NVIDIA fourth-quarter earnings per share are up 117 percent

NVIDIA keeps going like the Energizer Bunny! The firm's fiscal Q4 2017 results just rolled in and it's amazing to see how much NVIDIA has grown over the last year. Last quarter's revenue came in at a record $2.17 billion, up 55 percent versus the year before, while full-year revenue was a record $6.91 billion, up 38 percent from a year ago.

On a GAAP basis, NVIDIA earned $655 million last quarter, up 216 percent year-over-year and $1.67 billion for the full year, up 171 percent versus the year before. If we take a look at the non-GAAP figures, which filter out what the company deems as exceptional one time gains and expenses, NVIDIA pulled in fiscal Q4 2017 net income of $704 million. This translates to $1.13 in earnings per share, up 117 percent versus the year before!

NVIDIA's results beat expectations of Wall Street analysts, consensus called for fiscal Q4 2017 revenue of $2.11 billion with earnings per share of 83 cents. So in a nutshell, revenue was $60 million higher than consensus while EPS beat by 30 cents.

NVIDIA's guidance for the current quarter points to revenue of $1.90 billion, plus or minus two percent. At the moment, NVIDIA shares are down 2.22 percent in after-hours trading to $113.79. I'm not exactly sure what spooked investors, on the surface these numbers are outstanding. Perhaps expectations for current-quarter revenue guidance were a little higher.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today reported revenue for the fourth quarter ended January 29, 2017, of $2.17 billion, up 55 percent from $1.40 billion a year earlier, and up 8 percent from $2.00 billion in the previous quarter.

GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.99, up 183 percent from $0.35 a year ago and up 19 percent from $0.83 in the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.13, up 117 percent from $0.52 a year earlier and up 20 percent from $0.94 in the previous quarter.

For fiscal 2017, revenue reached a record $6.91 billion, up 38 percent from $5.01 billion a year earlier. GAAP earnings per diluted share were $2.57, up 138 percent from $1.08 a year earlier. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $3.06, up 83 percent from $1.67 a year earlier.

"We had a great finish to a record year, with continued strong growth across all our businesses," said Jen-Hsun Huang, founder and chief executive officer of NVIDIA. "Our GPU computing platform is enjoying rapid adoption in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, gaming, and autonomous vehicles.?

"Deep learning on NVIDIA GPUs, a breakthrough approach to AI, is helping to tackle challenges such as self-driving cars, early cancer detection and weather prediction. We can now see that ?GPU-based deep learning will revolutionize major industries, from consumer internet and transportation to health care and manufacturing. The era of AI is upon us," he said.

Capital Return
During fiscal 2017, NVIDIA paid $739 million in share repurchases and $261 million in cash dividends. As a result, the company returned an aggregate of $1.00 billion to shareholders in fiscal 2017.

For fiscal 2018, NVIDIA intends to return $1.25 billion to shareholders through ongoing quarterly cash dividends and share repurchases.

NVIDIA will pay its next quarterly cash dividend of $0.14 per share on March 17, 2017, to all shareholders of record on February 24, 2017.

A breakdown of the NVIDIA quarterly revenue trend can be viewed below. Gaming revenue is up 66 percent year-over-year, professional visualization revenue climbed 11 percent, datacenter revenue skyrocketed 205 percent and automotive revenue increased 38 percent.