenue and said that revenue grew 25% from a year ago.

Founder and CEO George Kurtz called the company a “comeback story” on the conference call.

“I’m extremely proud of the engagement we’ve had with customers, partners, prospects in the market navigating a year that tested CrowdStrike,” he said. “Q4 showcases the fruits of our labors, giving me strong conviction in our AI-native, single platform, excellent execution, and accelerating market opportunity.”

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