“Several publications have reported potential delays in the production and shipment of Nvidia’s new Blackwell chips. Nvidia has not commented or confirmed this, but most of our channel checks suggest that the delays should be relatively short-lived, likely due to a design flaw rather than a manufacturing issue,” John Belton, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, wrote in an emailed comment.
A report Saturday said one of Nvidia’s next generation chips will be delayed by a just-discovered design flaw. Tech news site The Information, citing a couple of industry sources, said volume shipments of the Blackwell B200 chip would be delayed some three months.
Blackwell volumes were expected to begin in October 2024. Nvidia reports on a January fiscal year, so a delay would push revenue contributions from the B200 into the April 2025 quarter, Barron’s noted in its story on the possible delay.
Here’s Barron’s take on the effect of any delay in the Blackwell 100 or 200 chips:
Here’s the math on the rumored B200 delay:
“The Blackwell architecture was planned to start shipping in several varieties. There are the B100 and B200 chips, with the latter more powerful and in higher demand. Then there is the GB200, which is faster still because it packages two B200s with a third processor that all share data at high bandwidth.
Nvidia may be able to charge $30,000 to $40,000 for the B200, and $50,000 to $70,000 for the GB200, according to Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh.
One of the more detailed models out there for Nvidia product sales is from Timothy Arcuri at UBS. As of last month, he was projecting shipments of about 32,500 B200 chips and 43,400 GB200 modules in Nvidia’s quarter ending January 2025. That would be only about 7% of all the accelerators shipped in the quarter because the vast majority of units shipped would still be [current generation] Hopper chips.”
Combining both analysts’ intelligence, the January quarter contribution from B200 products would amount to $3 billion. That’s 9% of the $34.5 billion in total revenue expected for the quarter, per the consensus forecast.
But even if the delay materializes, the revenue pushout for Nvidia is unlikely to be as large as that. Customers still can’t get all the Hopper chips they want. Nvidia has nearly caught up with demand for the H100 version but the more powerful H200 remains backlogged.
So Nvidia could just crank out more Hopper chips and sell all they make.”
Barron’s ends its analysis by noting “Nvidia is no cheap stock. At the closing price Friday of $107, it trades at 40 times this year’s earnings forecast and 30 times next year’s.”
My take: If the market delivered a big drop on a short-term push-out in revenue I’d buy more Nvidia shares.
