Nvidia allegedly misinformed investors about crypto mining revenues

The primary factor that lead to Nvidia’s recent financial problems is clearly the GPU-based crypto mining decline that occurred in early 2018. The green team warned its investors about severely diminished revenues as early as Q2 2018, but a recent report by RBC analyst Mitch Steves presents problematic incongruities in how Nvidia actually informed its investors about crypto-related sales recorded between April 2018 and July 2018.

Steves claims that Nvidia generated US$1.95 billion from crypto-related sales in the aforementioned period, but the green team’s reported states that the revenue only amounted to US$602 million. Moreover, the cumulated crypto-related revenue in that period should be close to US$2.75 billion, and AMD apparently generated only around US$234 million. This seems quite improbable, as AMDs cards were considered faster and they also were cheaper at that time. However, Steves points out that AMD’s 2018 financial report support his calculations, revealing that the crypto exposure for the red team in Q1 2018 amounted to exactly US$234 million.

One big problem with this report is Steves’ belief that the numbers can’t be confirmed, as the GPU sales during the crypto boom of 2017 do not specifically show how many GPUs were actually sold for mining purposes. Nvidia’s stocks already dropped to some of the lowest figures in years and important investors even threatened to sell their shares, so this report could not have come at a better time. Nvidia is expected to reveal more figures in its next financial report that will be released on February 14.

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