NVIDIA posts fourth quarter gain of $171.1 million

NVIDIA is getting back on track and announced a fourth quarter net income grew $171.1 million, or 29 cents per share, on revenue of $886.4 million. Income is up from $131.1 million, or 23 cents per share, while revenue is down from $982.5 million, compared to the year-earlier period. Excluding special items like the licensing agreement with Intel, adjusted income was 23 cents per share. Analysts polled by FactSet Research expected NVIDIA to post earnings of 21 cents per share on revenue of $897.7 million. For the current quarter, NVIDIA expects revenue to increase by 6-8 percent from the fourth quarter.

Here's NVIDIA's PR:
-- Revenue increased 5.0 percent to $886.4 million from the third quarter.
-- We believe some analyst estimates may have recorded the Intel settlement as revenue, rather than as a credit to operating expenses, artificially raising revenue consensus.
-- GAAP net income grew to $171.7 million, or $0.29 per diluted share, from the third quarter's $84.9 million, or $0.15 per diluted share.
-- GAAP gross margin increased to a record 48.1 percent from the third quarter's 46.5 percent.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today reported revenue of $886.4 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011 ended Jan. 30, 2011, up 5.0 percent from the prior quarter and down 9.8 percent from $982.5 million from the same period a year earlier.

On a GAAP basis, the company recorded net income of $171.7 million, or $0.29 per diluted share, compared with $84.9 million, or $0.15 per diluted share, in the previous quarter and GAAP net income of $131.1 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, in the same period a year earlier. GAAP gross margin was a record 48.1 percent compared with 46.5 percent in the previous quarter and 44.7 percent in the same period a year earlier.

The company's fourth quarter results include a $57.0 million credit to operating expenses, $37.1 million after tax, as a result of a legal settlement in connection with a new licensing agreement entered into with Intel.

"These strong results underscore the larger story of NVIDIA's transformation," said Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA president and chief executive officer. "Even as we are extending our leadership in visual computing, our investment in mobile computing and parallel computing is now driving our growth.

"Tegra is positioned center stage in the revolution in super phones and tablets, while Tesla is becoming an essential processor for supercomputing. I have never been more excited about NVIDIA's prospects."

Outlook
The outlook for the first quarter of fiscal 2012 is as follows:
-- Revenue is expected to be up 6 to 8 percent from the fourth quarter.
-- GAAP gross margin is expected to be 48.5 to 49.5 percent.
-- GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $327 million.
-- GAAP tax rate is expected to be 16 to 18 percent.
At press time, NVIDIA's (NVDA) shares are down 2.27 percent to $22.85.

NVIDIA preps Kal-El+ for Windows 8 notebooks - 09/13/2011 09:03 AM
German tech site ComputerBase noticed that NVIDIA showed off a Tegra roadmap at the Citi Technology Conference. One slide reveals Kal-El+, an upcoming SoC designed for notebooks with the ARM edition o...

NVIDIA Project Denver to offer 8-core ARM and 256 CUDA cores? - 07/19/2011 09:59 AM
Some more information about NVIDIA's Project Denver chip surfaced by way of BSN:The information we have at hand is that Project Denver CPU core is looking to be very much aligned with T40, i.e. "...

NVIDIA PhysX 3.0 Announced - 06/08/2011 08:24 AM
NVIDIA announced it has finalized PhysX 3.0 PysX is the world

Analyst believes Intel needs NVIDIA patents to fight AMD - 12/01/2010 11:42 AM
UBS Securities analyst Uche Orji believes Intel is likely to offer NVIDIA a cash settlement to resolve the legal differences between the firms, as Intel is said to be wanting to get its hands on some ...

nVIDIA PhysX System Software 9.10.0224 released - 06/30/2010 07:18 PM
NVIDIA released a new PhysX System Software 9.10.0224 driver. Includes the latest PhysX runtime builds to support all released PhysX content. Changes & fixed issues in this release Fixes a bu...