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Wednesday, February 24th, 2021
| Time | Event |
| 9:49a | HP is Acquiring HyperX for $425 Million
In some unexpected news today, HP and HyperX (formerly a division of Kingston) have jointly released a statement that HP is to acquire HyperX gaming peripherals portfolio, and the brand, for $425 million USD. Kingston retains the DRAM, Flash, and SSD products (those that are branded HyperX will probably be renamed). Perhaps it is indicative that Kingston wants to remain focused on the memory and storage markets, and divest away from a variable commodity market, while at the same time HP is looking to boost its presence in the space alongside its HP OMEN branding. Pending regulatory review, the deal is expected to go close in Q2 2021, with the acquisition accretive on a non-GAAP to HP in the first full year. The HyperX peripheral line-up, which includes gaming headsets, microphones, keyboards, mouse pads, mice, power supplies, console accessories and apparel, is expected to be used by HP’s broader gaming ecosystem to expand potential add-ons for its OMEN series gaming desktops and laptops, as well as build that ecosystem for hardware, software, and services.
HyperX as a brand has always been a distinct element somewhat separate from Kingston – over the last few years, every trade show we’ve attended we have made separate meetings for each company, whereas a decade ago we would cover both in the same room. This disaggregation of the business has obviously allowed Kingston to package it up should it ever need to offload, as it has now done with HP. Kingston still retains the gaming focused RGB-laden DRAM and SSD businesses, although these are likely to be sold either under Kingston or a separate new brand that we will learn about in due course. It is unclear whether HyperX sponsorships of eSports teams is also part of the deal, if those will transfer to HP, or they will remain with Kingston.
In the press release, HP quotes that the PC hardware industry is set to have a $70 billion addressable market by 2023, with the global peripherals market (gaming and non-gaming) to grow to $12.4 billion by 2024. HP states that gaming peripherals will be a disproportionally large element of that year-on-year growth, and that HyperX’s brand recognition will help HP ‘advance its leadership in personal systems by modernizing compute experiences and expanding into valuable adjacencies’. In non-corporate speak, that just means that HP sees collective value in enabling its own systems with top-brand accessories to improve the overall experience. For a price, naturally, although there will no doubt be some synergies as HP can mothball some of its own HP OMEN peripherals that may not have had large distribution. With the deal expected to close in Q2, it will be interesting to see if HP does any brand reorganization with HyperX, such as ‘HyperX by HP’, or leave it as it is. If we get more information we will add to this news post. Source: https://press.hp.com/us/en/press-release |
| 3:35p | AMD To Unveil Next Radeon RX 6000 Video Card On March 3rd
It looks like AMD is getting ready to launch the next part in their RDNA2/RX 6000 family of video cards. This afternoon the company sent out a save the date invitation to the press and public, announcing that the company will be holding a Radeon-related announcement next Wednesday, March the 3rd. And with a picture of a previously unseen Radeon video card included with the announcement, AMD is leaving little ambiguity about their plans. The event, officially dubbed “Where Gaming Begins Episode 3”, will be another Radeon-focused event, where AMD will “introduce the newest addition to the Radeon RX family of high-performance graphic cards.” AMD’s previous two WGB events have been pre-recorded presentations, so we’re expecting the same here. The cornerstone of the announcement will be the introduction of a new Radeon video card. Essentially giving us half of the product announcement up-front, AMD has also posted a short, looping video of the card, highlighting the fairly sizable card and its open air cooler with dual axial fans. Given this, we’re almost certainly looking at what will be a Radeon RX 6700 card. AMD started the RDNA2 family with the top cards and GPU (Navi 21) first, so this is the next step in the expected filtering down of RDNA2 into cheaper video cards.
We’ll find out more about the card next week of course, but I would expect to see it positioned to compete against NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3060 series, with today’s announcement by AMD clearly intended to be a bit of a spoiler ahead of NVIDIA’s launch tomorrow. Currently AMD’s product stack stops at the $579 RX 6800, so it will be interesting to see just where this upcoming video card lands – if it’ll be positioned closer to the $400 RTX 3060 Ti, or the (nominally) $329 RTX 3060. AMD and NVIDIA’s GPUs have been slightly out of alignment this generation, as evidenced by Navi 21’s performance, so I won’t be too surprised if this next Navi GPU (Navi 22) similarly floats between NVIDIA’s GA106 and GA104. Finally, I suspect we’ll hear some software-related news from AMD as well. The company has demonstrated an aptness for bundling software news into these hardware announcements, looking to make the most of these large, highly visible product launches. So I don’t expect AMD to solely talk about the new video card for 15+ minutes. At any rate, we’ll find out more on March 3rd at 11am ET. So please join us then for the full details on AMD’s next Radeon video card. |
| 7:00p | NVIDIA Closes Out Q4 & FY2021 With Another Round of Record Earnings
NVIDIA this afternoon closed the book on another record fiscal year, announcing their FY 2021 and Q4 2021 earnings results for the company. For the last quarter of their fiscal year, NVIDIA booked just over $5B in revenue with a profit of $1457M, marking NVIDIA’s first five billion dollar quarter, and setting earning records across the board. Meanwhile for the full fiscal year, NVIDIA has recorded just under $16.7B in revenue, with a net income for the year of $4.3B. |
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