NVIDIA Announces Financial Results for Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2021

NVIDIA Announces Financial Results for Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2021

• Record quarterly and full-year revenue for company, Gaming and Data Center
• Company quarterly revenue of $5.00 billion, up 61 percent year on year
• Company full-year revenue of $16.68 billion, up 53 percent

NVIDIA today reported record revenue for the fourth quarter ended January 31, 2021, of $5.00 billion, up 61 percent from $3.11 billion a year earlier, and up 6 percent from $4.73 billion in the previous quarter. The company’s Gaming and Data Center platforms achieved record revenue for the quarter and year.

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

For fiscal 2021, revenue was a record $16.68 billion, up 53 percent from $10.92 billion a year earlier. GAAP earnings per diluted share were a record $6.90, up 53 percent from $4.52 a year earlier. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $10.00, up 73 percent from $5.79 a year earlier.

“Q4 was another record quarter, capping a breakout year for NVIDIA’s computing platforms,” said 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.

“Demand for GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs is incredible. NVIDIA RTX has started a major upgrade cycle as gamers jump to ray tracing, DLSS and AI.

“Our A100 universal AI data center GPUs are ramping strongly across cloud-service providers and vertical industries. 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. We are seeing the smartphone moment for every industry.

“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 said.

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.

Q4 Fiscal 2021 Summary

Fiscal 2021 Summary

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 percent.
• GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins are expected to be 63.8 percent and 66.0 percent, 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 both expected to be an expense of approximately $50 million.
• GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates are both expected to be 10 percent, plus or minus 1 percent, 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 percent from a year earlier. Full-year revenue was a record $6.70 billion, up 124 percent.
• Announced that the world’s leading OEMs unveiled the first wave of NVIDIA-Certified Systems™ with NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs — the industry’s only 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.

Gaming

• Fourth-quarter revenue was a record $2.50 billion, up 10 percent from the previous quarter and up 67 percent from a year earlier. Full-year revenue was a record $7.76 billion, up 41 percent.
• Announced the company’s biggest-ever laptop launch, with 70+ new laptops for gamers and creators, powered by NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 30 Series Laptop GPUs.
• Expanded the GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs with 60-class offerings — the most popular in the company’s gaming lineup — including the GeForce RTX 3060, starting at just $329, featuring NVIDIA RTX™ ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex and NVIDIA Broadcast.
• Increased momentum for NVIDIA RTX adoption, now available in 36 new titles, including Minecraft, Fortnite and Cyberpunk 2077.
• Announced that Overwatch and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege are adopting NVIDIA Reflex, bringing this low-latency technology to seven of the top 10 competitive-shooter games.
• Announced GeForce NOW™ has come to iOS Safari, giving over 6 million GeForce NOW members access to the service through Safari on iPhone or iPad.

Professional Visualization

• Fourth-quarter revenue was $307 million, up 30 percent from the previous quarter and down 7 percent from a year earlier. Full-year revenue was $1.05 billion, down 13 percent.
• 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 percent from the previous quarter and down 11 percent from a year earlier. Full-year revenue was $536 million, down 23 percent.
• 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 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 2021 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 2022.

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 stock-based compensation expense, acquisition-related and other costs, IP-related costs, 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 of 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.