Second-quarter data-center sales top Wall Street view by more than $2 billion, and revenue forecast comes in $3 billion higher than expected, as demand explodes for gear that assists generative-AI tasks
Nvidia Corp. shares rallied in the extended session Wednesday after the maker of graphics processing units that is leading the AI-hardware charge reported a 141% surge in data-center sales and record results.
Nvidia $(NVDA)$ shares rallied over 5% after hours, following a 3.2% rise in the regular session to close at $471.16, less than 1% below the stock's record closing high of $474.94, set on July 18, according to FactSet data. A close at such levels on Thursday would mean a new record high for the stock.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company reported second-quarter net income of $6.19 billion, or $2.48 a share, compared with $656 million, or 26 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted earnings, which exclude stock-based compensation expenses and other items, were $2.70 a share, compared with 51 cents a share in the year-ago period.
Revenue surged to a record $13.51 billion from $6.7 billion in the year-ago quarter, driven by a 141% leap in data-center revenue to $10.32 billion.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast earnings of $2.08 a share on revenue of $11.19 billion, and data-center sales of $8.03 billion.
Nvidia forecast third-quarter revenue of $15.68 billion to $16.32 billion.
Analysts had estimated third-quarter earnings of $2.40 a share on revenue of $12.59 billion, with $9.15 billion of that from data-center sales. For the year, Wall Street, on average, expects earnings of $8.29 a share on $44.54 billion in revenue, a 71% increase from fiscal 2023's $26.97 billion, with $32.41 billion of that in data-center sales.
"Companies worldwide are transitioning from general-purpose to accelerated computing and generative AI," said Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive of Nvidia, in a statement. "Leading enterprise IT system and software providers announced partnerships to bring Nvidia AI to every industry. The race is on to adopt generative AI."
Right after the report, Lopez Research analyst Maribel Lopez told MarketWatch that Nvidia's "numbers prove just how much money there is in the AI hardware opportunity."
"While cloud companies are selling AI services, Nvidia is walking away with a bulk of the revenue and profits," Lopez said. "Nvidia's minting cash with no apparent slowdown in sight."
Nvidia shares are up more than 222% on a year-to-date basis, compared with a 42% surge in the PHLX Semiconductor Index SOX, a 15.5% rise by the S&P 500 SPX and a 31% gain by the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite COMP over the same span.
Nvidia, which has stood as the largest publicly traded chip maker by market cap since February, having traded that title back and forth with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (2330.TW) since late 2020, closed above the $1 trillion mark officially for the first time on June 14. Nvidia ended Wednesday with a valuation of $1.164 trillion, and one analyst thinks it could be the most valuable U.S. company in a few years.
Nvidia currently stands as the fifth-largest U.S. company by market cap behind Apple Inc. $(AAPL)$, Microsoft Corp. $(MSFT)$, Alphabet Inc. $(GOOGL)$(GOOGL) and Amazon.com Inc. $(AMZN)$. While all have a big stake in the future of AI, the latter three companies are scrambling to outfit their cloud-service provider data centers with new AI gear amid tight supply.
While Nvidia is considered the overwhelming leader in the AI chip market, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. $(AMD)$ is considered a distant second. AMD's data-center numbers declined in the company's recent earnings report, although the company didn't have comparable AI chip sales in its results.
Shares of AMD and TSMC were both up more than 3% after hours Wednesday.
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