Nvidia’s Q4 revenues hit $22.1, up 265% from a year ago

Nvidia reported $22.1 billion in revenue today for its fourth fiscal quarter of fiscal 2024 (ending January 31, 2023), easily topping Wall Street’s expectations.

The graphics processing unit (GPU) and AI chip company reported Q4 revenue of $22.1 billion, up 265% year-over-year and 22% sequentially.

Nvidia’s data center segment grew 409% from a year ago and 27% sequentially to $18.4 billion. In the previous quarter, Nvidia reported $18.2 billion in revenue. Full year revenue was $60.9 billion, up 126%.

GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $4.93 up more than 765% from a year ago and up 33% from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $11.93, up 586% from a year ago.

“Accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point. Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations,” said Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, in a statement.

He added, “Our Data Center platform is powered by increasingly diverse drivers — demand for data processing, training and inference from large cloud-service providers and GPU-specialized ones, as well as from enterprise software and consumer internet companies. Vertical industries — led by auto, financial services and healthcare — are now at a multibillion-dollar level.”

And he said, “Nvidia RTX, introduced less than six years ago, is now a massive PC platform for generative AI, enjoyed by 100 million gamers and creators. The year ahead will bring major new product cycles with exceptional innovations to help propel our industry forward. Come join us at next month’s GTC, where we and our rich ecosystem will reveal the exciting future ahead.”

Huang recently returned to the Denny’s restaurant in San Jose, California, where Nvidia began as a startup. Before the earnings, Nvidia’s value in the stock market was $1.667 trillion.

Nvidia’s peers in the stock market are the tech giants: Microsoft, valued at $2.988 trillion; Apple, valued at $2.815 trillion; Google, valued at $1.781 trillion; and Amazon, valued at $1.751 trillion.

Nvidia data center segment includes server GPUs, networking and AI cloud software.

Analysts expected Nvidia to report earnings per share of $4.63 on revenue of $20.62 billion.

For the first fiscal quarter ending January 31, 2024, analysts expected earnings per share of $5 on revenue of $22.17 billion. Nvidia’s after-hours stock price is at $724.1, up 7.32%.

Nvidia said its own outlook for the first quarter of fiscal 2024 is that revenue is expected to be $24 billion, plus or minus 2%. GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins are expected to be 76.3% and 77%, respectively, plus or minus 50 basis points.

GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $3.5 billion and $2.5 billion, respectively. GAAP and non-GAAP other income and expense are expected to be an income of approximately $250 million, excluding gains and losses from non-affiliated investments.

Segment reports

In the data center, Nvidia launched data center and PC AI optimizations for Google’s Gemma language models.

In data centers, it expanded its strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services to host Nvidia DGX Cloud on AWS, and it said Amgen will use the Nvidia DGX SuperPod to power insights into drug discovery and medicine.

Collette Kress, CFO, said in a statement these increases reflect higher shipments of the Nvidia Hopper GPU computing platform used for the training and inference of large language models, recommendation engines, and generative AI applications, along with InfiniBand end-to-end solutions. Data center revenue for fiscal year 2024 was up 217%.

In the fourth quarter, large cloud providers represented more than half of data center revenue, supporting both internal workloads and external customers. Strong demand was driven by enterprise software and consumer internet applications, and multiple industry verticals including automotive, financial services, and healthcare.

Customers across industry verticals access Nvidia AI infrastructure both through the cloud and on-premises. Data center sales to China declined significantly in the fourth quarter due to U.S. government licensing requirements. Data center compute revenue was up 488% from a year ago and up 27% sequentially in the fourth quarter; it was up 244% in the fiscal year.

Networking revenue was up 217% from a year ago and up 28% sequentially in the fourth quarter; it was up 133% in the fiscal year.

Gaming revenue

Nvidia said its gaming division saw $2.9 billion in revenue, flat from the previous quarter and up56% from a year ago.

The year-on-year increases for the quarter and fiscal year reflect higher sell-in to partners following the normalization of channel inventory levels and growing demand. The launch of the GeForce RTX 40 Super Series family of GPUs also contributed to revenue in the quarter.

In the quarter, it released the GeForce RTX 40 Super Series GPUs starting at $599, with DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction and Nvidia Reflex. It announced generative AI capabilities for its installed base of over 100 million RTX AI PCs. And it reached a milestone of 500 AI-powered RTX games and applications using Nvidia DLSS, ray tracing and other Nvidia RTX technologies.

Professional visualization was $463 million in the quarter, up 11% from the previous quarter and up 105% from a yea ago. Nvidia announced the adoption of Nvidia Omniverse by the global automotive-configurator ecosystem. And it launched the Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada Generation GPU.

And fourth-quarter revenue for automotive was $281 million, up 8% from the previous quarter and down 4% from a year ago. Nvidia announced Nvidia Drive deals with Great Wall Motors, Zeekr and Xiaomi using Drive Orin to power intelligent automated driving systems.