Nvidia shares, which have more than tripled over the past year, were down 3.5% at $670.10 at about 1:20 p.m. ET. The stock, which had hit a record closing high of $739 last Wednesday, fell 4.4% on Tuesday, its biggest single-day drop since October.

Investors have come to expect only the best from Nvidia, so anything less than a blowout earnings report with strong guidance when the company reports after today’s market close could be perceived negatively by market participants. The trading action in recent days indicates that some investors believe that the optimism surrounding Nvidia, which Goldman Sachs has dubbed the “most important stock on planet earth,” may have gotten exaggerated.

NVIDIA Announces Financial Results for Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2024

• Record quarterly revenue of $22.1 billion, up 22% from Q3, up 265% from year ago
• Record quarterly Data Center revenue of $18.4 billion, up 27% from Q3, up 409% from year ago
• Record full-year revenue of $60.9 billion, up 126%

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today reported revenue for the fourth quarter ended January 28, 2024, of $22.1 billion, up 22% from the previous quarter and up 265% from a year ago.

For the quarter, GAAP earnings per diluted share was $4.93, up 33% from the previous quarter and up 765% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share was $5.16, up 28% from the previous quarter and up 486% from a year ago.

For fiscal 2024, revenue was up 126% to $60.9 billion. GAAP earnings per diluted share was $11.93, up 586% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share was $12.96, up 288% from a year ago.

“Accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point. Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA.

“Our Data Center platform is powered by increasingly diverse drivers — demand for data processing, training and inference from large cloud-service providers and GPU-specialized ones, as well as from enterprise software and consumer internet companies. Vertical industries — led by auto, financial services and healthcare — are now at a multibillion-dollar level.

“NVIDIA RTX, introduced less than six years ago, is now a massive PC platform for generative AI, enjoyed by 100 million gamers and creators. The year ahead will bring major new product cycles with exceptional innovations to help propel our industry forward. Come join us at next month’s GTC, where we and our rich ecosystem will reveal the exciting future ahead,” he said.

NVIDIA will pay its next quarterly cash dividend of $0.04 per share on March 27, 2024, to all shareholders of record on March 6, 2024.Outlook
NVIDIA’s outlook for the first quarter of fiscal 2025 is as follows:

• Revenue is expected to be $24.0 billion, plus or minus 2%.
• GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins are expected to be 76.3% and 77.0%, respectively, plus or minus 50 basis points.
• GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $3.5 billion and $2.5 billion, respectively.
• GAAP and non-GAAP other income and expense are expected to be an income of approximately $250 million, excluding gains and losses from non-affiliated investments.
• GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates are expected to be 17.0%, plus or minus 1%, excluding any discrete items.

Highlights

NVIDIA achieved progress since its previous earnings announcement in these areas:

Data Center

• Fourth-quarter revenue was a record $18.4 billion, up 27% from the previous quarter and up 409% from a year ago. Full-year revenue rose 217% to a record $47.5 billion.
• Launched, in collaboration with Google, optimizations across NVIDIA’s data center and PC AI platforms for Gemma, Google’s groundbreaking open language models.
• Expanded its strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services to host NVIDIA^® DGX™ Cloud on AWS.
• Announced that Amgen will use the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD™ to power insights into drug discovery, diagnostics and precision medicine.
• Announced NVIDIA NeMo™ Retriever, a generative AI microservice that lets enterprises connect custom large language models with enterprise data to deliver highly accurate responses for AI applications.
• Introduced NVIDIA MONAI™ cloud APIs to help developers and platform providers integrate AI into their medical-imaging offerings.
• Announced that Singtel will bring generative AI services to Singaporethrough energy-efficient data centers that the telco is building with NVIDIA Hopper™ architecture GPUs.
• Introduced plans with Cisco to help enterprises quickly and easily deploy and manage secure AI infrastructure.
• Supported the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource pilot program, a major step by the U.S. government toward a shared national research infrastructure.

Gaming

• Fourth-quarter revenue was $2.9 billion, flat from the previous quarter and up 56% from a year ago. Full-year revenue rose 15% to $10.4 billion.
• Launched GeForce RTX™ 40 SUPER Series GPUs, starting at $599, which support the latest NVIDIA RTX™ technologies, including DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction and NVIDIA Reflex.
• Announced generative AI capabilities for its installed base of over 100 million RTX AI PCs, including Tensor-RT™ LLM to accelerate inference on large language models, and Chat with RTX, a tech demo that lets users personalize a chatbot with their own content.
• Introduced microservices for the NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine, allowing game and application developers to integrate state-of-the-art generative AI models into non-playable characters.
• Reached the milestone of 500 AI-powered RTX games and applicationsutilizing NVIDIA DLSS, ray tracing and other NVIDIA RTX technologies.

Professional Visualization

• Fourth-quarter revenue was $463 million, up 11% from the previous quarter and up 105% from a year ago. Full-year revenue rose 1% to $1.6 billion.
• Announced adoption of NVIDIA Omniverse™ by the global automotive-configurator ecosystem.
• Announced the NVIDIA RTX 2000 Ada Generation GPU, bringing the latest AI, graphics and compute technology to compact workstations.

Automotive

• Fourth-quarter revenue was $281 million, up 8% from the previous quarter and down 4% from a year ago. Full-year revenue rose 21% to $1.1 billion.
• Announced further adoption of its NVIDIA DRIVE^® platform, with Great Wall Motors, ZEEKR and Xiaomi using DRIVE Orin™ to power intelligent automated-driving systems and Li Auto selecting DRIVE Thor™ as its centralized car computer.

CFO Commentary
Commentary on the quarter by Colette Kress, NVIDIA’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, is available at https://investor.nvidia.com.

Conference Call and Webcast Information
NVIDIA will conduct a conference call with analysts and investors to discuss its fourth quarter and fiscal 2024 financial results and current financial prospects today at 2 p.m. Pacific time (5 p.m. Eastern time). A live webcast (listen-only mode) of the conference call will be accessible at NVIDIA’s investor relations website, https://investor.nvidia.com. The webcast will be recorded and available for replay until NVIDIA’s conference call to discuss its financial results for its first quarter of fiscal 2025.

Non-GAAP Measures
To supplement NVIDIA’s condensed consolidated financial statements presented in accordance with GAAP, the company uses non-GAAP measures of certain components of financial performance. These non-GAAP measures include non-GAAP gross profit, non-GAAP gross margin, non-GAAP operating expenses, non-GAAP income from operations, non-GAAP other income (expense), net, non-GAAP net income, non-GAAP net income, or earnings, per diluted share, and free cash flow. For NVIDIA’s investors to be better able to compare its current results with those of previous periods, the company has shown a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures. These reconciliations adjust the related GAAP financial measures to exclude acquisition termination costs, stock-based compensation expense, acquisition-related and other costs, IP-related costs, other, gains and losses from non-affiliated investments, interest expense related to amortization of debt discount, and the associated tax impact of these items where applicable. Free cash flow is calculated as GAAP net cash provided by operating activities less both purchases related to property and equipment and intangible assets and principal payments on property and equipment and intangible assets. NVIDIA believes the presentation of its non-GAAP financial measures enhances the user’s overall understanding of the company’s historical financial performance. The presentation of the company’s non-GAAP financial measures is not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the company’s financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP, and the company’s non-GAAP measures may be different from non-GAAP measures used by other companies.