NVIDIA Announces Financial Results for Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2015 

NVIDIA today reported record revenue for the fourth quarter ended January 25, 2015, of $1.25 billion, up 9 percent from $1.14 billion a year earlier and up 2 percent from $1.23 billion the previous quarter.

Revenue for fiscal 2015 was a record $4.68 billion, up 13 percent from $4.13 billion a year earlier.

GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.35, up 40 percent from $0.25 a year earlier and up 13 percent from $0.31 in the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $0.43, up 34 percent from $0.32 a year earlier and up 10 percent from $0.39 in the previous quarter.

GAAP earnings per diluted share for fiscal 2015 were $1.12, up 51 percent from $0.74 a year earlier. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.42, up 43 percent from $0.99 a year earlier.

"Momentum is accelerating in each of our market-specialized platforms, driving record revenue in the quarter and full year," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer of NVIDIA.

"GeForce and SHIELD are extending our reach in the rapidly growing global gaming market. Our DRIVE auto-computing platform is at the center of the advance toward self-driving cars. GRID is enabling enterprises to finally virtualize graphics-intensive applications. And our Tesla accelerated computing platform is helping to ignite the deep learning revolution.

"The success of these platforms highlights the growing importance of visual computing and the opportunities ahead for NVIDIA," he said.

During the fourth quarter, NVIDIA paid $46 million in cash dividends and repurchased 0.2 million shares. During fiscal 2015, the company paid $186 million in cash dividends and repurchased 44.4 million shares for $814 million. As a result, the company returned to shareholders $1.0 billion in fiscal 2015.

Since the restart of its capital return program in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013, NVIDIA has returned approximately $2.22 billion to shareholders. This return represents 111 percent of the company's cumulative free cash flow for fiscal years 2013 through 2015, reflecting the acceleration of the capital return program from cash generated in previous years.

The company intends to return approximately $600 million to shareholders through ongoing quarterly cash dividends and share repurchases in fiscal 2016.

NVIDIA will pay its next quarterly cash dividend of $0.085 per share on March 19, 2015, to all shareholders of record on February 26, 2015. NVIDIA expects that a portion of this dividend payment may be considered a return of capital for U.S. federal income tax purposes.

NVIDIA's outlook for the first quarter of fiscal 2016 is as follows:

• Revenue is expected to be $1.16 billion, plus or minus two percent.
• GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins are expected to be 56.2 percent and 56.5 percent, respectively, plus or minus 50 basis points.
• GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $478 million; non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $425 million, inclusive of litigation costs.
• GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates for the first quarter of fiscal 2016 are expected to be 20 percent, plus or minus one percent -- excluding the benefit of the U.S. Federal R&D tax credit which expired December 31, 2014.
• Capital expenditures are expected to be approximately $30 million to $40 million.

Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2015 Highlights

During the fourth quarter, NVIDIA achieved progress in each of its market-specialized platforms:

Gaming:

Introduced the GeForce GTX 960 GPU, bringing the power and efficiency of the Maxwell architecture to the gaming market's $199 sweet spot.

Enterprise Graphics:

Announced, shortly after the quarter, that the new version of VMware's virtualization suite, VMware Horizon 6, includes the capability to deliver scalable, virtualized 3D graphics enabled by NVIDIA GRID vGPU.

Accelerated Computing:

Announced that the NVIDIA Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform will power the U.S. Department of Energy's next-generation supercomputers, expected to deliver at least three-times greater performance than today's most powerful system. They will be based on IBM POWER servers equipped with Tesla GPUs and NVIDIA NVLink high-speed GPU interconnect technology.

Launched the Tesla K80 dual-GPU accelerator, designed to power a wide range of machine learning, data-analytics and high performance computing applications.

Automotive:

Unveiled at the International Consumer Electronics Show the NVIDIA Tegra X1 mobile processor -- a 256-core Maxwell architecture-based mobile super chip with over one teraflops of computing power.

Launched NVIDIA DRIVE automotive computers, which move the industry closer to the era of auto-piloted cars and run next-generation infotainment systems.