For the first time in its history, chip major Nvidia has revealed exactly how much revenues it earned from the cryptocurrency market during a quarter. At its Q1, 2018 earnings call, the American chip-maker reported revenues of $289 million from the sector, thanks to the strong demand for video cards specifically made for cryptocurrency mining.
The result represented a growth of almost 150 percent on a Year-on-Year basis, but the company says it expects sales of cryptocurrency-specific products to slow down during the current quarter. According to Nvidia’s Chief Financial Officer, Colette Kress, cryptocurrency-related revenues are expected to fall 65 percent to about $100 million during Q2 with supply side pressures easing considerably over the past few weeks.
“Our GPU prices are normalizing, allowing gamers who had been priced out of the market to get their hands on one. Cryptocurrency demand was stronger than expected but we were able to fill it with crypto-specific GPUs. Looking forward, we expect crypto-specific revenue to be one-third as in Q1”
In what can only be good news for gamers worldwide, the company’s Chief Executive, Jensen Huang, told investors that the days of ultra-high GPU prices because of the crypto-craze is now over. “The pent-up demand is quite significant and I’m expecting the gamers to be able to buy new GeForces pretty soon”, he said.
Overall, Nvidia’s net income rose to $1.24 billion in the first quarter ended April 29. The company had earned $507 million during the same period last year. Total revenues for the company rose to $3.21 billion from $1.94 billion.
According to a Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S poll, Wall Street analysts, on average, had expected Nvidia to earn revenues of $2.91 billion. Nvidia shares declined 3.8 percent in after-hours trading Thursday after hitting a record 263.96 earlier in the day.
