Why NVIDIA Popped

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of graphics specialist NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA  ) have popped today by upwards of 10% after the company posted an upbeat earnings release coupled with better-than-expected guidance.

So what: Revenue in the quarter came out to $924.9 million, with adjusted net income of $97.5 million, or $0.16 per share. The Street would have settled for just $916.2 million in sales and a dime per share in profits, letting NVIDIA register an earnings beat. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said the company's new Kepler GPUs are boosting business and Tegra growth is on track.

Now what: Guidance for next quarter calls for sales between $990 million and $1.05 billion, topping analyst forecasts of $976 million. NVIDIA pointed out that the first Ultrabook carrying one of its GPUs was launched in March, while the first quad-core Tegra 3 also saw a debut in February. Huang is also excited by the upcoming launch of Microsoft Windows 8 on ARM, as it hopes its Tegra chips will gain additional traction there.

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