Nvidia sales outlook tops analyst views, shares rise 8%

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Chip maker Nvidia Corp on Thursday forecast sales for its current fiscal year that topped Wall Street expectations, sending its shares up eight percent in late trading.

The California-based company said it expected revenues for its fiscal 2020 year to be "flat or down slightly" from the 11.7 billion U.S. dollars it recorded in the just-ended fiscal year. The forecast exceeds the 10.8 billion U.S.dollars in revenue that analysts expected, according to Reuters data.

Fourth-quarter revenues fell for Nvidia, which supplies chips for gaming computers and artificial intelligence work and is coming off record highs early last when demand for its chips for mining cryptocurrencies sent sales soaring.

The just-ended fiscal year was Nvidia's best ever, with sales up more than 21 percent from a year earlier, but sputtered to what chief executive Jensen Huang called a "disappointing finish."

Nvidia reported profit for the fiscal fourth quarter ended January 27 above Wall Street estimates.

Its outlook for the 2020 fiscal first quarter missed analyst expectations only slightly and its data center business did not fall as far as analysts had feared.

"Not-as-bad-as-feared has replaced the better-than-expected for a lot of companies this earnings season," analyst Ivan Feinseth of Tigress Financial Partners said.

Nvidia has entered into newer growth areas such as data centers and self-driving cars as it looks beyond its bread-and-butter business of selling chips that enhance video game graphics.

Nvidia's data center business brought in 679 million U.S. dollars in the fourth quarter. That was lower than the year before, but slightly ahead of analyst expectations, according to data from FactSet.

Fourth-quarter total revenue fell to 2.21 from 2.91 billion U.S. dollars but came above its already lowered estimate of 2.20 billion U.S. dollars. The company's net income fell to 567 million U.S. dollars in the fourth quarter.

Its shares were up eight percent to 167.40 dollars in late trading, after closing up 1.09 percent at 154.53 dollars in regular trade on Nasdaq.

Source(s): Reuters