shares of Nvidia (NVDA -2.85%) Shares rose 9.1% in after-hours trading on Wednesday after the graphics chip specialist released a strong report for its fiscal fourth quarter of 2024 (ending Jan. 28).
The main reason for the stock price rise was that sales and profits for the quarter easily exceeded Wall Street expectations, and analysts’ consensus estimates for sales and bottom line profits for the first quarter of 2025 were significantly higher. by.
Nvidia’s key quarterly numbers
| metric | 4th quarter of 2023 | 4th quarter of 2024 | Change from previous year |
|---|---|---|---|
| revenue | $6.05 billion | $22.1 billion | 265% |
| GAAP operating income | $1.26 billion | $13.62 billion | 983% |
| GAAP net income | $1.41 billion | $12.29 billion | 769% |
| Adjusted net income | $2.17 billion | $12.84 billion | 491% |
| GAAP earnings per share | $0.57 | $4.93 | 765% |
| Adjusted earnings per share | $0.88 | $5.16 | 486% |
Data source: Nvidia. YOY = change from previous year. GAAP = Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. The fourth quarter of fiscal 2024 ended on January 28, 2024.
Investors should focus on adjusted numbers because they do not include one-time items.
Wall Street was expecting adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $4.63 on revenue of $20.62 billion, and NVIDIA met both expectations with flying colors. The company also beat its own forecast of adjusted EPS of $4.46 on sales of $20 billion.
Platform performance
| platform | 2024 Q4 Revenue | Change from previous year | QoQ change |
|---|---|---|---|
| data center | $18.4 billion | 409% | 27% |
| game | $2.9 billion | 56% | flat |
| professional visualization | $463 million | 105% | 11% |
| car | $281 million | (Four%) | 8% |
| OEM and others | $90 million | 7% | twenty three% |
| total | $22.1 billion | 265% | twenty two% |
Data source: Nvidia. OEM = original equipment manufacturer. OEMs and the like are not target market platforms. YOY = change from previous year. QOQ = quarterly ratio.
Data center revenue set a new record for the quarter, but continued to grow as a percentage of the company’s total revenue. Therefore, this artificial intelligence (AI)-driven business is increasingly driving overall performance. In the fourth fiscal year, this segment accounted for 83% of total revenue.
The division’s performance is even more impressive given that, as Colette Kress noted in her CFO commentary, “US government licensing requirements led to a significant decline in sales to China in the fourth quarter.” As I reported when government chip export restrictions were expanded in October 2023, China has historically accounted for about 20% to 25% of Nvidia’s data center revenue.
Kress said the strong growth in data centers is due to the [AI] training and [AI] End-to-end inference for large-scale language models, recommendation engines, generative AI applications and InfiniBand [networking] solution. ”
Generative AI is the technology behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, which exploded in popularity after its full public release in late 2022.
CEO’s statement
Here’s a lot of what CEO Jensen Huang said on the earnings call:
Accelerated computing and generative AI have reached a tipping point. Demand is rapidly increasing across companies, industries, and countries around the world. Our data center platform is driven by increasingly diverse drivers: the demand for data processing; [AI] training and [AI] Inference from leading cloud service providers and GPUs [graphics processing unit]- Includes enterprise software and consumer internet companies as well as professional companies. Vertical industries centered around automobiles, financial services, and healthcare are now reaching multi-billion dollar levels.
guidance
Management expects sales to be $24 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2025 (ending in late April), representing 234% year-over-year growth. It also (albeit indirectly by providing a large amount of input) led to adjusted EPS of $5.41, or 396% growth.
A closer look at the report reveals that Wall Street was modeling first-quarter 2025 adjusted EPS of $4.99 and revenue of $22.1 billion, so the company’s outlook easily beats both expectations. Ta.
Another great quarter
So NVIDIA delivered another strong quarterly report. That guidance suggests that management is incredibly optimistic that the voracious demand for the company’s products and services will continue, thanks to its aggressive adoption of AI.
