Nvidia (NVDA) earnings report Q4 2024

Nvidia reported fourth fiscal quarter earnings that beat Wall Street’s forecast for earnings and sales, and said revenue in the course of the current quarter can be higher than expected, even against elevated expectations for large growth.

Nvidia shares rose about 10% in prolonged trading.

Here’s what the corporate reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting for the quarter ending in January, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG, formerly often called Refinitiv:

• Earnings per share: $5.16 adjusted vs. $4.64 expected
• Revenue: $22.10 billion vs. $20.62 billion expected

Nvidia said it expected $24.0 billion in sales in the present quarter. Analysts polled by LSEG were in search of $5.00 per share on $22.17 billion in sales. 

Nvidia has been the first beneficiary of the recent technology industry obsession with large artificial intelligence models, that are developed on the corporate’s pricey graphics processors for servers.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang addressed investor fears that the corporate may not have the opportunity to maintain up this growth or level of sales for the entire 12 months on a call with analysts.

“Fundamentally, the conditions are excellent for continued growth” in 2025 and beyond, Huang told analysts. He says demand for the corporate’s GPUs will remain high attributable to generative AI and an industry-wide shift away from central processors to the accelerators that Nvidia makes.

Nvidia reported $12.29 billion in net income in the course of the quarter, or $4.93 per share, up 769% versus last 12 months’s $1.41 billion or 57 cents per share. 

Nvidia’s total revenue rose 265% from a 12 months ago, based on strong sales for AI chips for servers, particularly the corporate’s “Hopper” chips reminiscent of the H100, it said.

“Strong demand was driven by enterprise software and consumer web applications, and multiple industry verticals including automotive, financial services and health care,” the corporate said in commentary provided to investors.

Those sales are reported in the corporate’s Data Center business, which now comprises the vast majority of Nvidia’s revenue. Data center sales were up 409% to $18.40 billion. Over half the corporate’s data center sales went to large cloud providers.

Nvidia said its data center revenue was hurt by recent U.S. restrictions on exporting advanced AI semiconductors to China.

“We understood what the restrictions are, reconfigured our products in a way that just isn’t software hackable in any way, and that took a while so we reset our product offering to China,” Huang said. “Now we’re sampling to customers in China.”

Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said that while the corporate had improved supply of its AI GPUs, it still expected them to be in brief supply, especially the next-generation chip, called B100, expected to ship later this 12 months.

“We’re delighted that provide of Hopper architecture products is improving,” Kress said on a call with analysts. “Demand for Hopper stays very strong. We are able to expect our next-generation products to be supply constrained as demand far exceeds supply.”

“Every time we have now recent products, as , it ramps from zero to a really large number and you possibly can’t do this overnight,” Huang said.

The corporate’s gaming business, which incorporates graphics cards for laptops and PCs, was merely up 56% 12 months over 12 months to $2.87 billion. Graphics cards for gaming was Nvidia’s primary business before its AI chips began taking off, and a few of Nvidia’s graphics cards may be used for AI.

Nvidia’s smaller businesses didn’t show the identical meteoric growth. Its automotive business declined 4% to $281 million in sales, and its OEM and other business, which incorporates crypto chips, rose 7% to $90 million. Nvidia’s business making graphics hardware for skilled applications rose 105% to $463 million.