Nvidia's 'crypto hangover' lasts longer than expected, shares tumble 18%

Nvidia released its Q3 earnings Thursday, which sent its stock price down by more than 18% in after-hours trading. The company reported revenue of $3.18 billion (2.5% growth), which was below analysts' predictions of $3.24 billion. Nvidia continues to feel the weak demand for hardware used for mining cryptocurrencies. The profitability of GPU mining is currently very low. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company could have done a better job managing the cryptocurrency dynamics. He said: “The crypto hangover lasted longer than we expected. When prices went down, we expected demand to pick up more quickly.”

Nvidia anticipated the weak demand after seeing disappointing numbers in Q2. Following the release of Q2 earnings, Nvidia's CFO Colette Kress said: "Whereas we had previously anticipated cryptocurrency to be meaningful for the year, we are now projecting no contributions going forward." Nvidia's competitor AMD released its Q3 earnings three weeks ago and saw shares tumble 25% following the negligible sales of mining GPUs.