NVIDIA Q2 2021 Earnings – Data Center Segment Shines Brighter than the Gaming Business

Aug 19, 2020 at 04:53pm EDT
NVIDIA
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NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) has become one of the best stock plays in recent times, generating a year-to-date return of 104 percent. Today, the company has come under a fresh spotlight as it gears up to announce earnings for the second quarter of the FY 2021.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) Q2 2021 Earnings Scorecard

For the three months that ended on the 30th of June 2020, NVIDIA earned $3.866 billion in revenue, corresponding to an increase of 49.84 percent on an annual basis.

Related Story RTX Spark To Encourage Industry Towards Lighter Laptops With Less Bulky Cooling Solutions, As Surface Laptop Ultra Targets A 110W TDP
Revenue Comparison
Revenue
0
2
4
6
0
2
4
6
Q2 2020
2
Q1 2021
3
Consensus
3
Q2 2021
3

(All figures are in billions of dollars)

As far as NVIDIA’s business units are concerned, Data Center led the pack with $1,752 million in revenue.

Segmental Revenue Comparison
Q2 2020 Segmental Revenue
Q1 2021 Segmental Revenue
Q2 2021 Segmental Revenue
0
400
800
1200
1600
2000
2400
0
400
800
1200
1600
2000
2400
Gaming
1.3k
1.3k
1.7k
Data Center
655
1.1k
1.8k
Professional Visualization
291
307
203
Automotive
209
155
111
Other
111
138
146

(All figures are in millions of dollars)

NVIDIA also reported $2.18 in non-GAAP EPS, beating consensus expectations by $0.21.

EPS Comparison
EPS
0
1
2
3
0
1
2
3
Q2 2020
1
Q1 2021
1
Consensus
1
Q2 2021
2

(All figures are in dollars)

For Q3 2021, NVIDIA has provided the following guidance:

NVIDIA also provided the following business highlights in its earnings press release:

Gaming:

Data Center:

Professional Visualization:

Automotive:

Investors have reacted negatively to NVIDIA’s Q2 2021 earnings due to the company missing GAAP EPS expectations by $0.02. On a non-GAAP basis, NVIDIA did manage to beat consensus expectations by a solid $0.21. The stock is down 0.33 percent in after-hours trading:

Source

Analysts were expecting NVIDIA’s data center revenue to outpace its gaming haul for the first time ever in Q2 2021. That prediction has certainly panned out today. This momentous development has placed data center as the primary driver of revenue growth for the company.

The upcoming launch of the next-generation Ampere-based GPUs on the 1st of September is the next seminal event on the radar of investors. Of course, the rumored RTX 3090 graphic card, featuring the brand-new GDDR6X memory for the first time, will likely be the star attraction of the launch event.

Additionally, analysts – including Bank of America’s Vivek Arya – expect the launch of the next iteration of gaming consoles from Sony and Microsoft to unleash a GPU upgrade supercycle. Arya scrutinized Steam’s GPU survey back in July and pointed out that just 9 percent of the PC gamers possessed a GPU that could match the performance of the upcoming consoles. The analyst, therefore, concluded that a mass upgrade to newer NVIDIA GPUs carrying higher ASPs may allow the company to breach the relatively “conservative” consensus expectation of “+16% H/H Nvidia gaming sales growth estimate for H2”.

Arya went on to note that the new consoles could "catalyze a major upgrade cycle for NVDA" as users adopt NVIDIA’s Turing or 7nm Ampere GPUs in droves.

We quoted an exlusive report by UK's Evening Standard on the 15th of August. As per the details, NVIDIA is purportedly entering final talks for acquiring ARM, with a potential deal emerging before the end of the current summer season. According to the report, SoftBank’s CEO Masayoshi Son is demanding a price as high as £40 billion ($52 billion) for ARM. This translates to a premium of around $20 billion relative to the $32 billion that SoftBank paid in 2016 to acquire ARM.

About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.

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