Regardless of getting down 19% calendar year to day, Nvidia‘s ( NVDA -4.50% ) inventory has delivered additional than 400% returns to investors in excess of the last 3 several years. Traders are optimistic about Nvidia’s momentum in advertising its graphics processors and devices into several markets, these as cloud servers, self-driving autos, and the metaverse.
However, offering graphics processing units (GPUs) to gamers is nevertheless the company’s greatest enterprise, building 46% of total income last year. It can be critical that Nvidia maintains powerful growth in this organization to keep providing good returns to shareholders, and there are superior motives it will.

Picture resource: Getty Visuals.
Continual growth in gaming
About the previous five decades, Nvidia’s gaming GPU gross sales grew from $3.8 billion to $11.8 billion. That is an annualized progress amount of 25%. This progress was well balanced across increased ordinary offering rates, which rose at 13% for every 12 months and unit income growth of 11% for every 12 months.
The most up-to-date components study from Steam, a preferred on the internet gaming store, demonstrates that significantly less than 15% of Steam buyers are applying the latest GeForce 30-collection graphics playing cards, or GPUs. This reveals that most gamers never acquire a new GPU each and every yr. To publish constant advancement in the gaming segment, Nvidia must sell extra models each calendar year to new clients. This has not been a difficulty so far, considering that there have been an estimated 50 million new gamers coming into the current market every single calendar year.
What’s a lot more, Nvidia claims that only 29% of its set up foundation of GeForce users have upgraded to the most recent RTX family members of gaming GPUs. If Nvidia can expand its gaming phase 25% for each 12 months with less than a third of the base upgrading, it is straightforward to see how the gaming business has legs for much more progress as existing GeForce end users pull the bring about on a new GPU.

Impression resource: Nvidia 2022 Trader Working day Presentation.
There are around 250 game titles and computer software applications that have declared help for Nvidia’s ray-tracing technologies, which is what the RTX refers to. Ray tracing renders shadow and lighting effects with much more realism in games. With so a lot of video games supporting ray tracing now, more players are probably itching to enhance to take advantage of this aspect. But the scarcity of chips impacting the semiconductor business has stored lots of gamers from shopping for a new graphics card. Management expects this circumstance to keep on being for some time.
However, when gamers update, they invest an ordinary of $300 additional than on their past GPU. Above the very long expression, Nvidia estimates that avid gamers will commit about $100 per year on superior-overall performance GPUs throughout desktop, laptops, cloud gaming services, or consoles. Adding this up, Nvidia states this signifies a $100 billion chance.
It will never be easy to seize the total addressable current market. There would have to be at minimum 750 million GeForce consumers out of an estimated 3 billion gamers globally. Nvidia’s GeForce set up base has hovered below 200 million in modern many years, so it can be uncertain if it will access that a lot income in its gaming phase. But with the gaming section revenue achieving $12 billion in fiscal 2021, Nvidia will not have to seize a massive portion of its addressable market place to demonstrate solid advancement.
At a significant marketplace cap of nearly $600 billion, buyers are valuing Nvidia primarily based on the expectation of robust progress across the organization, not just gaming. But with most of its GeForce mounted base applying older GPUs, alongside with the trends towards larger offering costs, Nvidia has fantastic visibility to advancement for a segment that generates approximately half of its profits.
Due to the fact of these alternatives, Nvidia might be capable to justify its superior cost-to-earnings ratio of 62, but it will need to continue on firing on all cylinders.
This report represents the view of the writer, who may well disagree with the “official” suggestion position of a Motley Fool premium advisory provider. We’re motley! Questioning an investing thesis – even 1 of our individual – assists us all consider critically about investing and make conclusions that assist us come to be smarter, happier, and richer.