Nvidia provides strong revenue outlook on demand for computer chips

Nvidia reported fourth-quarter earnings and sales on Wednesday that beat analyst expectations and provided a strong outlook for the current quarter. The stock rose under 1% in extended trading.

Here’s how the chipmaker did versus Refinitiv consensus expectations for the quarter ending January:

EPS: $1.32, adjusted, versus $1.22 expectedRevenue: $7.64 billion, versus $7.42 billion expected

Nvidia said it expects to report $8.10 billion in the first quarter, higher than analyst expectations of $7.29 billion. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement that the company is seeing “exceptional” demand because its chips are useful for artificial intelligence and other intensive applications.

Nvidia was on a big run in 2021, but it is down about 10% year-to-date as investors are looking for safer investments in an inflationary environment.

Nvidia reported $3.26 billion in sales from its data center business, up 71% annually.

Nvidia has been boosted as cloud providers and enterprises turn to the kind of graphics processors Nvidia makes for artificial intelligence applications. During the quarter, Nvidia announced that Facebook parent Meta would use its chips for artificial intelligence research, for example.

Gaming is still Nvidia’s largest market, as its latest GeForce graphics processors are ideal for playing advanced computer games. The gaming business rose 37% year-over-year to $3.42 billion.

Nvidia was in talks to purchase Arm, a chip technology company, from SoftBank, but the company announced earlier this month that the transaction had fallen apart under regulatory scrutiny.

Nvidia said it expected a $1.36 billion charge to operating expenses as a result of the Arm deal failing to close.