‘The Prophet’ Warns: It’s Only Going to Get Worse

NVDA is trading near $161 in premarket Thursday, extending an after-hours plunge that has erased hundreds of billions of dollars in market value since the first reports tied Huang to an alleged spy plot and, more recently, a second reported affair. The board met late Wednesday and has not yet announced a decision. The next earnings report is five days away.

Analyst Targets

• Goldman Sachs: Buy, $300 price target (reiterated)
• Wells Fargo: Overweight, target lowered from $315 to $300
• RBC Capital: Outperform, $330 price target (maintained)
• Morgan Stanley: dropped NVDA from its Top Pick list; Buy, $300 target
• Robert Baird: downgraded to Hold; target cut to $200 from $500
• Citigroup: Buy; price target lowered to $285 from $315

What Just Happened

The Nvidia board met late Wednesday to discuss whether to remove Huang as CEO, Reuters reported. The immediate catalyst was new reporting, including by The New York Times, alleging an affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare. That has compounded the company’s ongoing internal review tied to earlier reporting that Huang had a relationship with a Chinese businesswoman U.S. officials suspect was involved in a foreign intelligence effort.

In its statement earlier this week, Nvidia said it had retained Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct an independent investigation, Reuters reported. Prediction markets also reacted, with some contracts implying a high probability of an announced exit by year-end, depending on how each market defines “exit” and what constitutes a public announcement.

The Succession Problem

This is where the November 17 earnings date becomes central. Nvidia has long been viewed as unusually founder-led, with Huang seen as deeply involved across the organization, and investors have debated for years whether there is an obvious successor. Recent coverage has said the company is also working with an outside firm as it considers potential leadership outcomes.

Two internal names dominate the discussion. Many analysts and investors see two people as particularly likely candidates, at least for the short term: engineer Ian Buck and CFO Colette Kress. Kalshi-linked betting tracked by Yahoo Finance had Buck favored at about 42% and Kress at about 27% late Wednesday.

Kress, who joined Nvidia in 2013 and previously held finance roles at Cisco and Microsoft, is seen as the natural interim choice, though her limited technical background is viewed as a drawback over the longer term. Buck is a different profile: he leads Nvidia’s hyperscale and high-performance computing business. He is a prominent CUDA-era Nvidia executive, but he is not the inventor of CUDA. Some analysts favor a split arrangement. The more realistic route, one analyst said, is an interim leader from the long-serving inner circle, possibly as a co-CEO structure: one leader to steady the business and the finances, such as Colette Kress, alongside a product and technology leader, such as Ian Buck.

What This Does to November 17

Nvidia reports earnings November 17. Street estimates compiled by major market data services cluster around roughly $2.47 to $2.48 of EPS and about $109 billion of revenue, versus $1.30 and $57.01 billion a year earlier. Management’s most recent quarterly outlook, issued with the Aug. 26 results, called for revenue of about $96.2 billion plus or minus 2% for the subsequent quarter.

An interim CEO changes the guidance call entirely. Huang has used earnings calls to set multi-year ambitions, talk about CUDA moats, and anchor hyperscaler spending commitments. Analysts have noted it is unclear who would carry Huang’s “visionary” mantle if the board forces a change at the top. Kress would deliver precise financial commentary. Buck could address the data center roadmap. Neither delivers the market-moving authority Huang commands, and Q4 guidance credibility, not Q3 revenue, is the number that moves the stock after earnings.

Macro and Market Contagion

Overnight, broader risk sentiment wobbled. Market commentary out of Asia noted Nasdaq 100 futures down close to 1% into Thursday, with semiconductors softer after Nvidia’s after-hours drop. In prior sessions tied to this story cycle, Nvidia-specific weakness also fed a rotation debate toward other large-cap semiconductor names.

Nvidia weakness historically reshapes capital flows across the semiconductor sector. AMD and Arm have already shown they can absorb rotation capital when investors question Nvidia’s dominance at the top of the AI stack.

Bull / Base / Bear

Bull: Board announces a co-CEO structure before markets open Thursday. Continuity is established, the Nov. 17 call proceeds with both Kress and Buck present, and the numbers beat. Stock retraces toward $185.

Base: Huang is removed but the board delays a formal announcement until after the Nov. 17 report to preserve guidance credibility. Kress leads the call, Q3 numbers are solid, but Q4 guidance is narrow and vague. Stock trades between $155 and $170.

Bear: A formal ouster lands before the earnings call, the guidance discussion is effectively leaderless, and hyperscaler commitments come into question. NVDA undercuts recent lows, and a break below roughly $164, a level some traders have flagged, would likely intensify the sell-off.

The credibility of any guidance call rests on whether hyperscaler commitments hold. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have locked in a combined $2.4 trillion in AI infrastructure obligations, and the returns on that spending are already diverging.

Bottom Line

The question was never whether Nvidia could deliver a strong quarter on November 17. It almost certainly will. The question is whether any executive in that building can walk onto a live earnings call without Jensen Huang and credibly tell Microsoft, Google, and Meta what the next twelve months look like for Blackwell supply, Rubin timing, and gross margins. That answer determines where NVDA trades by Friday morning, not the revenue number.