American tech company Nvidia has reported a “substantial” decline in revenue as the cryptocurrency mining industry slows. The announcement came in a report of the company’s Q2 earnings published on Thursday.
Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said the decline in sales to crypto miners was not exactly a surprise for her company, although the dip was much more significant than what had been expected. "Our revenue outlook had anticipated cryptocurrency-specific products declining to approximately $100 million, while actual crypto-specific product revenue was $18 million,” she said in the report.
“Whereas we had previously anticipated cryptocurrency to be meaningful for the year, we are now projecting no contributions going forward."
Still, Kress said that the decline was a matter of perspective: while GPU business revenue was “down 4 percent sequentially”, Kress noted that “GPU business revenue was $2.66 billion, up 40 percent from a year earlier.”
Nvidia makes great hardware. High respect for Jensen & company. Our hardware needs were just unique & matched tightly to our software.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 16, 2018
In Spite of Dipping Sales to Miners, Nvidia’s Profits Are Way Up
In spite of the decline, Nvidia reported better-than-expected earnings overall. The company’s net income throughout Q2 was $1.1 billion ($1.76 per share) while it was just $583 million ($0.92 per share) in Q2 2017.
Kress also explained that her company’s diversification in sales to the gaming, Data Center , and professional visualization sectors helped to offset the decline in sales to crypto miners.
Announcing NVIDIA #Turing. The greatest leap in computer graphics in over a decade. https://t.co/hMXXeiHFqA #SIGGRAPH2018 pic.twitter.com/C9sPMl3JcD
— NVIDIA (@nvidia) August 13, 2018
Additionally, a group of analysts polled by FactSet predicted that the company’s revenue from gaming and servers sales would continue to grow, though Crypto Mining sales will likely continue to decline.
However, when the company’s report was published on Thursday, Nvidia’s stock value fell by six percent. Still, the company’s stock value is up over 30 percent since the beginning of the year.
