Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang holds one of the company’s new RTX 4090 chips for computer gaming in this undated handout photo provided September 20, 2022.
Nvidia Corp | via Reuters
Nvidia stock rose on Wednesday after the company reported slightly higher revenue and net income than Wall Street expected, despite a year-over-year decrease in both categories. Here’s how the chipmaker did versus Refinitiv consensus expectations for the quarter ending January:
- EPS: $0.88, adjusted, versus expectations of $0.81
- Revenue: $6.05 billion, versus expectations of $6 billion
Nvidia forecast $6.5 billion in sales in its first quarter, higher than the $6.33 billion expected by Wall Street. Nvidia reported $0.57 in GAAP net income per share.
Although both revenue and earnings were down from last year’s $1.32 per share and $7.64 billion in sales, Nvidia has increasingly been seen by investors as one of the chip stocks best positioned to endure an economic slowdown that hurts PC and semiconductor sales.
Nvidia’s data center business, which includes chips for AI, continued to grow, suggested that it could continue to benefit heavily from artificial intelligence software like ChatGPT and Microsoft Bing’s AI chatbot.
The stock was up about 45% in 2023 before Wednesday’s earnings report.
Most of Nvidia’s sales of GPUs for artificial intelligence fall into the company’s data center category. Data center revenue increased 11% on an annual basis to $3.62 billion. The company said the growth was because U.S. cloud service providers bought more products.
Gaming revenue was down, as expected, as sales were highly elevated in the past few years. The pandemic encouraged gamers to upgrade their systems with new graphics cards from companies like Nvidia. Nvidia reported $1.83 billion in fourth-quarter gaming revenue, a 46% drop from the same time last year. The company said the decline was because it was selling fewer chips to partners because they currently have too much stock.
Nvidia also said that it shipped fewer chips for game consoles during the quarter, which is also reported inside the gaming category. Nvidia has a successful business selling chips to console makers. Nintendo uses a Nvidia chip to power the Switch.
Other categories, including professional visualization and automotive chips, remain much smaller than the company’s gaming and data center businesses. Nvidia’s professional visualization business for designers reported $226 million in revenue, down 65% annually, and automotive revenue was $294 million, up 135% from last year.
