During the Covid pandemic, sales of gaming PCs and associated peripherals went stratospheric, as millions of people worldwide not only had to work from home but also keep themselves entertained in the confines of their four walls. But since then, things haven't been so good and quite a few companies have felt the pinch in their finances. Corsair, famous purveyor of all things RGB, appears to be doing pretty well, though, as indicated by the $1.46 billion annual revenue declared in its latest financial report.
Do I need to say more about who Corsair is? Even if you're one of the most casual of casual PC gamers, you can't have escaped the ever-present marketing of Corsair and its raft of PC gaming products. It's been around since 1994 and first made its mark in the world of cache and RAM modules. Now it manufactures everything from RGB fans and AIO coolers to mice and keyboards, gaming chairs, headsets, and full PC systems.
As highlighted in its full-year 2023 financial report, Corsair is essentially split into two divisions: Gaming Components and Systems, and Gamer and Creator Peripherals. The former generated the most revenue but saw the lowest gross margin, with $1.06 billion and 21% respectively. The figures for the other segment were $395 million and 34%.
The total adjusted net income was only $58 million, though, so clearly Corsair has needed to pay off lots of additional bills. However, it was a substantial improvement from the previous year, when the gaming company only saw a net income of $18 million. Andy Paul, Corsair's CEO, explained why in the report.
"Consumer spending during the recent holiday period was better than we expected and we see that the high inventory levels at our competitors that were causing heavy discounting are generally back to normal.
We launched some really exciting products during 2023, and many were sold out during Q4 2023. In fact, we were airfreighting many of these products into our hubs during much of Q4 2023 to meet demand."
"The gaming hardware market in the United States and Europe, where we have most of our business, is now at a level between 30% and 50% bigger than pre-pandemic years"
In short, PC gamers purchased an absolute shed load of Corsair's products, and the company is expecting the Gamer and Creator Peripherals segment to do even better this year. The CEO said that new products will be released in 2024 and Corsair will be stepping into the sim racing and mobile controller sectors, too.
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Interestingly, it's not expecting the Gaming Components and Systems to improve much or at least, not for another year because "we are midcycle for new GPUs and the next big GPU launch and demand surge is likely to be 2025." That suggests Corsair isn't expecting Nvidia to release its next line of GeForce graphics cards until the tail end of 2024.
Traditionally, Nvidia announces a new architecture around September, with mainstream cards appearing a few months down the line, so it would seem that Corsair is betting on the RTX 50-series being no different. One thing is certain, though: You're going to see even more Corsair RGB lighting up gaming desks around the world over the next few years.
