NVIDIA released its latest earnings report after closing bell tonight, posting non-GAAP earnings of 53 cents per share on $1.43 billion in revenue for its second fiscal quarter. Analysts had been expecting earnings of 37 cents per share on $1.35 billion in revenue. In last year’s second quarter, NVIDIA posted $1.15 billion in sales and 34 cents per share in non-GAAP earnings.
NVIDIA’s earnings soar
GAAP earnings surged from 5 cents per share in last year’s second quarter to 40 cents per share this year. NVIDIA’s GAAP gross margin rose to 57.9%, compared to last year’s 55%. The non-GAAP gross margin increased to 58.1% from the year-ago quarter’s 56.6%.
“Strong demand for our new Pascal-generation GPUs and surging interest in deep learning drove record results,” NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said in a statement. “Our strategy to focus on creating the future where graphics, computer vision and artificial intelligence converge is fueling growth across our specialized platforms — Gaming, Pro Visualization, Datacenter and Automotive.”
During the quarter, the company introduced the first four Pascal gaming GPUs, which it said set new speed and power efficiency records. It also released its first game and its in-game 360-degree capture tool NVIDIA Ansel. Additionally, the company also unveiled its Quadro P600 product and a new rendering technique developed in partnership with SMI.
It paid out $509 million out to shareholders in share buybacks and $124 million in dividends to shareholders during the first half of fiscal 2017.
NVIDIA issues strong guidance
The chip maker said it expects revenue for its third fiscal quarter to be around $1.68 billion, plus or minus 2%, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.425 billion. The company expects its GAAP gross margin to be 57.8% and its non-GAAP gross margin to be 58%, with both percentages varying by plus or minus 50 basis points.
Shares of NVIDIA surged in after-hours trades, climbing by as much as 4.69% to as high as $62.50 following another strong day of trading. The company’s stock closed Thursday’s regular trading hours out at $59.70 per share, an increase of 2.03%. NVIDIA has been outperforming fellow tech stocks Google, Facebook and Amazon recently.
