Wednesday, February 25th, 2026
Investors today gave tech and software a renewed vote of confidence, while all major indexes shrugged off a twinge of doubt late-morning and closed at or near session highs. The Dow closed up +307 points, +0.63%, the S&P 500 rose +56 points, +0.81%, Nasdaq was +288, +1.26% and the small-cap Russell 2000 finished the day up +11, +0.41%.
NVIDIA Slam-Dunks on Earnings Again
Once again, the world’s biggest company by market cap, NVIDIA NVDA, demonstrates how it got to this position: it forecast earnings growth at +70.8% in the quarter, and came in +82%. Earnings of $1.62 beat the Zacks consensus by a solid dime. Revenues also surpassed expectations to $68.13 billion — a record quarter in sales for NVIDIA and its largest quarter-over-quarter revenue growth in its 33-year history.
Its Data Center business alone brought in $62.3 billion — better than the $60.4 billion analysts were expecting — and is up 13x since the emergence of ChatGPT. This is where the AI rubber hits the road, and it’s burning up in NVIDIA’s case. The company now guides to an improved $76.44 – $79.56 billion in Q1 quarterly revenues, with +75% Gross Margins. Not bad for the world’s largest networking business.
NVIDIA stock had gone up to $203 per share on the news, but has since moderated somewhat. It’s climbed another 7+% year-to-date, +57% from a year ago and over +1300% in the past five years. The conference call is expected to be a festive one, and afterwards, CEO Jensen Huang will prepare for his keynote address for this year’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) on March 16th.
Salesforce Beats, Stock Slides on Revenue Guide
Salesforce.com CRM kept its strong quarterly earnings reports going this afternoon, reporting $3.81 per share versus $3.03 in the Zacks consensus for its Q4. Revenues grew +12% year over year to $11.2 billion, narrowly improving over the $11.17 billion expected. The company has been hit by AI fears in the software space, and shares had fallen -27% year to date.
Well, revenue guidance was nothing to write home about for the CRM major, and despite a $50 share buyback program and an increased quarterly dividend to $0.44 per share, Salesforce stock is down another -4% in late trading today. This gives back most of the shares’ gains so far this week ahead of the earnings print.
Urban Outfitters Outperform on Top & Bottom Lines
Also out this afternoon are Q4 results for apparel parent corporation Urban Outfitters URBN. The retail major, with only one earnings miss in the last 12 quarters, beat again today: $1.43 per share versus estimates for $1.24 — a big lift over the year-ago $1.04 per share reported. Revenues of $1.80 billion narrowly outpaced the $1.79 billion in the Zacks consensus, led by +7.3% growth in the flagship Urban Outfitters brand, followed by +5.9% at Anthropologie.
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