A series of prominent stock sales and allegations of accounting irregularities have put Nvidia in the middle of a debate about the value of artificial intelligence and its related stocks.
Now Nvidia is pushing back. In a private seven-page memo sent by Nvidia's investor relations team to Wall Street analysts over the weekend, the chip maker directly addressed a dozen claims made by skeptical investors.
Nvidia's memo, which includes fonts in the company's trademark green color, begins by addressing a social media post from Michael Burry last week, which criticized the company for stock-based compensation dilution and stock buybacks. Burry's prescient bet against subprime mortgages before the 2008-2009 financial crisis was depicted in the movie The Big Short.
"NVIDIA repurchased $91B shares since 2018, not $112.5B; Mr. Burry appears to have incorrectly included RSU [restricted stock unit] taxes. Employee equity grants should not be conflated with the performance of the repurchase program," Nvidia said in the memo. "Employees benefiting from a rising share price does not indicate the original equity grants were excessive at the time of issuance."
Barron's reviewed the memo, which initially appeared in social media posts over the weekend, and confirmed its authenticity with multiple Wall Street sources.
Burry told Barron's he disagrees with Nvidia's response and stands by his analysis. He said he would discuss the topic of the company's stock-based compensation in more detail in a future report.
Nvidia didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nvidia also responds to claims that the "current situation is analogous to historical accounting frauds (Enron, WorldCom, Lucent) that featured vendor financing and SPVs [special purpose vehicles.)"
"NVIDIA does not resemble historical accounting frauds because NVIDIA's underlying business is economically sound, our reporting is complete and transparent, and we care about our reputation for integrity," the memo said. "Unlike Enron, NVIDIA does not use Special Purpose Entities to hide debt and inflate revenue."
Nvidia also addressed allegations that its customers -- large technology companies -- aren't properly accounting for the economic value of Nvidia hardware.
Some of the companies use a six-year depreciation schedule for graphics processing units. Burry has said he believes the useful lives of the chips are shorter than six years, meaning Nvidia's customers are inflating profits by spreading out depreciation costs over a long period.
"NVIDIA's customers depreciate GPUs over 4-6 years based on real-world longevity and utilization patterns," the company said in the memo. "Older GPUs such as A100s (released in 2020) continue to run at high utilization and generate strong contribution margins, retaining meaningful economic value well beyond the 2-3 years claimed by some commentators."