Colette Kress
Analyst · UBS. Please proceed with your question
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to NVIDIA's conference call for the third quarter of fiscal 2015. With us on the call today from NVIDIA is Jen-Hsun Huang, President and Chief Executive Officer. First, I’d like to remind you that today’s call is being webcast on NVIDIA’s Investor Relations Web site. It is also being recorded. You can hear a replay by telephone until November 13, 2014. The webcast will be available for replay up until next quarter’s conference call to discuss Q4 financial results. The contents of today’s call is NVIDIA’s property. It cannot be reproduced or transcribed without our prior written consent. During the course of this call, we may make forward-looking statements based on current expectations. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties and our actual results may differ materially. For a discussion of factors that could affect our future financial results and business, please refer to the disclosure in today’s earnings release, our most recent Form 10-Q and the reports that we may file on Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All of our statements are made as of today, November 6, 2014 based on information currently available to us. Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update any such statements. During this call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. You can find a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures in our CFO commentary, which is posted on our web site. With that let’s start. Third quarter results were strong, with record revenue and improved performance in each of our businesses. Our focus on creating platforms for PC, mobile and datacenter is paying off. Our PC gaming platform benefited from the enthusiastic reception of our new flagship GeForce GTX gaming processors based on Maxwell. Our 10th generation GPU architecture, Maxwell sets new standards for performance and power efficiency, introducing a range of new features for gamers and game developers. Real time dynamic global illumination is a lead forward in replicating the true interaction of light in the gaming environment. Other new technologies render games at higher frame rates with very low power, heat and noise. Both the desktop versions of these processors, the GTX 980 and the GTX 970 and their notebook counterparts have won extraordinary support from reviewers. Forbes wrote of our new GPUs: They are higher performing and more power efficient than the previous generation and design win abound. That’s pretty much a trifecta in the mobile market. Commenting the desktop versions, Hardware Canucks called the GTX 980 a market changing graphic card that is back stopped by an impressive GPU architecture. We launched Maxwell in a groundbreaking event for the gaming community called Game 24. This live stream 24 hour celebration included gaming tournaments, modding competitions and celebrity commentators. As it moved across the globe, all along the way we drew more than 1.3 million Twitch viewers in 120 countries. In the mobile platform space, the SHIELD tablet, the latest extension of our SHIELD family of devices enjoyed solid demand during the quarter. The ultimate tablet made for gamers, it features the extreme performance of Tegra K1 mobile processor and the precision control of the SHIELD wireless controller. SHIELD tablet sales have extended into many worldwide markets and the 32 gigabyte LTE model has been recently added to the lineup. Very soon SHILED tablet will be upgraded to Google’s latest OS, Android 5.0 Lollipop. Tegra K1 was also featured in the Google Nexus 9 tablet launched last month in a 64 bit version. Powered by our project Denver CPU, Tegra K1 is the first ARM processor for Android to take advantage of the Android 5.0 support for 64 bit architectures. Tegra K1 is also now in Chromebooks from Acer and HP. Tegra technology continues to make strong headway in the automotive segment as well. Last month Paris Auto show, Honda announced that three of its popular models will come standard in the European market with a Tegra based infotainment and navigation system. This marks the first in-vehicle infotainment system to use the Android operating system running on Tegra. Tegra will enable Honda Connect to deliver a touchscreen experience like the intuitive experience you'd experience from a phone or tablet with crisp graphics that respond instantly to gestures like pinch, zoom, and swipe, but is designed for safe operation in a car. Honda now joins Volkswagen in our stable, but mainstream auto brands relying on Tegra, complimenting luxury brands like Audi, BMW, Lamborghini and Tesla Motors. Our enterprise businesses also had a strong quarter, benefiting from new products and industry trends that fuel demand for them. Our Quadro professional solutions, including processors based on the new Maxwell GPU architecture are enjoying the fast ramp up of any Quadro product in our history. They are being shipped by all of our major OEMs and adopted by global enterprise companies. This new line up provides up to two times improvement in application performance and data handling capability. In the datacenter platform space, NVIDIA GRID graphics virtualization continues to gain momentum. Thousands of companies have come forward worldwide to experience cloud based GPU accelerated virtual desktops through our tri-grid online demonstration. Also a program we launched in August with VMware for early customer access to GRID virtualized GPUs is drawing wide global interest. Initial customers include aircraft maker Airbus, the international construction group CH2M Hill, and healthcare provider MetroHealth. Other early notable GRID customers include Villanova University and Halliburton. Our Tesla accelerated datacenter platform continues to grow as HPC customers and cloud service providers deploy large Tesla powered systems. Fueling Tesla growth is the rapid rise of machine learning, particularly among mobile web service companies like China Baidu [ph] that are standardizing on Tesla as their common platform. As noted in the story, in the current issue of Wired GPUs are exceptionally well suited for parallel processing tasks, like speech recognition, image, and natural language processing. IBM unveiled its first open power based system featuring Tesla GPU accelerators which can significantly enhance Java, Big Data and technical computing applications. IBM announced plans to accelerate their enterprise applications using Tesla GPUs, including their nearly pervasive IBM DV2 with blue database software. We are excited about this month's Supercomputing 2014 conference New Orleans, where we will be demonstrating the latest breakthrough in supercomputing and visualization based on our Tesla accelerated computing platform. Now let’s take a more detailed look at the financials. Revenue growth year-over-year was driven by strength of GeForce GPUs for gaming related to our launch in Q3 of Maxwell GTX GPUs as well as the strength in datacenter GPUs and Auto Infotainment Systems. GPU business revenue grew 13% from a year earlier. Revenue from GeForce GPUs for gaming desktops and notebooks grew 36%, fueled by continued strength PC gaming, including Maxwell. Within this segment, gaming notebooks performed particularly well, more than doubling from year-ago levels. Tesla for high performance computing increased strongly, representing another record quarter of revenue driven by large project wins with cloud service providers and government customers. Quadro revenue remained strong, with our new product platform launched in August, delivering industry leading graphics and rendering performance. Tegra processor sales grew 51% from a year-ago, led by auto infotainment systems, mobile devices, embedded systems and the onset of the SHIELD tablet sales. Auto Infotainment systems revenue nearly doubled year-over-year. Revenue was up 11% from the second quarter of fiscal 2015. Moving to gross margins. GAAP gross margins was 55.2%, in-line with our outlook for the quarter, down 90 basis points from last quarter. Non-GAAP gross margin was 55.5%, also in-line with our outlook and down 90 basis points sequentially. The gross margin reflected continued strength in our GPU margins for PC platforms, inclusive of the product transition to Maxwell based GPUs for the desktop, notebook and workstation. Our margins from the above mentioned PC platforms and datacenter and cloud GPUs were partially offset by the impact of Tegra processor margins, which are lower than the Company’s overall average. GAAP operating expenses for the third quarter were $463 million, in line with our outlook and up 2% from Q2. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $415 million, lower than our outlook and inclusive of legal fees associated with our litigation against Samsung and Qualcomm. The operating expense discipline reflects continued management of our investment in both R&D and capital expenditures to enhance our return on invested capital. GAAP operating income was $213 million up 51% from the prior year’s third quarter, reflecting strong revenue growth from higher margin GPUs and contained operating expenses. GAAP net income was $173 million, up 45% from a year earlier driven by increased operating profit from strong revenue and margins. GAAP earnings per diluted share of $0.31 increased 55% from $0.20 per diluted share in the year-ago quarter, reflecting net income growth and share repurchases. Now turning to some key balance sheet items. During the third quarter we paid $46 million in cash dividends and repurchased 16.8 million shares under a structured repurchase agreement entered into during the quarter. During the first three first quarters of fiscal year ’15, we paid a $140 million in cash dividends and repurchased 44.2 million shares. As a result we have returned to shareholders $950 million during the first three quarters of fiscal year ’15. Since the restart of our capital return program in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013, we have returned approximately 2.17 billion. This return represents 136% of our cumulative free cash flow for fiscal years 2013, 2014 and 2015 to date and reflects the acceleration of our capital return program from cash generated in prior years. As we transition into fiscal year ’16 as part of our ongoing commitment to deliver shareholder value through capital return, we are pleased to announce our intention to return approximately $600 million to shareholders through ongoing quarterly cash dividends and share repurchases in fiscal year 2016. Accounts receivable at the end of Q3 were $563 million up from $470 million in Q2. The sequential increase was primarily due to the mid-quarter launch of our Maxwell based GPUs and the late quarter project shipments in our database business, compared with last quarter. DSO at quarter end was 42 days, up from 39 days in Q2. Inventory at the end of Q3 was $408 million, up from $387 million in the prior quarter. The sequential increase included the ramping of Maxwell based GPUs coupled with decreases in products based on previous-generation architectures. DSI at quarter-end was 68 days, down from 73 days at the end of Q2. Cash flow from operating activities was $216 million, up from $96 million in the prior quarter and from $162 million a year earlier. Our operating cash flow grew 33% year-over-year reflecting higher net income from revenue growth and contained operating expenses, partially offset by higher accounts receivable. Free cash flow was $176 million in the third quarter. Depreciation and amortization expense amounted to $55 million, capital expenditures were $40 million. Now turning to the outlook for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015. We expect revenue for the fourth quarter to be $1.2 billion, plus or minus 2%. The year-over-year growth is reflective of our continued strength in gaming for the PC, the notebook and mobile platforms. Additionally, we expect growth from our enterprise platforms. Our GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins are expected to be 55.2% and 55.5% respectively, plus or minus 50 basis points. The gross margin outlook is in line with our gross margin results in Q3, as high end GTX GPUs and datacenter results will contribute to the strong gross margins. GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $470 million and non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $422 million, inclusive of legal fees associated with our litigation against Samsung and Qualcomm. Excluding these legal fees, we expect operating expenses to remain near Q3 levels. GAAP and non-GAAP tax rate for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015 are both expected to be 18%, plus or minus 1%. This estimate is a percentage point lower than our previous outlook and is consistent with our tax rate in the third quarter, excluding any discrete tax events. We are pleased with our record revenue for both the quarter and year-to-date with strength across all platforms and businesses. Profitability, as measured by earnings per diluted share, increased 55% for the first nine months of fiscal 2015 compared with the prior year. Our 10th generation GPU Maxwell displayed a strong showing with stellar reviews and an innovative launch. We continue to embark on large engagements in datacenter and cloud with outstanding partners, IBM, HP, Dell, Citrix and VMware. Auto continues to gain ground with continued wins, including Honda this quarter. Tegra K1, through SHIELD and Nexus 9 continues to be praised for its technology achievement and expansion of Android gaming. We continue our transformation into a business focused on visual computing platforms, allowing us to realize continued success in consumer PC and mobile gaming as well as in cloud datacenters, supercomputers, professional design and automobiles. That concludes our prepared remarks. We will now take questions. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow up.