Nvidia's (Nasdaq: NVDA) stock has been on a spectacular multiyear run. Over the last five years, it's up by 1,600%. It's gained 190% from the December 2018 lows. During the coronavirus crash, it dropped 35%, but since it bottomed on March 18, it's up by more than 100%. It's also exceeded its pre-coronavirus peak by more than 15% which puts it in an exclusive club.
For the tech industry, chip stocks are a leading indicator, as they are an essential component of all types of products. Nvidia is even more so because its chips are used in some of the most cutting-edge and innovative areas including self-driving cars, data centers, graphics for video games, cryptocurrency mining, and artificial intelligence.
Inside the Numbers
Like many of the leading tech stocks in the past couple of weeks, Nvidia's results are showing that the coronavirus hasn't affected their business in a meaningful way. The company reported first-quarter net income of $917 million which was above analysts' expectations of $890 million and well-above last year's first-quarter net income of $394 million.
Revenue increased to $3.08 billion from last year's $2.22 billion and beat consensus expectations of $2.97 billion. The results were also above Nvidia's guidance of $2.94 to $3.06 billion as well. Following earnings, its stock was mostly unchanged as it digests its 100% gain over the past two months.
Gaming and Data Center
Gaming and data centers are Nvidia's two largest revenue drivers. Strong growth in both groups indicates that these are unaffected by the pandemic. If anything, more people working and students doing their schooling online mean heavier bandwidth and demand for chips that power servers and cloud processes. Nvidia's customers include the largest cloud companies like Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), and Salesforce (Nasdaq: CRM). This quarter marked the first time that data center revenue exceeded the $1 billion mark.
It's possible that in the next quarter, data center revenue will exceed gaming. Gaming revenue for the quarter was $1.34 billion, a 30% increase from the previous quarter. Gaming has also seen a surge in popularity as many forms of recreation have been displaced.
Nvidia's guidance for the next quarter was for revenue between $3.58 billion and $3.72 billion which was above analysts' forecasts of $3.25 billion. Nvidia's performance is not surprising when considering that all the other cloud stocks demonstrated impressive revenue growth and Intel also reported strong sales for its data center unit. Currently, cloud computing is a $100 billion industry, and Nvidia sees it growing at a 40% rate into a $1 trillion industry. Like the people who profited from the gold mining rush by selling clothes and equipment to the miners, Nvidia is selling tools to the companies battling for market share in this expanding field.