Nvidia experiences ‘turbulent and disappointing’ Q4 as share prices plummet 15%

PC hardware company Nvidia saw its shares drop by 15 per cent after it provided updated Q4 fiscal 2019 guidance reporting that its fourth-quarter revenue is expected to come in at $2.20 billion and not the £2.70 billion as originally thought. The revision – which the company says comes as its gaming and datacenter revenue fell below company’s expectations – wiped $13 billion off its market value.

The guidance (thanks, GI.biz) suggests "deteriorating macroeconomic conditions" – "particularly in China" – "impacted consumer demand for Nvidia gaming GPUs", and said sales of certain high-end GPUs using Nvidia’s new Turing architecture were also lower than expected. Datacenter revenue also came in "short of expectations", and "a number of deals in the company’s forecast did not close in the last month of the quarter as customers shifted to a more cautious approach".

"Q4 was an extraordinary, unusually turbulent, and disappointing quarter," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. "Looking forward, we are confident in our strategies and growth drivers.

"The foundation of our business is strong and more evident than ever – the accelerated computing model Nvidia pioneered is the best path forward to serve the world’s insatiable computing needs. The markets we are creating – gaming, design, HPC, AI and autonomous vehicles – are important, growing and will be very large. We have excellent strategic positions in all of them."

As recently as May 2018 the PC hardware manufacturer was seeing a profits boost of 145 per cent and reporting record revenue. However, this is the second consecutive quarter in which the company has experienced a shortfall in expected profits, and it has lost 43 per cent of its market value since September 2018.

Management will discuss its reported financial results via an earnings call on February 14th.