Nvidia says crypto-mining boom is over for now

The extra boost Nvidia Corp. received from selling its graphics chips to cryptocurrency miners appears to be over, at least for now. Nvidia NVDA, -0.63% Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress surprised investors — who had already been anticipating lackluster crypto sales — with an even more downbeat forecast for crypto-mining sales Thursday. Nvidia released second-quarter earnings and noted a shortfall in crypto sales in addition to the forecast.

“Our revenue outlook had anticipated cryptocurrency-specific products declining to approximately $100 million, while actual crypto-specific product revenue was $18 million,” Kress said in prepared remarks. “Whereas we had previously anticipated cryptocurrency to be meaningful for the year, we are now projecting no contributions going forward.”

After reporting $289 million in revenue from cryptocurrency miners buying its graphics cards in that report, the consensus among Wall Street analysts for full-year crypto revenue was $498 million, according to FactSet. That forecast is likely going to drop sharply. And not many analysts asked questions about the crypto shortfall on the company’s call with analysts. One analyst asked if Nvidia knew how much of its GeForce graphics card business had been driven by crypto.

Nvidia shares fell 5% in after-hours trading, even though the company’s second quarter came in better than expected. The downturn in crypto pressured its third-quarter revenue forecast, which called for sales of $3.19 billion to $3.32 billion, lower than the FactSet consensus of $3.34 billion.