NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) released its third quarter earnings report after closing bell tonight, posting adjusted earnings of 39 cents per share on revenue of $1.23 billion, a 16% year over year increase. Analysts had been expecting earnings of 27 cents per share on $1.2 billion in revenue for the quarter.
In the same quarter last year, the company reported earnings of 26 cents per share, beating the consensus estimate, on $1.05 billion in revenue, which was just barely a miss compared to consensus.
Net earnings were 31 cents per share or $173 million, compared to 20 cents per share last year.
Business updates
During the quarter, NVIDIA launched its new gaming GPUs, extended its Maxwell-based processors and continued working with Tesla Motors INc (NASDAQ:TSLA) to push into the big data analytics market. The company also passed 6 million cars on the road with NVIDIA-powered infotainment systems.
“NVIDIA’s focus on creating visual computing platforms for datacenter, mobile and PC drove record revenue this quarter,” said NVIDIA President and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang in a statement. “Growth drivers have kicked in for us on several fronts. High-performance computing, virtualization and web service providers have created demand for our GPU-accelerated datacenter platforms. Automakers are using Tegra to help reinvent the driving experience. And our new Maxwell architecture is a giant leap forward that has triggered a major upgrade cycle by PC gamers.”
The company paid $46 million in cash dividends and received 16.8 million shares as part of a $310 repurchase agreement. NVIDIA expects to return about $600 million to shareholders in the 2016 fiscal year through a combination of share repurchases and dividends.
NVIDIA provides guidance
For the fourth fiscal quarter, NVIDIA expects revenue to be about $1.2 billion, plus or minus 2%. The company projects non-GAAP gross margins of between 55.2% and 55.5%, plus or minus 50 basis points. NVIDIA expects GAAP operating expenses to be between $470 million and non-GAAP operating expenses to be about $422 million, including litigation costs.
The company expects to spend between $40 million and $50 million on capital expenditures.
