Nvidia Q3 Results Reveal ‘Crypto Hangover’ Due to Disappearance of Miner Sales

Nvidia released its earnings report for the third quarter (Q3) of 2018 today, Nov. 15, revealing that demand for Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) among crypto miners has dried up.

In the financial results report, founder and CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang said that the company’s “near-term results reflect excess channel inventory post the cryptocurrency boom, which will be corrected.”

Put differently, the cryptocurrency frenzy drove up prices for Nvidia’s gaming cards, but once that demand disappeared, prices did not decrease quickly enough to attract customers who were waiting for more affordable cards. Huang told Reuters:

“The crypto hangover lasted longer than we expected. We thought we had done a better job managing the cryptocurrency dynamics.”

The company’s provision for inventories purportedly expanded to $70 million in Q3, having more than tripled for the first nine months of the current year to $124 million. This also resulted in the decrease of Nvidia’s gross margins by 1.8 percentage points in Q3 to 60.4 percent. The margins drop is also attributed to $57 million in charges related to the company’s previous generations of chips following the plunge in cryptocurrency mining demand.

After Nvidia’s post of sales missed expectations for Q3, the company’s shares dropped over 16 percent in late trading:

Nvidia stock following Q3 announcement. Source: Quartz

Per the financial report, Nvidia’s overall revenue in Q3 was $3.18 billion, a 21 percent increase compared to $2.64 billion a year earlier, and up two percent from $3.12 billion in the previous quarter.

In August, Nvidia forecasted its Q3 revenue to be between $3.19 billion and $3.32 billion, stressing that it does not expect to make significant blockchain-related sales for the rest of the year.

At the same time, Nvidia’s revenue for the third quarter is higher than that recently projected by experts from analytical firm Trefis. The experts expected consolidated revenues to be a bit under $3.10 billion in Q3, of which 84 percent could be attributed to GPUs.