Chips Pummeled; Nvidia Swings to Loss

Widely held semiconductor stocks got blistered Thursday, with most stocks erasing any modest gains logged the previous day.

Nvidia(NVDA Quote) was down 7.2% to $10.73 ahead of its quarterly earnings report. The company reported a first-quarter loss of $201.3 million, or 37 cents a share, compared with a profit of $176.8 million, or 30 cents a share, for the year-earlier period. Adjusted loss was $46.7 million, or 9 cents per share. The company said revenue fell to $664.2 million, from $1.2 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2009. Sequentially, however, revenue grew 38%. Analysts had expected a loss of 11 cents per share on $514.7 million in revenue.

Atmel(ATML Quote) fell 2.4% to $3.64, adding to losses the day before driven by disappointing quarterly earnings.

Intel(INTC Quote) fell 2.2% to $15.77. The company and partner Novell announced Thursday that they were extending their collaboration to adopt Moblin, an open-source Linux platform.

Elsewhere in the sector:

Broadcom(BRCM Quote) fell 7.7% to $22.70.

Texas Instruments(TXN Quote) fell 4% to $17.58.

Advanced Micro Devices(AMD Quote) fell 7% to $4.01.

Qualcomm(QCOM Quote) fell 3.2% to $42.34.

Applied Materials(AMAT Quote) fell 6.6% to $11.85..