Chip demand remains high
Nvidia doubles profit
02/16/2022 11:36 p.m
Production problems of the car manufacturers are slowing down Nvidia’s business in this area, but otherwise the fourth business quarter is going brilliantly for the semiconductor manufacturer. The forecasts for the current period are even better.
The need for chips for artificial intelligence and graphics cards is driving the business of semiconductor specialist Nvidia to record levels. Sales increased in the fourth business quarter, which ended in January, by 53 percent to a good 7.6 billion dollars (6.7 billion euros). The bottom line is that the profit of three billion dollars was even more than twice as high as in the same quarter of the previous year, as Nvidia announced after the US stock market closed on Wednesday.
For the current quarter, Nvidia announced a further increase in sales to 8.1 billion dollars – while the analysts had expected around 7.3 billion dollars. However, the quarterly result is burdened by a payment of 1.36 billion dollars after the failure of the purchase of the chip designer Arm. It’s the advance that Arm’s owner, Japanese technology group Softbank, is allowed to keep. In the gaming sector, Nvidia sales of graphics cards increased by 37 percent to $3.42 billion last quarter. The data center business is almost as big, jumping 72 percent to $3.26 billion.
Nvidia’s chips and software are used for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications. For example, the Facebook group Meta uses Nvidia systems in its new supercomputer. Meanwhile, auto sales fell 14 percent to $125 million. Nvidia has deals with various car companies to equip future generations of vehicles with computers for driving assistants and self-driving cars. Recently, however, the business has been slowed down by production problems in the automotive industry in view of the global shortage of components.