On March 25, a California federal judge certified an investor class in a securities lawsuit against Nvidia Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) and its founder and CEO, Jensen Huang. The lawsuit accuses the company and its CEO of misleading shareholders about its gaming revenue during 2017 and 2018, specifically focusing on the portion of revenue that came from selling graphics processing units (GPUs) to crypto miners.
Founded in 1993, Nvidia is a technology company that became the world's first company to hit $5 trillion in market capitalization last year. With a market cap of $4.26 trillion currently, it is currently the world's largest company.
During the 2017-18 boom, crypto miners often deployed GPUs manufactured by Nvidia for mining cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC). It was in 2018 that Nvidia investors first sued Nvidia and Jensen Huang for allegedly understating over $1 billion in GPU sales tied to crypto mining.
The plaintiffs alleged that in 2018, the company's earnings call and guidance cut on Aug. 16 and a revenue warning on Nov. 15 revealed the crypto mining exposure as shares dropped on both occasions.
In May 2022, NVIDIA agreed to pay a $5.5 million penalty to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for inadequate disclosures concerning the impact of crypto mining on the company’s gaming business. Though the company had information that the growth in gaming sales was driven in significant part by crypto mining, it didn't disclose these significant earnings and cash flow fluctuations related to a "volatile" business, the SEC had remarked.
On March 25, Judge Haywood Gilliam ruled in his order that investors can pursue their claims as a group and defined the class as investors who purchased the Nvidia stock between Aug. 10, 2017, and Nov. 15, 2018. The order underlined that the certification is only a procedural step and doesn't resolve the question of whether Nvidia’s statements were fraudulent or not.
“Investors who purchased NVIDIA in the 2017-2018 timeframe have done incredibly well, as our corporate strategy unfolded as we consistently predicted," an NVIDIA spokesperson told TheStreet Roundtable.
"We will address the complaint in court.”
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