Nvidia's valuation looks surprisingly cheap heading into earnings. Could it be an issue for the stock?

Nvidia's valuation looks surprisingly cheap heading into earnings. Could it be an issue for the stock? Nvidia's valuation looks surprisingly cheap heading into earnings.

Could it be an issue for the stock? · Yahoo Finance Brian Sozzi · Executive Editor Tue, August 25, 2026 at 10:23 AM GMT+2 3 min read NVDA ^GSPC Nvidia ( NVDA ) has a tantalizingly cheap P/E ratio. Nvidia's forward price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple has declined steadily since August 2024, when artificial intelligence began to take hold, unleashing a boom in the company's stock price and earnings growth (see the graphic below).

The decline has only accelerated this year despite a series of strong quarters. The forward P/E ratio for Nvidia currently stands at 24 times, not too far removed from the S&P 500's ( ^GSPC ) 21-times multiple, despite the company being one of the fastest-growing companies in corporate America. Nvidia's stock rose 1% before the bell on Tuesday.

JP Morgan So what gives with this valuation that many would call outright cheap? A couple of things stand out. For one, early in any supercycle, investors tend to bid up a stock based on speculative future earnings and cash-flow potential.

As Nvidia delivers actual multibillion-dollar realized profits, speculative expectations transition into actual earnings. In short, it takes more for Nvidia, at its size, to wow investors and get them to pay a speculative-level P/E ratio. Looked at another way, Nvidia is increasingly being seen as a mature tech company — as crazy as that may sound for a company growing super quickly.

Secondarily, while Nvidia's stock price has appreciated significantly in recent years, investors naturally discount long-term growth due to potential cyclical risks — such as the digestion of future cloud capital expenditures, geopolitical trade policies, or supply chain bottlenecks. So Nvidia's valuation does reflect several worthy concerns about a company that has grown at lightning speed over the past three years. "Taking a step back, we still do not expect upside to near-term numbers to serve as a material positive catalyst for the stock — revenue guidance has beaten Street consensus by an average of 4% over the past four quarters, while the stock has traded down 3%/5% on average over the subsequent 7 to 30 days," JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur wrote in a new note on Monday ahead of Nvidia earnings Wednesday.

In effect, to shake off the "cheap valuation" vibes, Nvidia will have to get its stock price rerated to show it warrants a more speculative forward P/E ratio. Sur offered a few ways this rerating could happen: Nvidia maintains market dominance relative to encroaching competition from AI compute: "Total addressable market share capture by alternative compute platforms … has been an ongoing narrative headwind for NVDA, and one that we think will be challenging to dispel entirely given the significant program ramps planned for the next few years," Sur wrote. "Even so, we would expect mgmt to highlight platform flexibility … and material gen-on-gen per-token cost reductions … as compelling drivers of customer adoption and market share retention.

" "We remain of the view that NVDA will maintain market leadership in AI compute (due in part to these factors), though we do also expect GPU and ASIC/XPU share of the AI compute TAM to trend towards parity over the next several years," Sur added. Long-term benefits from recently announced infrastructure funding agreements: "Management likely frames these initiatives as infrastructure enablement endeavors, given underlying demand already exists, while NVDA is using limited, asset-backed support and 3rd-party capital to remove power, DC and financing bottlenecks," Sur wrote. The outlook for Nvidia's stalled China business improves: "Shipments of H200 GPUs to China (which have long been approved but slow to commence) represent a material upside lever to Oct.

quarter guidance (and forward estimates beyond Oct. quarter) given recent reports of initial customer deliveries (translating to an estimated ~$3 billion of incremental revenue per 100k units shipped)," Sur wrote. Story Continues Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor, host of the Power Players with Brian Sozzi podcast, and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team.

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