Report: Analyst Finds Nvidia Earned $1.35 Billion More in Total Crypto Revenue Than Stated
This story has been updated with Nvidia’s decline to comment.
Taiwan-based computer hardware producer Nvidia reportedly earned nearly $1.35 billion more due to crypto and blockchain than it had stated. The numbers were calculated by RBC Capital Markets analyst Mitch Steves, financial news website Market Insider reports on Jan. 31.
Steves reportedly said in a note released on Jan. 30 that that according to his calculations, Nvidia generated about $1.95 billion in total revenue related to cryptocurrency and blockchain, noting that the official company’s statement said that it generated around $602 million over the same time period.
His calculations reportedly revealed that the Nvidia’s total crypto-related revenue from April 2017 to July 2018 should be around $2.75 billion. This estimate is based on the hash rate of Ethereum (ETH) and other cryptocurrencies that required graphic processing units (GPUs) at the time.
According to Market Insider, Steves assumed Nvidia had a 75 percent market share of GPUs sold for mining purposes, while IT company AMD controlled the rest. Still, the article also notes that the analyst stated that there is no way to confirm those numbers.
Furthermore, Steves reportedly suggests that a recent AMD earnings report also confirms his thesis. Before the release of this report, an analyst had stated that the company could still be facing problems due to a “crypto hangover.”
AMD’s aforementioned report, released on Jan. 29, noted that the company expects the revenue of the first quarter to be approximately $1.25 billion, which is down 24 percent compared to the previous years. The causes for the decline illustrated in the document are “excess channel inventory, the absence of blockchain-related GPU revenue and lower memory sales."
According to the article, Steves suggests AMD’s report implied the company had $234 million in the first quarter of last year, which matches about one-quarter of the total crypto revenue, which would be in line with his calculations.
When Nvidia released its earnings report for the third quarter of last year in November 2018, the founder and CEO of the company Jensen Huang said that the company’s “near-term results reflect excess channel inventory post the cryptocurrency boom, which will be corrected.”
In the wake of the estimates release, Nvidia’s stocks fell by around 5 percent in the extended session. Commenting on the recent RBC note, tech news website TechSpot suggested that “the steep falls [in stock] are a strong incentive for Nvidia to mask large fluctuations in revenue.”
When reached by Cointelegraph, Nvidia declined to comment on the matter.
As Cointelegraph reported last month, Nvidia decreased its financial estimates for Q4 for the fiscal year of 2019, citing the decline in mining alongside weaker gaming and data center sales as the causes.
Also, at the end of December of last year, a class action lawsuit was launched against Nvidia over the losses reported by the company when lower crypto prices diminished demand for GPUs by miners.