The computer chip giant Nvidia posted better than expected quarterly gains on Wednesday, thanks to a surge in demand for its computer graphics chips.
For its fourth quarter, ended January 25, Nvidia reported profit of $193.1 million, 35 cents per share, up 31 percent from $146.9 million, or 25 cents a share, that is posted the previous year.
The company posted revenue of $1.25 billion for the quarter (a 9 percent gain), which was higher than Wall Street expectations of $1.20 billion.
For fiscal 2015 Nvidia posted revenue of a record $4.68 billion, a 13 percent gain from $4.13 billion a year earlier.
Source: Nvidia Newsroom.
The results were significantly driven by graphic chip sales. However, the company’s mobile-chip segment, Tegra, reported a drop in revenue. This is mainly because a lot of new smartphones and tablets are not using Tegra chips anymore.
Nvidia graphic chip sales gained 13 percent, up to $1.07 billion, while Tegra sales fell by 15 percent to $112 million.
Shares soared by 5 percent in after-hours trading to $21.76.
The company will return approximately $600 million to shareholders through ongoing quarterly cash dividends and share repurchases in 2016.
“Momentum is accelerating in each of our market-specialized platforms, driving record revenue in the quarter and full year,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer of NVIDIA.
“GeForce and SHIELD are extending our reach in the rapidly growing global gaming market. Our DRIVE auto-computing platform is at the center of the advance toward self-driving cars. GRID is enabling enterprises to finally virtualize graphics-intensive applications. And our Tesla accelerated computing platform is helping to ignite the deep learning revolution.
“The success of these platforms highlights the growing importance of visual computing and the opportunities ahead for NVIDIA,” he said.