Nvidia
Nvidia Corp. shares eased off their record highs in the extended session Thursday, following an earlier after-hours gain, as the chip maker reported quarterly results and an outlook that topped Wall Street estimates.
Nvidia shares fell 2% after hours, following a 2% gain right after the earnings release. Shares booked a 1.7% gain to close at a record high of $260.13 in the regular session.
The company reported first-quarter net income of $1.24 billion, or $1.98 a share, compared with $507 million, or 79 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted earnings were $2.05 a share. Nvidia, on average, was expected to post adjusted earnings of $1.46 a share, while Estimize, a software platform that uses crowdsourcing from hedge-fund executives, brokerages, buy-side analysts and others, had called for earnings of $1.77 a share.
Revenue rose to $3.21 billion from $1.94 billion in the year-ago period, while Wall Street had expected revenue of $2.89 billion and Estimize expected revenue of $2.97 billion.
“We had a strong quarter with growth across every platform,” said Jensen Huang, Nvidia founder and chief executive, said in a statement. “Our data-center business achieved another record and gaming remained strong. At the heart of our opportunity is the incredible growth of computing demand of AI, just as traditional computing has slowed.”
Nvidia reported 68% growth in sales of gaming cards to $1.72 billion, compared with the $1.61 billion expected by analysts. Similarly, Nvidia’s data-center sales jumped 71% to $701 million, compared with the $656 million forecast from analysts.
Auto-related revenue rose 4% to $145 million, rather than a forecast 0.4% slip to $139.5 million from Wall Street. Data visualization revenue grew 22% to $251 million, compared with the expected $248.1 million.
For the second quarter, Nvidia estimates revenue of $3.04 billion to $3.16 billion, while analysts expect revenue of $2.95 billion.
Of the 32 analysts who cover Nvidia, 17 have buy or overweight ratings, 13 have hold ratings and two have sell or underweight ratings, with an average price target of $252.68, or 2.9% below Thursday’s close.