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Investment Overview for nVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)
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Below are key drivers of Nvidia's value that present opportunities for upside or downside to the current Trefis price estimate for Nvidia:
Pro Graphics cards
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Nvidia's share in Professional Graphics Cards: We currently forecast Nvidia's market share to decline from an estimated 80.4% in 2012 to 77% by the end of the Trefis forecast period. There could be a 4% downside to our price estimate if market share were to fall down to 60% by the end of the forecast period.
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Professional Graphics Cards EBITDA Margin: We currently forecast this figure to increase from an estimated 48%% in 2012 to about 46% by the end of the Trefis forecast period. There could be 5% downside to our price estimate if margins for professional graphics cards were to decline to 38%, a level seen during 2009. This could happen if AMD gains significant market share and remains highly competitive on pricing.
Mobile and Game Console Computing
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Mobile & Game Console Computing Chips Revenue: We currently forecast this figure to increase from $765 million in 2012 to approximately $2 billion by the end of the Trefis forecast period. However, there could be a slight downside to our price estimate if Nvidia's successor chips under the Tegra series fail to make an impact and competitors such as Apple and Qualcomm along with new entrants such as Intel take the market share.
- Mobile & Game Console Computing Chips EBITDA Margin: We currently forecast this figure to recover to 16% over the next few years. However, there can be an upside of over 5% to our price estimate if the margin increase to 25%.
For additional details, select a driver above or select a division from the interactive Trefis split for Nvidia at the top of the page.
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Nvidia designs and develops Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), which are high performance processors that generate realistic and interactive graphics on PCs. A computer's Central Processing Unit (CPU) off-loads the burden of graphics processing to GPUs. In this way, a dedicated GPU and CPU work in tandem to increase the overall speed and performance of a system.
The GPU market is typically segmented into discrete and integrated GPUs. Integrated GPUs, which were once found in the majority of PCs, have been replaced by Intel and AMD's APUs. However, discrete GPUs are preferred by customers such as gamers or design professionals for high performance and 3D graphics. Within discrete GPUs, high-end discrete GPUs form the professional graphics cards market in which Nvidia has a significant market share.
Nvidia sells its products directly to PC manufacturers, such as Dell, HP, Toshiba, and Sony. In addition, the company also sells some of its high-end GPUs directly to consumers through retailers such as Best Buy.
Nvidia announced "Project Denver" during the January 2011 Consumer Electronics Show. Project Denver is Nvidia's development of ARM-architecture based CPUs which could challenge the x86 CPU architecture that currently dominates the desktop, notebook and server CPU market. Intel and AMD are the leading x86 CPU players. We expect Nvidia's ARM-based CPUs to come to the market in 2013.
Furthermore, Nvidia also designs and develops mobile processor for use in smartphones and tablets. Nvidia's Tegra processor has seen significant revenue growth in 2011 and 2012. Mobile computing could become a big business for Nvidia in the future.
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The Professional Graphics segment makes a significant contribution to Nvidia's overall valuation, due to the high share that Nvidia has in this market as well as the high profit margins of the segment compared to its other businesses.
The importance of Professional Graphics is driven by 3 things:
High Professional Graphics Market Share
We estimate that Nvidia had much higher penetration in the professional graphics cards market (~80%), compared to discrete desktop graphics (~63%), discrete notebook graphics (~53%).
High Prices
Although there are about 17 times as many discrete graphics cards sold compared to the number of professional graphics cards sold, the professional graphics are on average sold at 6-8 times the price of a standard graphics card.
High Profit Margins
Nvidia's gross profit margins for professional graphics cards stood at ~48% in 2012 compared to ~29% for discrete graphics. We believe that the professional graphics cards margins will continue to remain the highest compared to other segments.
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Shift from Desktops to Notebooks
The shift of consumer preference from desktops to laptops will continue as the performance and pricing gap between desktops and laptops narrows. We expect the desktop market to more or less stagnate while notebooks will continue to grow, driven by demand from emerging markets.
Expected Demise of Integrated Graphics
With the launch of hybrid CPUs like Intel's Sandy Bridge and AMD's Llano, the days of integrated graphic chips are numbered. Therefore we expect this business to phase out by this year.
Growing smartphone and tablet market
Smartphone sales have increased from about 139 million in 2008 to an estimated 675 million in 2012, (as per estimates from market research firm Gartner), an increase of 43% compared to 2011. We expect smartphones shipments to continuing rising, crossing 1.3 billion by 2016.
Tablets are growing at a fast pace and are expected to cannibalize some PC sales in the future. Tablet shipments increased from 71 million in 2011 to 117 million in 2012 and are expected to reach 260 million by 2016.
Trefis Forecast Rationale for Nvidia's Average Professional GPU Price
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${forecast} refers to Nvidia's average selling price per professional GPU sold.
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Historically, ${forecast} declined from $186 in 2007 to $161 in 2009. However, the same recovered in 2010 and reached $244 in 2012, as per our estimate. Going forward, we expect ${forecast} to slightly increase for the next few years but stabilize thereon for the rest of our review period.
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Trefis considered the following actors for its forecast:
- More advanced capabilities would offset hardware cost decline
- Hardware costs reduction is a well known phenomenon in semiconductor industry and usually results in manufacturers passing cost savings to customers resulting in price declines.
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However, Nvidia is constantly improving the performance and capabilities of its products. Introduction of technologies such as Maximus will help Nvidia charge higher price for its professional GPUs.
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The improving economy presents an opportunity for Nvidia to sell more advanced, higher priced GPUs in the market, thus keeping the average selling prices stable.
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Price competition from AMD could act as an offsetting factor
- Given the opportunity to expand, AMD will look to enhance its offerings and compete on price with Nvidia. Some of the recently launched FirePro processors by AMD promise to offer better performance compared to Nvidia's processors.
- Over a period of time, AMD will compete on pricing and target emerging markets which are increasingly turning into design-based economies and moving ahead of just being manufacturers. This may limit Nvidia's power to charge high prices.
Back to Company OverviewHow Does Trefis Modelling Work?
How do we get the historical numbers for this chart?
Trefis has a team of in-house Analysts who gather historical data from company filings and other verifiable sources. When historicals are available, we explain how we got them at the bottom of the Trefis analysis section below.
Who came up with the Trefis forecast for future years?
The Trefis team of in-house Analysts considers a variety of factors when projecting any forecast. The rationale for our projections is explained in the Trefis analysis section below.
How does my dragging the trendline on the chart impact the stock price?
- We use forecasts for business drivers to calculate forecasted Revenues and Profits for each division of the company.
- We then use forecasted Profits in a Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model to obtain the Price Estimate for the company.
See more on:
DCF MethodologyView All Help Topics