Key Takeaways

Nvidia Corp. (NVDA)posted revenue and earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter that blew past market expectations, as the company continues to benefit from booming demand for equipment and services to support artificial intelligence (AI).

Shares of the company, which had fallen for four consecutive sessions ahead of Wednesday's eagerly anticipated earnings release, gained 9.1% to $735.94 in after-hours trading.

Nvidia said that revenue jumped to $22.10 billion in the quarter ending Jan. 28, compared with $6.05 billion a year earlier. Net income increased to $12.29 billion from $1.41 billion, while diluted earnings per share came in at $4.93, up from 57 cents a year earlier. Each of those numbers handily topped analysts' expectations.

Revenue for Nvidia's closely watched data-center business, which offers cloud and AI services, jumped to $18.40 billion, a five-fold increase from the year-ago period and also well above expectations.

Accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point. Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a press release, noting that the data center business has "increasingly diverse drivers."

"Vertical industriesled by auto, financial services and healthcareare now at a multibillion-dollar level," Huang added.

Nvidia's gross margin for the fourth quarter was 76%, up from 63.3% in the year-ago period. Nvidia's chief financial officer, Colette Kress, said the improvement was a function of the growth in the data center business, which wasprimarily driven by Nvidia's Hopper GPU computing platform.

Looking ahead, Nvidia says that fiscal first-quarter revenue is expected to come in at $24 billion, plus or minus 2%, which is above the consensus view from analysts. The company expects gross margin in the current quarter to rise slightly from the fourth-quarter figure.

Optimism around artificial intelligence helped push Nvidia's stock, which has more than tripled in the past year, to an all-time high last week. In the days leading up to the earnings release, analysts had raised their expectations even as investors expressed some concerns that the quarterly report might fall short of expectations.

The strong earnings report not only lifted Nvidia in extended trading but gave a boost to other chipmakers that have been riding the AI wave. Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), ARM Holdings (ARM), Broadcom (AVGO), Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) and Super Micro Computer (SMCI) were all moving higher late Wednesday.

UPDATE: This article has been updated after initial publication to add comments from company executives, additional details from the earnings report and updated share prices.

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Nvidia's Q4 Earnings Blow Past Expectations as Company Benefits From AI Boom - Investopedia