Well, optimistic analysts just weren’t optimistic enough about Nvidia’s (NVDA) fourth quarter 2023 earnings.
The company reported adjusted earnings of $5.16 per share on revenue of $22.1 billion. Analysts were expecting earnings of $4.60 a share and revenue of $20.4 billion.
The contrast with the fourth quarter of 2022 is mind-boggling. In that period Nvidia reported earnings of $0.88 per share on revenue of $6.1 billion. In all of 2022 Nvidia saw revenue of “only” $27 billion.
Guidance? No problem, The company told analysts to expect revenue of $24 billion, plus or minus 2%, in the first quarter of 2024. Wall Street’s prior estimate was $21.9 billion for quarter.
In after hours trading shares of Nvidia were up 7.17% after closing down 2.85% in the regular trading session.
“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,” said CEO Jensen Huang.
The beat on revenue and earnings came even though data center revenue from China fell “significantly” due to U.S. licensing restrictions. The United States has blocked the sale of high-end Nvidia chips to China on fears that they could be used for military applications.
Nvidia is a member of my long-term 50 Stocks Portfolio. That position is up 45% since December 7, 2023.
