NVIDIA Smashes Earnings With Record $7.1B Quarter As Gaming And Data Center Revenues Soar
NVIDIA posted yet another impressive earnings report, a statement that grossly undersells the lede. Not only did NVIDIA crush its earnings, it recorded the highest quarterly revenue since the company's inception nearly three decades ago. Continued growth in gaming and the data center both contributed heavily to its $7.1 billion in revenue.
That represents a sizable 50 percent gain from the same quarter a year ago, and a 9 percent jump from the previous quarter. Broken down by sector, NVIDIA saw record highs in more than half of its core businesses, including gaming, data center, and professional visualization. Those also happen to be its three biggest earnings (in that order).
"The third quarter was outstanding, with record revenue," NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said. "Demand for NVIDIA AI is surging, driven by hyperscale and cloud scale-out, and broadening adoption by more than 25,000 companies. NVIDIA RTX has reinvented computer graphics with ray tracing and AI, and is the ideal upgrade for the large, growing market of gamers and creators, as well as designers and professionals building home workstations."
Click to Enlarge (Source: NVIDIA)
Gaming continues to be NVIDIA's top performing sector and contributed over $3.2 billion to the company's billfold in Q3. What's especially impressive about this is that NVIDIA is unable to procure enough gaming GPUs to fully meet demand. Even so, gaming revenue increased 5 percent sequentially and 42 percent year-over-year.
During an earnings call, NVIDIA said that while channel inventories remain low, it is actually increasing desktop GPU supply. NVIDIA also said its RTX technology is driving its biggest ever refresh cycle, both because of the rabid demand from gamers and also creators. The company estimates that about 25 percent of GeForce owners are rocking RTX hardware these days.
As to the impact of cryptocurrency, NVIDIA said it doesn't have a way of breaking down how many gaming cards end up going to miners. However, it said almost all of the Ampere parts that shipped were light hash rate cards. GPUs specifically aimed at miners (CMP) contributed $105 million to NVIDIA's bottom line last quarter.
NVIDIA also saw another big gain in its data center dollars. It grew 55 percent year-over-year and 24 percent sequentially to $2.94 billion, coming close to where NVIDIA's gaming revenue landed. The data center is a big part of NVIDIA's overall business, and it will only grow bigger as it pushes the Ominverse and related technologies, such as AI technology for autonomous cars and robots.
Looking ahead NVIDIA expects to end the year on a high note with $7.4 billion in revenue next quarter, plus or minus 2 percent.
