Real Money’s Eric Jhonsa covers Nvidia’s fourth-quarter earnings report and conference call with management.
With Nvidia still seeing all the demand it can handle from gamers and cloud giants, investor expectations are high ahead of the GPU leader’s latest earnings report.
Among analysts polled by FactSet, the consensus is for Nvidia to report January quarter (fiscal fourth quarter) revenue of $7.42 billion (up 48% annually), GAAP EPS of $1.00 and non-GAAP EPS of $1.23.
Nvidia also provides quarterly sales guidance in its reports. The FactSet revenue consensus for Nvidia’s April quarter stands at $7.31 billion (up 29%).
Eric Jhonsa, Real Money’s tech columnist, will be live-blogging Nvidia’s report, which is expected at 4:20 P.M. Eastern Time, along with an earnings call scheduled for 5:30 P.M.. Please refresh your browser for updates.
4:48 PM ET: As one would expect, FQ4 Data Center growth (+71% Y/Y) was said to be driven by Ampere-architecture GPU sales “across both training and inference for cloud computing and AI workloads such as natural language processing and deep recommender models.”
Gaming growth was likewise said to be driven by Ampere GPU demand, with game console SoC sales (primarily to Nintendo) dropping Q/Q due to seasonality.
4:44 PM ET: FQ4 free cash flow was $2.74B, up from $1.28B a year earlier.
For the whole of FY22, FCF was $8.05B, up from FY21’s $4.68B. Excluding cash flows related to stock compensation, FY22 FCF was around $6B.
4:41 PM ET: Nvidia notes its FQ1 GAAP EPS will include a $1.36B write-off for the prepayment it made to Arm in 9/20, as a result of the deal being terminated earlier this month.
4:38 PM ET: Nvidia continues making giant prepayments to help secure wafer capacity: The company’s “outstanding inventory purchase and long-term supply obligations” totaled $9B at the end of FQ4, up from $6.9B at the end of FQ3 and just $2.54B a year earlier.
Foundry partner TSMC, which set a massive 2022 capex budget last month, is believed to be getting a large chunk of these prepayments.
4:35 PM ET: Within the OEM & Other segment, sales of CMP mining GPUs fell to just $24M from FQ3’s $105M. This fits with Nvidia’s guidance for CMP sales to be “negligible” during the quarter.
4:33 PM ET: Nvidia continue fluctuating after-hours: Shares are now down just 0.4%. Will be interesting to see how the stock trades as the call progresses.
4:32 PM ET: Pro Visualization revenue (driven by workstation GPUs) rose 109% Y/Y to $643M, easily beating a $559M consensus.
Auto revenue fell 14% to $125M, missing a $140M consensus. OEM & Other revenue (it includes sales of low-end PC GPUs, mining GPUs and edge AI products) rose 25% to $192M, topping a $178M consensus.
4:29 PM ET: Here’s the earnings release. And here’s the CFO commentary.
4:27 PM ET: FQ4 GAAP EPS was $1.18, above a $1.00 consensus.
GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins respectively came in at 65.4% (up 230 bps Y/Y) and 67% (up 150 bps), close to Nvidia’s guidance. For FQ1, Nvidia is guiding for a GAAP GM of 65.2% and a non-GAAP GM of 67%.
4:25 PM ET: Nvidia is now down 2.3% AH to $258.99. The numbers look solid (particularly the FQ1 guide), but as mentioned before, pre-earnings expectations were pretty high.
4:24 PM ET: Gaming revenue rose 6% Q/Q and 37% Y/Y to $3.42B, topping a $3.36B consensus.
Data Center revenue rose 11% Q/Q and 71% Y/Y to $3.26B, above a $3.18B consensus.
4:22 PM ET: Shares are roughly flat after-hours for now.
4:21 PM ET: Nvidia guides for FQ1 revenue of $8.1B, plus/minus 2%. That’s soundly above a $7.31B consensus.
4:20 PM ET: Results are out. FQ4 revenue of $7.64B beats a $7.42B consensus. Non-GAAP EPS of $1.32 beats a $1.23 consensus.
4:15 PM ET: Consensus sales estimates for Nvidia’s business segments:
Gaming – $3.36B (+34% Y/Y)
Data Center – $3.18B (+67%)
Pro Visualization – $559M (+82%)
Auto – $140M (-3%)
OEM & IP – $178M (+16%)
The quarter’s Gaming and Data Center sales might be more a function of supply rather than demand, given that the latter has been running well ahead of the former for gaming and server GPUs, as well as for some networking products.
4:08 PM ET: As a reminder, Nvidia’s report is expected to arrive at 4:20 PM ET. The call is set to kick off at 5:30.
4:06 PM ET: Nvidia closed nearly unchanged on Wednesday ahead of its report. Shares are down (amid a broader tech selloff) since the company posted a strong FQ3 report on 11/17, but remain up 73% over the last 12 months. Those gains leave Nvidia sporting a $652B market cap heading into its report.
4:02 PM ET: The FactSet consensus is for Nvidia to report January quarter revenue of $7.42B and non-GAAP EPS of $1.23. The April quarter revenue consensus is at $7.31B.
Given the demand strength that Nvidia is seeing across its biggest end-markets, informal expectations are probably higher.
4:00 PM ET: Hi, this is Eric Jhonsa. I’ll be live-blogging Nvidia’s earnings report and call.
