Source: Radio New Zealand
CFOTO via AFP
Nvidia, the world’s largest listed company and a critical bellwether on the health of the AI sector, posted record first-quarter earnings on Thursday of more than NZ$136 billion.
That’s up 85 percent on a year ago, with forecasts for the next quarter of over NZ$153 billion.
The world’s leading maker of AI computer chips is currently valued at around NZ$10 trillion and is so big that it makes up 7 to 8 percent of the S&P 500 Wall Street stock index.
Investment director at Craigs Investment Partners Mark Lister says most KiwiSaver funds invest in US stocks and will therefore be very exposed to the fortunes of Nvidia.
“If you’ve got a shares component of your KiwiSaver, then it will probably be dominated by the US share market, which is 65 percent of global markets,” Lister said.
“With Nvidia being 5 or 10 percent of the US market depending on which index you look at, you have in all likelihood got a pretty heavy weighting to this company whether you are aware of it or not.”
Lister said the headline result on Thursday looked good, as Nvidia beat estimates on revenue, guidance, data center earnings and margins.
However, he said the market had expected it to be strong and that’s why the initial share price reaction was flat.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Thibaud Moritz/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource
And he noted that any new information that comes to light from the CEO’s investor conference call will likely influence where shares go overnight.
US sharemarket growth in recent years has been driven in large part by the boom in AI companies, with Nvidia at the forefront.
Its share price is up 65 percent over the last year and 13-fold over the last five years.
“It’s been a phenomenally successful business,” Lister said. “What we need to see from here on, is earnings and genuine fundamental growth, support that share price move. To date it has.”
However, he believed there were still questions around geopolitics and whether Nvidia can continue to send chips to China, as well as growing competition from companies like Alphabet and Amazon.
“It’s always a little bit unnerving when you see share price moves that are as sharp as what you’ve seen with some of these AI stocks and the likes of Nvidia.
“But to date that is being supported by the economic fundamentals within the business, so it’s been a great performer and if it can continue to maintain this momentum, then it doesn’t look terribly overvalued ironically.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/21/why-nvidias-result-matters-for-kiwisaver-investors/