Nvidia Profit Tops Estimates

(RTTNews) - Graphics chip maker Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) said Thursday after the markets closed that its second quarter profit rose 33% from last year, helped by higher revenue and improved gross margin.

The company's quarterly earnings per share came in above analysts' expectations and its quarterly revenue met analysts' forecast. At the same time, the company gave an upbeat revenue outlook for the current quarter.

"We had a great quarter with strong gains in each of our three growth areas -- Gaming, Datacenter & Cloud, and Mobile," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer of Nvidia.

Nvidia shares are currently gaining 4.12% in after hours trading after closing the day's regular trading session at $17.46, down 18 cents or 1.02%. The shares trade in a 52-week range of $13.11 to $19.73.

Nvidia specializes in graphics processing units for PCs, but recently it has also been making inroads into the mobile computing market through its Tegra chips. Last year, the company launched Tegra 4, the world's fastest mobile SOC and the first quad-core A15 SOC.

For the second quarter ended July 27, 2014, the Santa Clara, California-based company reported net income of $128.0 million or $0.22 per share, compared to $96.4 million or $0.16 per share for the year-ago quarter.

Excluding items, adjusted net income for the second quarter was $173.4 million or $0.30 per share, compared to $133.3 million or $0.23 per share in the prior year quarter.

On average, 27 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to earn $0.20 per share for the second quarter.

Gross margin for the quarter improved to 56.1% from 55.8% a year earlier, while adjusted gross margin increased to 56.4% from 56.3% last year.

Revenue for the second quarter rose 13% to $1.10 billion from $977.23 million in the same quarter last year. Thirty analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $1.10 billion for the second quarter.

Tegra Processor sales jumped 200% from a year ago, led by mobile devices and automobile infotainment systems.

Looking forward, the company said it expects third quarter revenue to be $1.20 billion, plus or minus 2%. Analysts currently expect the company to post revenue of $1.16 billion for the third quarter.

Nvidia will pay its next quarterly cash dividend of $0.085 per share on September 12 to all shareholders of record on August 21.