Nvidia reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit and forecast second-quarter revenue above estimates on strong demand for its gaming chips and higher sales to data centers.

The company forecast revenue of $2.55 billion, plus or minus 2%, for the quarter.

In the first quarter of 2019, Nvidia's net income fell to $394 million, or 64 cents per share, from $1.24 billion, or $1.98 per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, Nvidia earned 88 cents per share. Total revenue fell to $2.22 billion compared with $3.21 billion a year earlier and $2.21 billion in the previous quarter.

“NVIDIA is back on an upward trajectory,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “We’ve returned to growth in gaming, with nearly 100 new GeForce Max-Q laptops shipping. And NVIDIA RTX has gained broad industry support, making ray tracing the standard for next-generation gaming.

“Despite the near-term pause in demand from hyperscale customers, the application of AI continues to accelerate. AI adoption is accelerating in the world’s largest industries, moving beyond the cloud to the edge where AI processing has to be instantaneous. We’re excited about our pending acquisition of Mellanox, which will help us drive data center architecture for high performance computing and AI from the cloud to the edge,” he said.

Q1 highlights

• GPU business revenue was $2.02 billion, down 27 percent from a year earlier and up 2 percent sequentially. The year-on-year decrease reflects declines in gaming and data center revenue, as well as the absence of $289 million of OEM revenue from cryptocurrency mining processors (CMP).
• Tegra Processor business revenue - which includes Automotive, SOC modules for gaming platforms, and embedded edge AI platforms - was $198 million, down 55 percent from a year ago and down 12 percent sequentially. The year-on-year decrease primarily reflects a decline in shipments of SOC modules for gaming platforms.
• Gaming revenue was $1.05 billion, down 39 percent from a year ago and up 11 percent sequentially. The year-on-year decrease primarily reflects a decline in shipments of gaming GPUs and SOC modules for gaming platforms. The sequential increase primarily reflects growth in gaming GPUs.
• Professional Visualization revenue was $266 million, up 6 percent from a year earlier and down 9 percent sequentially. The year-on-year increase reflects strength across both desktop and mobile workstation products. The sequential decrease largely reflects a seasonal decline.
• Data Center revenue was $634 million, down 10 percent from a year ago and down 7 percent sequentially, primarily reflecting a slowdown in purchases by certain hyperscale and enterprise customers, partially offset by growth in inference sales.
• Automotive revenue was $166 million, up 14 percent from a year earlier and up 2 percent sequentially, primarily reflecting growth in AI cockpit modules.
• OEM and Other revenue was $99 million, down 74 percent from a year ago and down 15 percent sequentially. The year-on-year decrease is primarily due to the absence of $289 million from CMP sales.