NVIDIA today reported revenue for the third quarter ended October 26, 2014, of $1.23 billion, up 16 percent from $1.05 billion a year earlier and up 11 percent from $1.10 billion the previous quarter. Revenue for the first three quarters of fiscal 2015 was a record $3.43 billion, up 15 percent from $2.99 billion a year earlier.

GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.31, up 55 percent from $0.20 a year earlier and up 41 percent from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $0.39, up 50 percent from $0.26 a year earlier and up 30 percent from the previous quarter."NVIDIA's focus on creating visual computing platforms for datacenter, mobile and PC drove record revenue this quarter," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer of NVIDIA.

"Growth drivers have kicked in for us on several fronts. High-performance computing, virtualization and web service providers have created demand for our GPU-accelerated datacenter platforms. Automakers are using Tegra to help reinvent the driving experience. And our new Maxwell architecture is a giant leap forward that has triggered a major upgrade cycle by PC gamers."

During the third quarter, NVIDIA paid $46 million in cash dividends and received 16.8 million shares under a $310 million structured repurchase agreement it entered into in the quarter. During the first three quarters of fiscal 2015, the company paid $140 million in cash dividends and repurchased 44.2 million shares. As a result, the company has returned to shareholders $950 million in the first three quarters of fiscal 2015.

Since restarting its capital return program in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013, NVIDIA has returned approximately $2.17 billion to shareholders. This represents 136 percent of the company's cumulative free cash flow for fiscal years 2013 to 2015 to date, and reflects the acceleration of the capital return program of cash generated in previous years.

The company intends to return approximately $600 million to shareholders in fiscal 2016 through ongoing quarterly cash dividends and share repurchases.

NVIDIA will pay its next quarterly cash dividend of $0.085 per share on Dec. 15, 2014, to all shareholders of record on Nov. 21, 2014. NVIDIA expects that a portion of this dividend payment may be considered a return of capital for U.S. federal income tax purposes.

Third Quarter Fiscal 2015 Highlights

During the third quarter, NVIDIA:

• Launched flagship NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPUs for gaming based on Maxwell, its 10th generation GPU architecture, which sets new standards of efficiency and performance.
• Extended Maxwell-based processors into the company's upgraded NVIDIA Quadro lineup.
• Continued Tesla's push into the big data analytics market. IBM announced future support for GPU acceleration in its IBM DB2 with BLU database software; NVIDIA released a deep learning library to enable faster growth in machine learning; and nearly all teams in the recent ImageNet international computer-vision competition used GPUs.
• Announced its early customer access program for NVIDIA GRID with VMware, which is drawing strong interest from companies worldwide. Among those signing up were airline-manufacturer Airbus, international construction group CH2M Hill and U.S. healthcare-provider MetroHealth.
• Added new wins for the Tegra K1 mobile processor, including the Google Nexus 9 tablet and NVIDIA's SHIELD tablet with 32 GB of memory and LTE connectivity. Acer and HP also announced Chromebooks with Tegra K1.
• Surpassed 6 million cars on the road with infotainment systems powered by NVIDIA. Honda also announced that three of its models -- the Civic, Civic Tourer and CR-V -- will include Tegra-based systems in the European market.
• Filed lawsuits against Samsung and Qualcomm in the International Trade Commission (ITC) and U.S. District Court in Delaware for using NVIDIA GPU patents without a license. The ITC has subsequently determined that it will investigate the case and hold an evidentiary hearing in June of 2015.

NVIDIA's outlook for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015 is as follows:

• Revenue is expected to be $1.20 billion, plus or minus two percent.
• GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins are expected to be 55.2 percent and 55.5 percent, respectively, plus or minus 50 basis points.
• GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $470 million; non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $422 million, inclusive of litigation costs.
• GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015 are both expected to be 18 percent, plus or minus one percentage point. This estimate excludes any discrete tax events that may occur during a quarter which, if realized, may increase or decrease NVIDIA's actual effective tax rates in such quarter.
• Capital expenditures are expected to be approximately $40 million to $50 million.