Nvidia Reports Positive Q4, Full Year Results

Nvidia Corp., a producer of graphics chipsets for PC gaming graphics cards and consoles, has released its financial report for the fourth quarter and full year of fiscal year 2006, a period ending January 29, 2006. Revenue for the quarter was $633.6 million, up 12% from the $566.5 million earnings in the same period of 2005. Profit for the quarter was over twice that of the fourth quarter 2005: the company made $98.1 million, a 104% increase over 2005's $48 million. "Fiscal 2006 was a milestone year for Nvidia," stated Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO at Nvidia. "We led the GPU and core logic industry on every front -- technology leadership, product innovation, and operational excellence. As a result, we delivered record annual results for revenue, operating income, operating margin, and operating cash flow." The unusually strong performance for the company was driven by its increased share of 51% of the desktop PC graphics processing unit market, with the release of its nForce SLI XE and nForce 4 Ultra. Nvidia will discuss its guidance and predictions for the 2007 fiscal year in a later conference call, though the new fiscal year should be another strong earner for the company, given its role as graphics processor provider for Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3. For the full fiscal year, earnings were $2.38 billion, a record for the company and an 18% improvement over 2005's $2.01 billion. Profit for the full year was triple that of the previous year, with $302.6 million compared to 2005's $100.4 million. The company's stock rose 11 percent on the news, ending at $47.20 per share. "Looking ahead into fiscal 2007, multiple important trends will create substantial growth opportunities in our target markets -- HD DVD and Blu-ray high definition video, Microsoft Windows Vista, the 3G ramp and increasing multimedia content for mobile devices, and next generation game consoles," said Huang. "We have aligned ourselves with these exciting new growth drivers and are well positioned to have another strong year."