Corsair Gaming said on November 10 that it will present at the 15th annual ROTH Technology Conference. Investors there will want to talk about the quarter it reported five days earlier, which beat its own forecast for an awkward reason: its best-selling product line right now is computer memory.
Third-quarter revenue rose 6% to $367.0 million, $17 million above the top of the company’s guidance range. Memory sales hit a third-quarter record of $167.3 million, up 43%. GAAP net loss narrowed to $2.4 million from $10.4 million a year earlier, and adjusted EBITDA climbed 38% to $22.4 million.
Memory is carrying the company
DRAM prices have soared as AI data centers soak up chip supply. Corsair sells memory modules to PC builders, so higher prices lift its revenue. Chief executive Thi La said supply is still tight and prices high.
The same squeeze hurts the rest of the business. Expensive memory makes building a gaming PC pricier, so people wait. Corsair’s sales of standalone DIY parts like cases and power supplies stayed soft. Pre-built gaming PCs grew in every category, which partly makes up for it. The same component costs are hitting consoles too: Nintendo raised Switch 2 prices as memory costs climbed.
There’s a catch for the coming quarter. Management expects memory margins to come back down toward normal, which is why it sees fourth-quarter adjusted EBITDA below last year’s level even on higher sales.
Peripherals pushed into the holidays
The gamer and creator peripherals segment, which covers keyboards, mice, headsets, controllers and streaming gear, grew only 3% to $116.5 million. Several product launches slipped from the third quarter into the fourth. Logistics delays and a move to a new distribution hub also left $6 million to $7 million of extra peripheral orders unshipped at quarter end.
Corsair expects double-digit peripheral growth in the fourth quarter as those launches and back orders land. It guided total fourth-quarter revenue to $420 million to $450 million and raised full-year revenue guidance to $1.456 billion to $1.486 billion.
That puts a lot on the holiday quarter. If memory prices start to ease, the DIY side could recover, but the memory windfall would shrink with it. Corsair is betting peripherals and pre-built systems can carry the load when that happens. On the hardware side of peripherals, new radio chips like SPARK’s ultra-wideband platform with Nordic are reshaping what high-end wireless mice can do.