Nvidia beats Wall Street’s Q3 expectations with strong graphics chip sales

Nvidia released third-fiscal quarter earnings today that beat Wall Street’s expectations. The world’s biggest standalone graphics chip maker reported that its revenue and earnings both exceeded expectations.

The non-GAAP earnings were 46 cents per diluted share on revenues of $1.3 billion for the third-fiscal quarter ended October 25, versus previous consensus estimates of 25 cents per share on revenues of $1.18 billion. Q3 earnings were up 18 percent year over year, while revenues were up 7 percent.

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“Our record revenue highlights Nvidia’s position at the center of forces that are reshaping our industry,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, in a statement. “Virtual reality, deep learning, cloud computing and autonomous driving are developing with incredible speed, and we are playing an important role in all of them. We continue to make great headway in our strategy of creating specialized visual computing platforms targeted at important growth markets. The opportunities ahead of us have never been more promising.

Nvidia’s stock is up 2 percent in after-hours trading.

For the upcoming fourth-fiscal quarter, Nvidia expects revenue of $1.3 billion and non-GAAP gross profit margins of 57 percent.

Graphics processing unit (GPU) revenue was $1.1 billion in the quarter, up 12 percent from a year ago and 16 percent from the previous quarter. The new GeForce GTX series graphics chips for the PC are the main growth driver. Gaming GPU revenue grew 40 percent from a year ago.

Professional Quadro graphics were $190 million, down 8 percent from a year ago. Datacenter chip revenue was $80 million, down 8 percent from a year ago. And Nvidia’s Tegra processor revenue was $129 million, down 23 percent from a year ago. That’s primarily due to Nvidia’s exit from tablet and smartphone chips. Tegra growth now comes from automotive revenue, which was $79 million. Licensing revenue from Intel was $66 million.

On May 28, Nvidia launched its Shield set-top box entertainment console for the home. It followed up with the release of the GeForce Now cloud gaming service to stream high-end games directly to the set-top box and the TV screen. The set-top box competes with Apple TV and other entertainment boxes for the living room.