NVIDIA Corporation's godson CoreWeave (CRWV.US) plunges 12% after hours! Holding a 670 billion order "heavy sword," but suffers a Q1 guidance "dark arrow"

On Thursday after-hours trading, the stock price of CoreWeave (CRWV.US) once plummeted by 12%. The cloud infrastructure provider focused on artificial intelligence announced higher fourth-quarter revenue than Wall Street expectations, but failed to boost the stock price. According to the announcement, CoreWeave's fourth-quarter revenue increased by 110% year-on-year to $1.57 billion, slightly exceeding the market's average expectation of $1.55 billion, with a loss of 89 cents per share, falling short of the market's average expectation. As of the time of writing, the stock fell by 9.56% after hours. In terms of performance guidance, the company expects full-year revenue for 2026 to be between $12 billion and $13 billion, analysts' previous expectation was $12.09 billion; it expects adjusted operating profit for 2026 to be between $900 million and $1.1 billion. However, the revenue guidance for the first quarter is between $1.9 billion and $2 billion, lower than the market consensus expectation of $2.29 billion. CoreWeave CEO Mike Intrator said during an analyst conference call that their core service, NVIDIA Corporation graphics chips, continue to be in short supply. He pointed out that the average price of NVIDIA Corporation's H100 processors fluctuated within 10% of the beginning of the year, while the prices of the older model A100 chips have risen since 2025. The company plans to set its capital expenditure target for 2026 at $30 billion to $35 billion, far exceeding the $10.31 billion in 2025. By the end of last year, the company had an active power capacity of 850 megawatts, with contracted power reaching 3.1 gigawatts (market expectations for active power about 827 megawatts). CoreWeave expects its active power by the end of 2026 to surpass 1.7 gigawatts (higher than the market's expected 1.59 gigawatts), and plans to add over 5 gigawatts by 2030 on top of existing contracts. Intrator said: "Demand is shifting from initially focusing on super-large-scale cloud and basic model areas to spreading throughout the entire economy. Now enterprise demand is explosively growing, sovereign demand is rising, and new entrants are entering to lock in the necessary infrastructure." The company's revenue backlog orders surged from $55.6 billion at the end of the third quarter to $66.8 billion. Adjusted pre-tax deprecation and amortization profit amounts to $898 million, lower than the market's expected $929 million. Since going public in March last year, the company's debt reached $21.37 billion by December 31st. Recent developments in the AI industry have caused concern among software investors, with announcements from companies like Anthropic leading to sell-offs in related stocks. CoreWeave supports AI model manufacturers such as Alphabet Inc. Class C and OpenAI, and its stock price has risen by 36% year-to-date as of Thursday's closing, while the iShares expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF has fallen by nearly 22% during the same period. This quarter, CoreWeave partnered with model developer Poolside and launched object storage services, increasing credit from $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion. Although the storage business will help it compete with giants like Amazon.com, Inc. AWS, the company still focuses on the professional cloud infrastructure sector. Intrator wrote in a blog post: "By 2025, CoreWeave will become the fastest cloud platform to surpass $5 billion in annual revenue."