Text size
Nvidia has a complicated relationship with cryptocurrency miners. They buy so many chips, so many that the players, for whom the cards were designed, had a hard time finding them.
When the company reported profits on Wednesday at the end, its numbers were far better than expected, largely due to its video game segment. As in the past
Nvidia‘S
(ticker: NVDA) the new line of RTX 3000 cards has been popular with cryptocurrency miners interested in Ethereum.
Nvidia posted video game sales of $ 2.7 billion for its fiscal third quarter, well above the consensus estimate of $ 2.1 billion. Sale of video game chips, including those made for
Nintendo‘S
Change system, helped the results. The segment also received a boost from Nvidia’s launch of its Ampere-based gaming cards in September.
Sales to miners generated at least $ 175 million in the third quarter, accounting for much of the outperformance, according to a Thursday note from RBC Capital Markets analysts Mitch Steves. Before the results came out, he estimated that sales to miners would be $ 150 million.
Ampere graphics processing units, or GPUs, are popular among Ethereum crypto miners, as it is one of the primary currencies to use GPUs for mining. The technical changes to Ethereum that will take effect around December 16 mean that much of the old hardware Ethereum miners currently used will no longer work. As a result, Steves wrote, they are buying GPUs and Nvidia’s appearance is pretty good.
According to an estimate made by Steves in September, it would take an Ethereum miner 233 days to reach profitability with an unmodified RTX 3080 card. Steves then wrote that the RTX 3080 attracts Ethereum miners around $ 3 per day. The RTX 3080 is expected to retail for $ 699, but suffered from shortages at launch.
Nvidia said Wednesday that it continues to face chip and card supply constraints in its fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in January.
Nvidia stock was unchanged in Thursday’s trading at around $ 537. The stock has risen 128% so far this year as the
PHLX Semiconductor
index increased by 39%.
.[ad_2]Source link