This article is more than 1 year old

Internet of ... cars? Auto infotainment systems boost Nvidia's Tegra biz

Chipmaker's CPU unit showed double-digit growth in Q3

Another storming quarter for Nvidia saw the chipmaker surpass Wall Street's expectations for both revenue and earnings for the third quarter of its fiscal 2015.

Nvidia posted revenues of $1.23bn for the three months ending on October 26, 2014, a 16 per cent increase over the same period a year ago and an 11 per cent increase sequentially.

Net income was likewise solid at $173m, which was up 45 per cent from the year-ago quarter and up 35 per cent from the previous sequential quarter. The end result was earnings of $0.31 per diluted share, which beat the analysts' average estimate by a couple of pennies.

"Growth drivers have kicked in for us on several fronts," Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said in a canned statement. "High-performance computing, virtualization and web service providers have created demand for our GPU-accelerated data center platforms. Automakers are using Tegra to help reinvent the driving experience. And our new Maxwell architecture is a giant leap forward that has triggered a major upgrade cycle by PC gamers."

Nvidia's GPU business still provides the bulk of its revenue. The group brought in $991m in sales for the quarter, a 13 per cent year-on-year increase. PC gaming was the largest driver of those gains, the company said, with revenue from GeForce GPUs for gaming desktops and notebooks up 36 per cent.

But it's the company's CPU business that's growing the fastest. Revenues from Nvidia's ARM-based Tegra system-on-chip (SoC) components were up 51 per cent in Q3 versus a year ago, driven by sales to makers of mobile devices and embedded systems. Revenue from automotive infotainment systems almost doubled, year-on-year.

Of course, those CPU revenues only amounted to $165m for the quarter, which isn't a patch on the billions that Qualcomm rakes in for its chips. But it shows that Nvidia is making good progress on diversifying its product line and its processors are still making inroads into emerging mobile markets.

In another encouraging sign, Nvidia's operating expenditure once again remained more or less flat, growing by 2 per cent from the year-ago quarter and 1 per cent sequentially.

Gladdened by the news, Wall Street sent Nvidia's stock up slightly on the news and then up another 1.5 per cent after the closing bell. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like