Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang attends an event during the annual Computex computer show in Taipei.
Xiao Tianlong | Reuters
Nvidia Report Stronger-than-expected forecasts for the first quarter of fiscal 2024 on Wednesday sent shares up 25% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company performed compared to Refinitiv’s consensus estimate for the quarter ended April:
- earnings per share: $1.09 adjusted, vs. $0.92 expected
- income: $7.19 billion vs. $6.52 billion expected
Nvidia said it expects revenue of about $11 billion for the quarter, up 2 percent, well above Refinitiv’s forecast of $1.06 a share on sales of $7.15 billion.
Nvidia’s stock has risen 109% so far in 2023, largely driven by optimism about the company’s leading position in the AI chip market. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company has seen a “surge in demand” for its data center products.
Nvidia’s data center group reported sales of $4.28 billion, compared with expectations for $3.9 billion, a 14% annual gain. Nvidia said the company’s performance was driven by demand for its GPU chips from cloud companies, as well as large consumer internet companies, which use Nvidia chips to train and deploy generative AI applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Nvidia’s strong performance in data centers shows how artificial intelligence chips are becoming increasingly important to cloud providers and other companies that run large numbers of servers.
However, Nvidia’s gaming segment, which includes the company’s graphics cards for PC sales, reported sales of $2.24 billion, missing estimates of $1.98 billion, even though total revenue for the category fell 38% year-over-year. Nvidia blamed the decline on a slowing macroeconomic environment and the growth of the company’s latest gaming GPUs.
Nvidia’s automotive unit, which includes chips and software used to develop self-driving cars, grew 114% year-over-year, but sales in the quarter were still small, at just under $300 million.
Net income for the quarter was $2.04 billion, compared to $1.62 billion a year earlier. However, Nvidia’s overall sales fell 13% year-over-year. Nvidia adjusts earnings to exclude investment gains and losses and some interest expense.