Benzinga - by Shanthi Rexaline, Benzinga Editor.
Editor’s note: this story has been updated with additional details.
Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA), which is spearheading the artificial intelligence revolution, reported Wednesday after the close first-quarter results that climbed past lofty expectations amid ever-increasing demand for its AI accelerators. The guidance for the second quarter also exceeded expectations. The company announced a 10-for-1 stock split and hiked its quarterly dividend by 150%. Reacting to the results, Nvidia’s stock rose in after-hours trading.
Nvidia’s Key Q1 Metrics: Revenues climbed to a record, thanks to record Data Center revenue, fueled by strong demand for its high-performance AI accelerators.
| Q1’25 | Consensus* | Guidance | Y-o-Y Growth | Q-o-Q Growth | |
| Revenue | $26.04B | $24.64B | $24B +/- 2% | 262% | +18% |
| Non-GAAP EPS | $6.12 | $5.59 | N/A | +461% | +19% |
| Non-GAAP gross margin |
78.9% | N/A | 77% +/- 50 bps | +2.2 bps | +12.1 bps |
“The next industrial revolution has begun — companies and countries are partnering with NVIDIA to shift the trillion-dollar traditional data centers to accelerated computing and build a new type of data center — AI factories — to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence,” said CEO Jensen Huang.
“AI will bring significant productivity gains to nearly every industry and help companies be more cost- and energy-efficient, while expanding revenue opportunities.”
Ahead of the results, analysts were worried about the imminent launch of its next-gen AI accelerators codenamed Blackwell denting demand for the existing H200 lineup.
Nvidia’s Q3 Performance By Segment: Data Center notched up a record, with revenue rising by over 400%. Within the segment.
| Revenue | Y-o-Y Growth | Q-o-Q Growth | |
| Data Center | $22.56B | +427% | +23% |
| Gaming & AI PC | $2.65B | +18% | -8% |
| Prof. Viz | $427M | -8% | +45% |
| Auto | $329M | +11% | +17% |
Data Center compute revenue jumped 478% year-over-year to $19.4 billion, reflecting higher shipments of Hopper GPU used for training and inferencing with large-language model, recommendations and generative AI applications. Networking revenue rose a modest 242% to $3.2 billion.
Nvidia said its recently unveiled Blackwell platform will fuel a “new era of AI computing at trillion-parameter scale and the Blackwell-powered DGX SuperPOD for generative AI supercomputing.
Nvidia’s Shareholder Returns: Nvidia said its next quarterly dividend amounting to 10 cents per share will be payable on June 28 to shareholders of record as of June 11. The dividend has been hiked by 150%.
The company announced a 10-for-1 stock split, with each record holder of common stock as of the close of market on Thursday, June 6 receiving nine additional shares of common stock, to be distributed after the close of market on Friday, June 7. Trading is expected to commence on a split-adjusted basis at the market open on Monday, June 10.
Nvidia’s Guidance: Nvidia guided to second-quarter revenue of $28 billion, plus or minus 2%. Analysts, on average, currently model revenue of $26.66 billion and earnings per share of $5.95.
The non-GAAP gross margin will likely to come in at 75.5%, plus or minus 50 basis points, the company said. For the full year, the company expects gross margins in the mid-70% range.
Nvidia will host its earnings call at 5 p.m. EDT. Ahead of the results, Paul Marino, chief revenue officer at GraniteShares, said investors will likely hang on to every word from Huang to see how confident he is about future growth.
Deepwater Asset Management’s Gene Munster is bullish on Nvidia and said the company is poised to grow faster for longer.
Rosenblatt’s Hans Mosesmann raised the specter of Nvidia losing unit market share to custom ASICs, AMD's MI300X, and even Gaudi 3 from Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC). But from the sales and value perspective, Nvidia is likely to maintain or even increase its market share due to a focus on platform and software stack, he said.
The company’s strategic shift towards software-centric service vectors, such as Omniverse, digital twins, and AI foundry, marks a transformation in Nvidia’s business model, which is expected to become significantly more focused on software intellectual property. Consequently, the company is poised to extract more value throughout the entire stack, indicating a growth potential.
Market Impact: Ahead of the results, Louis Navellier, founder and chief investment officer of Navellier & Associates, said an Nvidia beat following a weakish or flat market before the report would suggest a large move to the upside for the market in the subsequent session. With the market closing weaker for the day, an Nvidia-induced rebound could be expected on Thursday.
NVDA Price Action: Nvidia stock is up 91.74% year-to-date, outperforming major ETFs such as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) and Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ), and the iShares Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXX). This follows a 240% surge in 2023.
Nvidia shares, which closed Wednesday’s regular session down 0.46% to $949.50, gained 4.1% to $988.36 in after-hours trading, according to Benzinga Pro data.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang With GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchips. Photo courtesy of Nvidia and Shutterstock.
© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.