Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wears his usual leather jacket.
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Nvidia reported earnings on Wednesday for its second fiscal quarter, which ended August 1, beating Wall Street estimates due to strong graphics card sales.
However, Nvidia’s cryptocurrency chip products, CMP, had sales of $ 266 million, lower than the $ 400 million the company forecast in May. Nvidia shares rose over 2% in after-hours trading.
Here’s how the chipmaker performed compared to Refinitiv’s consensus estimates:
- Merits: $ 1.04, customized, versus $ 1.01 expected
- Revenue: Expected $ 6.51 billion versus $ 6.33 billion
Nvidia is forecasting sales of $ 6.8 billion for the current quarter, exceeding Refinitiv’s expectations of $ 6.5 billion.
Nvidia is in a period of sustained, massive growth in its business as semiconductors are scarce globally and demand for the type of processors it specializes in skyrockets. Nvidia’s revenue grew 68% annually for the quarter. In the previous quarter, sales increased by 84%.
Graphics chips like Nvidia are becoming increasingly important for a variety of technologies, including games, artificial intelligence, and types of cryptocurrency mining.
Nvidia’s graphics segment, which consists primarily of graphics cards, grew 87% to $ 3.91 billion, growing faster than its computing and networking segment, which includes chips for data centers. Computing and networking grew 46% to $ 2.6 billion.
Broken down by market rather than reportable segment, gaming was a highlight, rising 85% to $ 3.06 billion. Nvidia has had delivery issues since late last year as its newest line of graphics cards are mostly sold out in stores, and the company announced in May that it expects delivery issues in the second half of the year. The company said it was seeing longer lead times across its supply chain on Wednesday.
Nvidia said the surge in game sales was due to both GeForce graphics card sales and the chips being sold to game console manufacturers, like the processor at the heart of the Nintendo Switch.
Nvidia’s data center business also hit an all-time high, growing 35% annually to $ 2.37 billion, which the company attributed to graphics cards for data centers for both industrial use and cloud providers.
Investors are closely watching how Nvidia’s business correlates with cryptocurrency prices.
Cryptocurrency sales fell short of expectations, reporting $ 266 million in cryptocurrency card sales, over 33% less than expected. Nvidia said in May that the dedicated chips it makes for mining cryptocurrencies called CMP are expected to generate around $ 400 million in revenue in the August quarter.
Nvidia says its cryptocurrency cards are an attempt to make sure there are enough chips for players, and it has applied software to its GPUs to keep them from mining cryptocurrencies. Colette Kress, CFO of Nvidia, said it expected a “minimal contribution” from its CMP sales.
Nvidia’s professional visualization segment, primarily graphics cards for high-end professional workstations, grew 156% annually to $ 519 million. The auto business remains a small fraction of the company’s revenue, at $ 152 million in revenue, sequentially less than last quarter and 37% more than in the same quarter last year, which was in the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic that growled auto production .
Last year, Nvidia announced it would buy Arm, which makes key intellectual property for mobile chips, for $ 40 billion. The deal is turned down by some of Nvidia’s competitors who fear losing access to key arm technology.
“Although some Arm licensees have raised concerns or objected to the transaction and discussions with regulators are taking longer than originally anticipated, we are confident that the transaction recognizes the benefits of the acquisition for Arm, its licensees and the industry.” “Said Nvidia in a statement.
Nvidia split its shares 4-1 in June. Shares are up over 57% over the past year.
