Nvidia posts $30 million annual loss

By Tom Magrino, GameSpot
Posted Feb 10, 2009 5:12 pm PT
GPU maker takes fiscal-year trouncing, going from $797.6 million profit to sizable shortfall on $3.4 billion in 2008 revenue.
Nvidia is undoubtedly looking to put 2008 behind it and just move on. Reporting on its full fiscal-year results today, the graphics chip maker said revenues for the 12 months ended January 25, 2009, sunk 16 percent to $3.4 billion, down from the $4.1 billion in sales it brought in a year ago. Adding salt to that wound, Nvidia went from a $797.6 million profit for the period a year ago to a $30 million loss for the current fiscal year.
"The environment is clearly difficult and uncertain," said Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang in a statement. "Our first priority is to set an operating expense level that balances cash conservation while allowing us to continue to invest in initiatives that are of great importance to the market and in which we believe we have industry leadership. We have initiatives in all areas to reduce operating expenses."

The graphics chip maker took an especially painful walloping during its holiday period. For its fourth quarter of fiscal-year 2009, the publisher saw revenues dip 60 percent to $481.1 million, down from $1.2 billion a year ago. Profits slipped into the red as well, falling from a $256 million gain last year to a $147.7 million loss for the three months ended January 25, 2009.
Nvidia, which supplies the graphics processor for Sony's PlayStation 3, said in December that it would be ramping up its presence on the console scene thanks to partnerships with Electronic Arts, Take-Two, and THQ. As part of the independent deals, all three third-party publishers signed on to include Nvidia's Ageia-powered physics engine in their internally developed titles.