Nvidia forecast beats expectations but crypto mining’s role remains unclear

Nvidia Corp forecast second-quarter revenue above analyst’s estimates. But shares fell 1% after-hours. This is because the company could not say for certain how much of its recent revenue rise was driven by the volatile cryptocurrency-mining market.

In this pandemic the demand for Nvidia graphics chips for video gaming boomed. This resulted in rapid growth rate of data centre chips used in artificial intelligence applications such as image recognition. But investors again seemed put off by a surge in purchases of Nvidia chips for cryptocurrency mining. This tends to occur when the currency value rises. Nvidia has tried to use technical changes to steer miners away from its gaming chips and toward purpose-built chips for mining.

In first quarter those crypto-specific chips brought in $155 million, said Nvidia. The company also said that in the second quarter, crypto-specific chip sales are expected to rise to $400 million. Chief Executive Jensen Huang said in an interview that making gaming chips less suitable for miners will help to keep them available for gamers. He added that it effectively increases their production and supply of gaming chips.

By March 2022, Nvidia expects to close its $40 billion deal to purchase British chip technology firm Arm Ltd. But this needs approval from European and Chinese authorities. According to IBES data, the revenue expected by the company in this quarter is of $6.30 billion.

The company’s closely watched data centre business. This has been eating away at rival Intel Corp’s dominance in the segment and had revenue of $2.05 billion, up 79% year over year. More than double the previous year, the gaming chips sales were raised to $2.76 billion. Nvidia’s shares were down 1% at $621.95 in extended trading.