Jensen Huang Is Out Ahead Of Nvidia Earnings

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive – it’s been all about Nvidia (NVDA) this week, and the scandal surrounding its CEO Jensen Huang and his extra marital activities.

The markets appeared to have already made up their minds with Nvidia shares off sharply from their recent highs on the basis that CEO Huang will be forced out. When that became a reality the shares slipped further, however given the circumstances was there any doubt as to the inevitability of the outcome. He is set to be replaced by CFO Colette Kress on an interim basis, while a newly created chairman role will be filled by Harvey Jones.

Huang was certainly an important part of the business, however his conduct raised serious questions about corporate governance and whether one man is more important than the business itself.

Now that he has taken the decision to resign the question that needs asking is whether recent events matter in the context of the wider business given that Nvidia is one of the front runners in the AI trade?

Business is likely to continue as before and with the numbers out next week the noise around its CEO while unwelcome doesn’t change the business case for Nvidia, even if it raises some questions about its corporate governance.

These questions are likely to continue to rumble and there is a danger that Nvidia might become collateral damage in the aftermath as Democrats take aim at a business that has aligned itself closely to the Trump administration.

The Nasdaq has fallen sharply on the back of this uncertainty given Nvidia’s outsized weighting within it.

While a number of respected voices on Wall Street have warned Huang’s removal is tantamount to a 25% discount on Nvidia shares, most of these have price targets for the stock well above the current levels of where we are now.

1) UK CPI (Oct) – 18/11 – with UK inflation rising to 3.5% in September and its highest since October 2025 it was inevitable that the Bank of England would raise rates by 25bps at its most recent meeting. The only surprise was that one policymaker, Catherine Mann decided that a move by 50bps was needed despite the fact that energy prices remained the primary driver behind the current moves higher in price pressures. In the September numbers the main driver of the move was energy prices which rose 17.9%, with motor fuels accelerating to 29.8%, from 23% in August. Inflation also rose for housing, communication and recreation and culture by 5.3%, 5.8% and 2.3% respectively. One bright spot was food inflation which was unchanged at 1.3%. Of bigger concern going forward was PPI input prices which rose by 8.3%, and a 4-month high, while PPI output prices rose by 4.6%, a 3-year high. This is likely to start to feed into the headline CPI numbers in the weeks and months ahead, a fact acknowledged by the Bank of England at its recent meeting when they nudged up their peak inflation forecast to 4.9%.    

2) UK Wages/Unemployment (Sep) – 17/11 – the recent unemployment numbers for August showed a solid improvement on the previous set of numbers with the headline rate slowing to 4.7% from 4.9%. in the 3-months to August. Excellent news you might say except every other piece of economic data points to the exact opposite outcome. The bulk of the slowdown in the unemployment rate saw the one-month rate for August fall to 4.2%, which coming only a couple of months after it shot up to 5.1% suggests that the numbers are completely unfit for purpose. The latest HMRC payroll numbers saw 111k fewer employees than a year ago. Other ONS numbers also showed that an extra 314k new jobs were added during the months between June and August, while the latest HMRC numbers showed that payrolls fell by 92k, a mismatch of 406k. Compared to a year ago the ONS survey appears to show that 761k more people are in work now, however according to HMRC payroll data there are 111k less people working now than they were then. We already knew that ONS jobs data was suspect even before this week’s numbers, and it would appear that the data is no nearer to being accurate now than it was at the start of the year. This is a huge problem for the Bank of England given that they are being spoon fed a false impression of the labour market by an organisation which is becoming increasingly unfit for purpose. Vacancy rates also fell to their lowest levels since 2014 to 691k, with small businesses saying that labour costs are why they aren’t hiring new people. Larger firms are still hiring albeit at a much slower rate. On wages the picture is even more troubling with public sector pay rising by 6.3%, compared to private sector wages which rose by 3%, and even this seems generous. Wil this week’s unemployment numbers continue to paint a similarly distorted picture of the UK labour market and what if any value do they offer when they paint a completely unreliable picture of what is happening around with respect to jobs and vacancies more broadly.  

3) US Retail Sales (Oct) – 17/11 – the sharp increases in US gasoline prices have helped paint a picture of the US economy that is slightly misleading. This is because the way the numbers are calculated means that the higher the gasoline price goes the better US retail sales numbers look. In September US retail sales rose by 0.8%, while August was revised up to 1.3%, given that the sales are calculated based on value and not volume. When gasoline is stripped out retail sales growth has been much more moderate. While sales of gasoline rose 6.4%, other areas were much weaker. That said there was still decent growth at food services and drinking places of 1.1%, and furniture stores also saw sales increase by 1.3%. Nonetheless, even with fuel stripped out of the numbers the numbers have still proved to be surprisingly resilient with only 2 negative months this year, helped in no small part by a resilient labour market. As we look towards the latest October retail sales numbers it’s notable that we did see a 7.5% uptick in consumer confidence for the month of October after a sharp September slump to 84.2.      

4) Fed Minutes - 18/11 – while the Fed kept rates unchanged at its recent meeting there was a couple of notable dissents. One surprising and one less so. The two dissents came from Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, which wasn’t a surprise, as well as Fed governor Lisa Cook, which was a surprise, voting for a 25bps hike. On the dissents, Beth Hammack has been one of the more notable hawkish voices in recent months, however she wasn’t joined by her fellow travellers Lori Logan and Neel Kashkari in that regard, which was a little surprising. She was joined by governor Lisa Cook who decided to join her in what could perhaps be considered as a bit of a middle finger to President Trump who has attempted to force her removal in recent months for what he has claimed is mortgage fraud. Aside from that the Fed statement said that while inflation “remains elevated” the committee wanted to wait to see how the September hike starts to play out along with further economic data vis-à-vis the US economy which Fed chair Warsh said was expected to grow by 3% in Q3, and we now know grew by 3.4%. It still seems odds on that we’ll see another rate hike in December which the minutes while now dated should offer us an insight into what prevented the likes of Logan and Kashkari joining Hammack in voting for another rate hike.

5) Anthropic IPO – 19/11 – it wasn’t so long ago that people were talking about the prospect of a $2trn valuation for the creator of the Claude chatbot. Anthropic says it is looking to raise $90.4bn with the shares looking to retail at between $70 and $78 a share, as it looks to offload up to 801.4m shares. The fund raising will comprise a $26bn private placement along with $64.4bn in shares. This would give Anthropic a valuation of just over $1trn, and would also top the $75bn SpaceX raised in the summer in its IPO. Even at this reduced valuation this seems ambitious given all the recent uncertainties, given that to justify it the company would need to be looking to generate $150bn in annual recurring revenue by the end of next year. Currently Anthropic generates just over half that amount, with $81bn at the end of last month, up $10bn from September. In its recent filing Anthropic generated Q3 revenue of nearly $17bn, a sizable increase from the $1.4bn the year before. While that level of growth is impressive, so are its spending commitments which rose to $900bn, according to its most recent filing with most of that going on computing power, with $71bn of that amount falling due within the next 12 months. It’s also seen a big increase in operating expenses, which rose 292% in Q3 to $17.5bn, and which saw an operating loss of $567m during the quarter. Despite all of this it is being reported that the IPO is oversubscribed to the tune of over 200 times.  

6) Nvidia Q3 27 – 17/11 – having set new record highs back at the start of October Nvidia shares have been caught up in the big AI sell-off over the last few weeks, the shares falling below their 200-day SMA at the start of November. With the departure of CEO Jensen Huang as CEO over allegations of extra marital affairs with a possible Chinese spy as well as an Nvidia employee the focus will now shift to the new management of interim CEO Collette Kress who will chair the latest earnings call later this week. While the business itself is expected to continue to outperform, the focus is less likely to be on the numbers which are expected to be outstanding but on what comes next. As for the business itself the company has been setting the pace as far as the AI story is concerned. When the company reported in Q2, revenues comfortably beat forecasts, coming in at $96.22bn, well in excess of the $92bn guidance with data centres delivering $89bn of that total. Profits were also much better than expected at $2.22 a share, or $53.9bn, an 118% increase from the same quarter a year ago. Gross margins were also higher, rising to 75%, a 2.5pts increase on last year. For Q3 the guidance was even punchier, with revenues expected to be $108bn, +/-2%, with gross margins expected to be slightly softer at 74%, +/- 50bps. This prompted an initial sell-off which proved to be very short-lived. The company also announced that the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform was ramping up to full production with server racks in Google Cloud, Azure and Oracle (ORCL). Nvidia also announced NVIDIA Vera which is the first CPU built for AI agents, with SpaceX expected to deploy these chips in its next generation of AI applications.  Post earnings Nvidia confirmed it was buying “Hugging Face”, an open-source AI platform which allows developers to collaborate, test and share AI tools, thus allowing it to shape the AI ecosystem in both software and hardware.

7) Disney Q4 26 – 17/11 – while the last few weeks have been difficult for companies exposed to the AI trade, more traditional businesses like Disney (DIS) have held up much better. Earlier this month Disney shares hit their highest level since July 2025, and up over 20% from their lows in July this year. This rebound has been helped by a strong Q3 performance which saw the “House of Mouse” post a 7% increase in revenues to $25.2bn, helped by strong parks attendance as well as a $100m tariff refund, which helped boost operating income by 20%. Entertainment revenue rose 6% to $11.34bn, helped by improved profitability from Disney+/Hulu, with operating income rising 64% to $1.68bn, as well as some decent returns from Toy Story 5. This helped to propel a 63% increase in free cash flow to over $3bn. For Q4 the company said they expect to deliver total segment operating income of $4.9bn, with the 53rd week delivering $600m. Full year guidance was reaffirmed for cash provided for operations and capex of at least $19bn and $9bn respectively.       

8) Home Depot Q3 26 – 17/11 – Home Depot (HD) shares hit 3-year lows back at the start of October, however we’ve seen a solid recovery since then, with the shares pushing up to their highest level since March at the start of this month. In Q2 we saw another set of solid numbers from them, reporting Q2 revenues of $47.86bn, an increase of 5%, and net income of $4.77bn, both of which came in ahead of market forecasts. The retailer also reaffirmed its full year guidance arguing that many consumers were still steering away from large scale projects, in a trend that looks set to continue over the course of the rest of the year. Comparable sales rose by 1.7%, the best quarterly improvement in almost 4 years. Total sales growth is expected to remain within the window of 2.5% to 4.5% with operating margins of around 12.5%. The market reaction at the time was muted with the shares sinking to those aforementioned lows at the beginning of October, the shares have managed to recover some ground on the back of the outflows in tech. 

9) Target Q3 26 – 18/11 – Target (TGT) shares have been in a decent uptrend since posting 6-year lows at the end of last year, although they still remain well short of the record highs set back in 2021. Nonetheless we’ve still seen a 50% recovery in the year since those lows were posted. In Q2 Target saw revenues rise by 5.3% to $26.54bn while profits surged to $4.11 a share, with the retailer saying that the number was boosted by $994m in tariff refunds, which helped boost operating income to $2.6bn. Net sales were up by 5.3% in Q2, with comparable sales up by 3.8%, with an 8.7% increase in digital sales helping to support that. Target went on to boost its guidance for the full year citing an improved sales outlook, saying that it expected full year net sales to increase by 5%, raising it by 100bps. Full year EPS excl. tariff refunds are expected to come in between $8.25 and $9.25 a share, up from $7.50 and $8.50 a share.  

10) Walmart Q3 27 – 19/11 – the last two quarters results saw Walmart (WMT) shares fall sharply in the aftermath, with the shares sliding to a 10-month low in the days after their Q2 numbers. Since then, we’ve seen a decent recovery in the shares, although not quite back to the record highs we saw back in May. While shares in tech have seen a rather sharp sell-off in recent days, the more traditional names have suddenly seen renewed interest as investors rotate out of some of the more highly valued areas of the market. Walmart’s Q2 numbers were still impressive, revenues coming in above expectations, rising 5.9% to $187.9bn, while profits rose to 83c a share. Global eCommerce sales were up by 23%, driven by delivery and kerbside pickup, while US comparable sales rose 2.6%. For Q3 guidance was for projected net sales growth of 3% to 3.75% and EPS of 63c a share. Walmart also raised its full year net sales growth expectations to between 4% and 5%, and EPS to between $2.8 and $2.87 a share. Like its peers, tariff refunds helped to boost the numbers, with $2.9bn expected to be received back.