Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang presents the Nvidia Blackwell platform at an occasion forward of the Computex discussion board, in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 2, 2024.
Ann Wang | Reuters
Nvidia reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday that beat Wall Road expectations. The corporate additionally offered sturdy steering for the present quarter.
The corporate’s report and steering indicators that the chipmaker is assured it is going to be in a position to proceed its historic run of progress pushed by synthetic intelligence nicely into 2025. Shares had been flat in prolonged buying and selling.
Here is how the corporate did, in contrast with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
- Income: $39.33 billion vs. $38.05 billion estimated
- Earnings per share: 89 cents adjusted vs. 84 cents estimated
Nvidia mentioned it anticipated about $43 billion in first-quarter income, plus or minus 2%, versus $41.78 billion anticipated per LSEG estimates. The primary-quarter forecast implies year-to-year progress of about 65% from a yr earlier, a slowdown from 262% annual progress in the identical interval a yr prior.
Chief Monetary Officer Colette Kress mentioned the corporate expects “a big ramp” of gross sales of Blackwell, its next-generation AI chip, within the first quarter.
Web revenue in the course of the quarter rose to $22.09 billion, or 89 cents per diluted share, versus $12.29 billion, or 49 cents per share, within the year-ago interval.
Nvidia reported a 73% gross margin within the quarter, which was down three factors on an annual foundation. The corporate mentioned the decline in gross margin was because of newer knowledge middle merchandise that had been extra difficult and costly.
Income continues to surge at Nvidia as the corporate rides the AI increase with its knowledge middle graphics processing models, or GPUs, which comprise the overwhelming majority of the marketplace for AI accelerators. Nvidia’s income within the quarter rose 78% from $35.1 billion, and full fiscal-year income for Nvidia rose 114% to $130.5 billion.
Nevertheless, Nvidia’s progress is slowing as the corporate turns into bigger. Through the fourth-quarter of fiscal 2024, Nvidia gross sales greater than tripled.
A lot of the main focus this calendar yr is on how rapidly the corporate can ship its next-generation AI processors, referred to as Blackwell.
Nvidia mentioned it had $11 billion in Blackwell income in the course of the fourth quarter. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang mentioned demand for Blackwell is “wonderful” in a press release, and Kress referred to as it “the quickest product ramp in our firm’s historical past.”
“Blackwell gross sales had been led by massive cloud service suppliers which represented roughly 50% of our Knowledge Middle income,” Kress mentioned in a press release.
Blackwell gross sales, in addition to gross sales of the earlier technology Hopper AI chips, are reported within the firm’s knowledge middle enterprise. That unit now represents 91% of the corporate’s complete gross sales, up from 83% a yr in the past and 60% in the identical interval of 2023. In complete, knowledge middle income has elevated about tenfold over the previous two years.
Nvidia mentioned it had $35.6 billion in knowledge middle income within the fourth quarter, which was up 93% on an annual foundation. That additionally surpassed StreetAccount expectations of $33.65 billion.
Nvidia officers instructed traders that whereas its chips had been beforehand used to develop, or prepare, synthetic intelligence, its new chips resembling Blackwell can be used to ship AI software program, a course of typically referred to as inference.
Kress additionally addressed investor considerations that environment friendly fashions resembling DeepSeek’s R1 might restrict the necessity for extra Nvidia chips. New methods of working AI fashions that ask the AI to generate extra info to “assume” via responses might require as a lot as 100 occasions the quantity of Nvidia chips, she mentioned.
“Lengthy-thinking, reasoning AI can require 100 occasions extra compute per job in comparison with one shot inferences,” Kress mentioned.
“The overwhelming majority of our compute immediately is definitely inference,” Huang instructed traders. He mentioned next-generation AI algorithms might even want hundreds of thousands of occasions the present quantity of computing capability.
Huang additionally addressed questions on whether or not Nvidia’s enterprise might be threatened by customized chips being developed by expertise corporations resembling Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
“Simply because the chip is designed doesn’t suggest it will get deployed,” Huang mentioned.
The corporate’s knowledge middle enterprise this quarter additionally included $3 billion in gross sales for the corporate’s networking components, that are used to attach tons of of 1000’s of GPUs collectively. Nevertheless, whereas Nvidia had signaled that networking was a progress alternative for the corporate, networking gross sales had been down 9% from a yr in the past.
The corporate’s gaming enterprise, which incorporates graphics processors for enjoying 3D video games, reported $2.5 billion in gross sales versus StreetAccount expectations of $3.04 billion. Nvidia’s graphics gross sales really declined 11% on an annual foundation. The corporate introduced new graphics playing cards for shoppers in the course of the quarter that share the identical Blackwell structure as the corporate’s AI chips.
One of many firm’s progress classes is its enterprise promoting chips for automobiles and robots. Nvidia mentioned on Wednesday that it had $570 million in automotive gross sales in the course of the quarter, which is a small fraction of the corporate’s AI enterprise, however which represents a 103% rise on a year-over-year foundation.
Nvidia mentioned it spent $33.7 billion on share repurchases in its fiscal 2025.
