NVIDIA Announces Record Q4 2018 Results
by Brett Howse on February 8, 2018 10:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- NVIDIA
- Financial Results
This afternoon NVIDIA announced yet another record quarter, with revenues of $2.91 billion, which is up 34% from a year ago. Gross margin was 61.9%, and operating income was up 46% to $1.07 billion. Net income for the quarter was $1.12 billion, up 71% from a year ago, which provided diluted earnings per share of $1.78.
| NVIDIA Q4 2018 Financial Results (GAAP) | |||||
| Q4'2018 | Q3'2018 | Q4'2017 | Q/Q | Y/Y | |
| Revenue | $2911M | $2636M | $2173M | +10% | +34% |
| Gross Margin | 61.9% | 59.5% | 60.0% | +2.4% | +1.9% |
| Operating Income | $1073M | $895M | $733M | +20% | +46% |
| Net Income | $1118M | $838M | $655M | +33% | +71% |
| EPS | $1.78 | $1.33 | $0.99 | +34% | +80% |
For their 2018 fiscal year, NVIDIA racked up $9.71 billion in revenue, which is up 41% from a year ago. Earnings per share for the year were $4.82, up 88%.
NVIDIA has kind of hit a magic sweet spot, where they had been diversifying into growing markets, but have found themselves also swept up in the GPU fed craze of cryptocurrency, feeding their core business as well.
Gaming, which is their GeForce lineup, had revenues for the quarter of $1.74 billion, up almost $400 million from a year ago. But for the entire fiscal year, they haven’t even refreshed their lineup, although the Pascal series of GPUs have certainly been strong in terms of performance and efficiency. But you’d be lucky to find any in stock thanks to the copious number of GPUs purchased for mining coins. It’s not been ideal for gamers, but for NVIDIA’s R&D, and their investors, it’s been welcome news.
Professional Visualization was also up about 13% to $254 million. Growth here was attributed to the ultra-high-end and high-end desktop workstations, such as the Quadro GP100 launched earlier in the fiscal year.
NVIDIA’s foray into the datacenter is also paying off with substantial growth. Datacenter includes Tesla, GRID, and DGX systems, and for the quarter, NVIDIA saw revenues of $606 million, which are up 105% from a year ago.
Automotive was up a more modest 3% to $132 million, and we’ve seen NVIDIA get some big design wins with large automotive companies with their DRIVE platforms.
Automotive is powered by Tegra, and including the automotive sales, Tegra brought in $450 million this quarter, and the very popular Nintendo Switch is likely a nice chunk of that.
OEM and IP was $180 million for the quarter, which is up about 2.2%, and NVIDIA stated their licensing agreement with Intel concluded in the first quarter of fiscal year 2018.
| NVIDIA Quarterly Revenue Comparison (GAAP) ($ in millions) |
|||||
| In millions | Q4'2018 | Q3'2018 | Q4'2017 | Q/Q | Y/Y |
| Gaming | $1739 | $1561 | $1348 | +11% | +29% |
| Professional Visualization | $254 | $239 | $225 | +6% | +13% |
| Datacenter | $606 | $501 | $296 | +21% | +105% |
| Automotive | $132 | $144 | $128 | -8% | +3% |
| OEM & IP | $180 | $191 | $176 | -6% | +2% |
For Q1 2019, NVIDIA is forecasting revenues of $2.9 billion, plus or minus 2%.
Source: NVIDIA Investor Relations
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maximumGPU - Friday, February 9, 2018 - link
Agreed, his comment was utter non-sense. Every quarter it's the gaming department that brings in the most revenue, and he claims nvidia doesn't care lol. As you explained, games drove gpus more powerful to the point where they started being used for tasks that could exploit them. Cudos to nvidia for seeing the huge potential of that trend and bringing in things like CUDA, AI applications, etc..mode_13h - Wednesday, February 21, 2018 - link
GPGPU is older than CUDA and OpenCL. Check out Brook, Sh, Cg, etc. if you don't believe me.gpgpu.org used to be the main new source for developments in the field. It's still up and searchable, but I can't see a way to see beyond one page of history or search results. I guess you can use archive.org to see old postings. I know it goes back at least as far as 2003.
Credit where it's due: Nvidia definitely foresaw the AI trend and was among the first to get on board.
niva - Friday, February 9, 2018 - link
I actually agree with his comment. The question is, after the crypto-currency mining slows down, or upon release of the next gen of cards, things may change drastically in the entire market in terms of supply and demand. Sure you can go balls deep into the current market thinking it won't turn, but if it does, you're talking billions of dollars of investments with no way to recoup it. From the business perspective it's best to just go steady. Put out what you know there's steady demand for. Let the market dictate the prices. If this trend persists adjust slowly.You guys think this is a joke? It's how huge businesses have went bankrupt in the past.
CiccioB - Saturday, February 10, 2018 - link
None has negated that the mining business is causing a stress on GPU market with many questions about the future.The only possible (not meaning mandatory) solution is increasing the production of whatever now is a bottleneck for the supply chain.
There are no other solutions like believing in different products for gaming and for mining. They use the same resources and so the HW must be the same.
And I do not see any OEM creating a "mining Tesla card without video connectors" to sell at half the price, the only way to make miners buy them instead of the "normal video cards" they can then resell. It would be stupid for their own business (less margins) and would not really resolve the problem if the bottleneck is the produced number of GPUs or ram chips.
I think, by reading this kind of comment, that many have not understood much of the GPU market during these years.
cocochanel - Saturday, February 10, 2018 - link
mapesdhs has a few solid points. Most if not all PC games today are console ports. Many loaded with DRM's like Denuvo and the like. And most games, regardless of platform, are mediocre. PS4 has had a few good titles in the last 10 years, but that's about it.VR was supposed to take off but so far it hasn't happened. As the cost of headsets it coming down, hopefully we'll see a change.
Game developers are still stuck in DX11, even though DX12 and Vulkan are vastly superior.
And as Sn3akr points out, Nvidia and AMD complain about miners but are happy with the profits.
So why would they increase supply ?
The really sad part is that with the exception of Intel, here in the West we don't make stuff anymore. We just "design". OLED screens ? Samsung. SoC's ? TSMC and Samsung. Memory ? SSD's ? NVME's ? The same story. Final assembly ? You know the answer. If these companies charge as much as they want, who do we blame it on ? They got us by the balls and gouge us the same way Intel and Nvidia have been doing it for so long.
And that's not about to change anytime soon. Look at Intel for example. Instead of going after TSMC and Samsung, they go after Nvidia. Way to go.
cocochanel - Saturday, February 10, 2018 - link
Oh, I forgot abut Apple. They "design" a lot of stuff too. They have over 100 billion sitting in the bank and even more stashed away in offshore accounts. With that kind of money, they could build some plants here in the good old USA, develop their own technologies and make a lot of stuff.But why do that ?
Instead, let's sell overpriced smartphones and 15 inch laptops for 3000 bucks. But hey, they did built a nice oval campus. To "design" more stuff.
mode_13h - Wednesday, February 21, 2018 - link
How can you possibly be so hostile to design? Everything that makes one CPU (or GPU) good and another bad is down to design. Same with software. Or cars, even.Design actually matters. When people talk about these tech companies designing, they don't just mean the product packaging or the case.
mode_13h - Wednesday, February 21, 2018 - link
They want to increase supply, because most of the margin from recent price increases is going to board partners and the retail channel - not AMD and Nvidia. The best way for the chip makers to increase revenues is to make more chips.And I'm quite suspicious that the real villain behind lagging quality in PC games is the rise of the iGPU. These things are much weaker than even the GPUs of the consoles you deride. Even the latest AMD APU can barely keep up with a GTX 1030.
BTW, Intel *does* have a foundry business. Way to go on your research.
cpy - Friday, February 9, 2018 - link
Gaming my ass, miners take all the cards nowadays.milkod2001 - Friday, February 9, 2018 - link
Does it matter who do you sell your products to? NO