NVIDIA Announces Financial Results for 4Q

NVIDIA reported record revenue for the fourth quarter ended January 31, 2021, of $5 billion, up 61% from $3.11 billion a year earlier, and up 6% from $4.73 billion in the previous quarter. The company’s Data Center platform achieved record revenue for the quarter and year.

GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were a record $2.31, up 51% from $1.53 a year ago, and up 9% from $2.12 in the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $3.10, up 64% from $1.89 a year earlier, and up 7% from $2.91 in the previous quarter.

For fiscal 2021, revenue was a record $16.68 billion, up 53% from $10.92 billion a year earlier. GAAP earnings per diluted share were a record $6.90, up 53% from $4.52 a year earlier. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $10, up 73% from $5.79 a year earlier.

“Q4 was another record quarter, capping a breakout year for NVIDIA’s computing platforms,” says Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Our pioneering work in accelerated computing has led to gaming becoming the world’s most popular entertainment, to supercomputing being democratized for all researchers and to AI emerging as the most important force in technology.

“Our A100 universal AI data center GPUs are ramping strongly across cloud-service providers and vertical industries," Huang continues. "Thousands of companies across the world are applying NVIDIA AI to create cloud-connected products with AI services that will transform the world’s largest industries.

“Mellanox has expanded our footprint across the data center. And we are making good progress toward acquiring Arm, which will create enormous new opportunities for the entire ecosystem,” he adds.

NVIDIA paid quarterly cash dividends of $99 million in the fourth quarter and $395 million in fiscal 2021. It will pay its next quarterly cash dividend of $0.16 per share on March 31, 2021, to all shareholders of record on March 10, 2021.

NVIDIA’s outlook for the first quarter of fiscal 2022 is as follows:

• Revenue is expected to be $5.30 billion, plus or minus 2%;
• GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins are expected to be 63.8% and 66%, respectively, plus or minus 50 basis points;
• GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $1.67 billion and $1.20 billion, respectively;
• GAAP and non-GAAP other income and expense are expected to be an expense of approximately $50 million; and
• GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates are both expected to be 10%, plus or minus 1%, excluding any discrete items. GAAP discrete items include excess tax benefits or deficiencies related to stock-based compensation, which are expected to generate variability on a quarter-by-quarter basis.

Highlights 

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

Data Center

Fourth-quarter revenue was a record $1.90 billion, slightly above the previous quarter and up 97% from a year earlier. Full-year revenue was a record $6.70 billion, up 124%.

Announced that OEMs unveiled the first wave of NVIDIA-Certified Systems with NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs (graphics processing units)—accelerated servers tested for machine learning and data analytics workloads.

Introduced support for Google Cloud’s Anthos on bare metal for NVIDIA DGX A100 systems, enabling enterprises to create hybrid cloud infrastructure more easily.

Enhanced the NVIDIA Clara application framework for AI-powered healthcare and life sciences with the launch of Clara Discovery for computational drug discovery, providing dozens of pre-trained models, the MONAI open-source medical AI training framework, and federated learning for the industry to collaborate on building models without sharing data.

Collaborated with Amazon Web Services to bring the NVIDIA NGC software hub to AWS Marketplace.

Professional Visualization

Fourth-quarter revenue was $307 million, up 30% from the previous quarter and down 7% from a year earlier. Full-year revenue was $1.05 billion, down 13%.

Announced that NVIDIA Omniverse—a real-time simulation and collaboration platform for 3D production pipelines—is now in open beta.

Automotive

Fourth-quarter revenue was $145 million, up 16% from the previous quarter and down 11% from a year earlier. Full-year revenue was $536 million, down 23%.

Announced that NVIDIA DRIVE autonomous driving technology is powering a range of next-gen electric vehicles from carmakers SAIC and Nio; robotaxi-maker Zoox; and cabless truck-maker Einride.

Announced that NVIDIA is powering the new Mercedes-Benz AI cockpit, featuring the MBUX Hyperscreen, which will debut in the all-electric Mercedes-Benz EQS in the first half of 2021.

Expanded the NVIDIA DRIVE sensor ecosystem with new solutions from lidar makers Baraja, Hesai, Innoviz, Magna and Ouster.

CFO Commentary

Commentary on the quarter by Colette Kress, NVIDIA’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, is available here.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.