Much of the PC industry has been reporting less than strong results, with declines in PC unit sales leading to lower earnings for many of the big players such as Intel, AMD, and even Apple. NVIDIA has bucked this trend though with a strong quarter to start their fiscal year 2017. Revenue for the quarter was $1.305 billion, up 13% from Q1 FY 2016, with growth in NVIDIA’s GPU business, datacenter, automotive, and professional visualization all showing strong sales. Gross margin for the quarter was 57.5%, up 0.8% from a year ago. Operating income was up 39% to $245 million, and net income came in up 46% to $196 million. This resulted in earnings per share of $0.33.

NVIDIA Q1 2017 Financial Results (GAAP)
  Q1'2017 Q4'2016 Q1'2016 Q/Q Y/Y
Revenue (in millions USD) $1305 $1401 $1151 -7% +13%
Gross Margin 57.5% 56.5% 56.7% +1.0% +0.8%
Operating Income (in millions USD) $245 $252 $176 -3% +39%
Net Income $196 $207 $134 -5% +46%
EPS $0.33 $0.35 $0.24 -6% +38%

NVIDIA also reports Non-GAAP results, which exclude stock based compensation, warranty charges, restructuring fees, and other fees. The Non-GAAP results had revenue of $1.305 billion, which is up 13%. Gross margin was 58.6%, which is up 1.7%. Operating income was up 39% to $322 million, and net income was up 41% to $263 million. Non-GAAP earnings per share were $0.46.

NVIDIA Q1 2017 Financial Results (Non-GAAP)
  Q1'2017 Q4'2016 Q1'2016 Q/Q Y/Y
Revenue (in millions USD) $1305 $1401 $1151 -7% +13%
Gross Margin 58.6% 57.2% 56.9% +1.4% +1.7%
Operating Income (in millions USD) $322 $356 $231 -10% +39%
Net Income $263 $297 $187 -11% +41%
EPS $0.46 $0.52 $0.33 -12% +39%

GPUs accounted for most of the revenue, with GPU revenue coming in at $1.08 billion for the quarter. This is a gain of 15% year-over-year, driven by strong growth in the GeForce lineup. NVIDIA has recently announced their latest Pascal architecture with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, with cards coming soon, so I would expect strong sales to continue. Tegra processor revenue for the quarter was $160 million, up 10% compared to Q1 2016, thanks to continued growth in Tegra automotive.

Gaming platform revenue was up 17% to $687 million, consistent with the strong growth in PC gaming compared to the rest of the PC market. Quadro revenue, filed under Professional Visualization, was up 4% to $189 million.

Datacenter revenue which includes Tesla and GRID results were a record $143 million for the quarter, up 63% from a year ago, driven by demand for GPU acceleration for deep learning.

Automotive revenue was $113 million of the $160 million for Tegra, up 47% year-over-year. It appears that NVIDIA made the right call with Tegra by mostly abandoning the mobile market where competition is pretty fierce, and they’ve really gained a good diversified foothold in the automotive sector where higher TDPs can let them drive larger GPUs.

Finally, the licensing deal with Intel, which is going to end soon, accounted for $66 million in revenue.

NVIDIA Quarterly Revenue Comparison (GAAP)
In millions Q1'2017 Q4'2016 Q1'2016 Q/Q Y/Y
GPU $1079 $1178 $940 -8% +15%
Tegra Processor $160 $157 $145 +2% +10%
Other $66 $66 $66 flat flat

NVIDIA has had a pretty successful run since the introduction of their Maxwell products, and these results are all prior to Pascal even coming on the market in a consumer card. NVIDIA’s outlook for Q2 is revenue of $1.35 billion plus or minus 2%, and GAAP gross margin of 57.7%, plus or minus 0.5%.

Source: NVIDIA Investor Relations

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  • poohbear - Thursday, May 12, 2016 - link

    what's most interesting is that nearly half their sales aren't from GPUs! they have really diversified and protected themselves incase PC gaming goes south, but that isn't about to happen any time soon. good on them!
  • Yojimbo - Thursday, May 12, 2016 - link

    Half their sales aren't from GPUs? What do you mean by that?
  • lilmoe - Thursday, May 12, 2016 - link

    Are we reading the same charts?
  • alistair.brogan - Thursday, May 12, 2016 - link

    "GPUs accounted for most of the revenue"

    people don't usually read and comprehend before commenting :)
  • tipoo - Friday, May 13, 2016 - link

    Benefit of the doubt, maybe he meant consumer GPUs. They really did make inroads into HPC, cloud compute, etc.
  • Yojimbo - Friday, May 13, 2016 - link

    Maybe by "GPUs" he meant the "Gaming" segment of their "Revenue by Market Platform" graph. That's what immediately occurred to me but I asked him because I don't really know, and "GPU" covers more than just gaming.
  • ThomasS31 - Friday, May 13, 2016 - link

    Or just irony? :))
  • michael2k - Friday, May 13, 2016 - link

    I think he meant gaming. If you look for a division that accounts for half their revenue then you get gaming platform revenue.

    Gaming platform revenue was up 17% to $687 million, consistent with the strong growth in PC gaming compared to the rest of the PC market.
  • webdoctors - Friday, May 13, 2016 - link

    Its still mostly GPU money, but:

    Automotive revenue was $113 million of the $160 million for Tegra, up 47% year-over-year.

    This is amazing. That means cars are getting a lot smarter, and $113M is a lot of money, ~10% for a company that is primarily known for GPUs. So its a great diversification step and one no one 5 years ago thought would be a market with significant money in it.

    Its cool how companies leverage their strength in one area and apply it to others.
  • The_Assimilator - Friday, May 13, 2016 - link

    It's cool how companies *that aren't run by incompetent morons* leverage their strength in one area and apply it to others. I'm sure if AMD's board weren't absolutely clueless and didn't change every year, their balance sheet would be looking a whole lot better.

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