Nvidia Corp on Wednesday gave a bullish forecast on robust demand for chips used by video gamers and data center operators.
Revenue would be about US$5.3 billion in the period ending in April, the Santa Clara, California-based company said in a statement.
That compares with an average analyst estimate of US$4.5 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Photo: Bloomberg
The chipmaker is enjoying a surge in orders for PC gaming gear from consumers stuck at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic and looking for entertainment.
Nvidia chips are also important components in machines that run the code needed to create bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. The price of bitcoin has soared in recent months.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) has built on the company’s strength in PC gaming graphics chips by taking the company into new markets, such as artificial intelligence processing in data centers and components for autonomous vehicles.
Results from Nvidia, the largest US chipmaker by market capitalization, are a barometer of confidence at some of the biggest tech companies. Cloud providers such as Google and Amazon.com Inc use Nvidia graphics chips to help power some of the most widely used services on the Internet.
That business has been choppy lately, with spikes in orders followed by lulls as customers use up stockpiles of chips.
Data center chip sales jumped 97 percent to US$1.9 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter from a year earlier. Revenue from gaming was US$2.5 billion in the quarter, up 67 percent from the same period last year.
During previous run-ups in the price of cryptocurrencies, Nvidia experienced surging demand, followed by crashes sparked by price drops and the switch to more customized technology. The company has tried to minimize this volatility by offering different chips specifically for crypto mining. That reduces the risk that its gaming chips are dumped back into the market when crypto customers realize that they do not need them.
An increase in online activity and purchases of equipment for working from home triggered a sharp rebound in chip demand last year. That caught some customers off guard, especially automakers. New orders flooded in and the global semiconductor supply chain is still trying to catch up.
Nvidia outsources production to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co, which are swamped with orders. That is limiting Nvidia’s ability to meet demand.
“Throughout our supply chain, stronger demand globally has limited the availability of capacity and components, particularly in Gaming,” Chief financial officer Colette Kress said in a statement posted on the company’s Web site.
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