Nvidia’s (NVDA) third quarter earnings report out Wednesday saw the chipmaker once again blow away Wall Street forecasts.
And analysts across the Street were quick to praise the results, which showed the world’s largest public company continuing to benefit from the AI boom.
Wedbush’s Dan Ives, one of Nvidia’s biggest fans on Wall Street, said the company’s fiscal third quarter earnings reported after the bell Wednesday were “flawless” and “should be framed and hung in the Louvre” in a note to investors Thursday.
Ives, with his typical flair, also frequently refers to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as the “Godfather of AI” and the company’s latest Blackwell AI chip as the “LeBron” of semiconductors.
“We believe the path to $4 trillion market cap and beyond is now laid out by Nvidia and this is bullish for the broader tech rally into year-end and 2025,” Ives wrote elsewhere in his report.
Nvidia’s financial results for the quarter ended Oct. 27 topped expectations across the board.
And while other analysts didn’t go so far as to recommend Nvidia’s print as worthy of a fine art exhibition, analysts at investment firms including JPMorgan, DA Davidson, and Bernstein each raised their price targets on the stock following Wednesday’s report.
“NVIDIA is well within its means to extend growth into next year given hyperscaler commentary around additional investments in AI compute and the company’s ability to deliver even with production setbacks,” wrote DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria in his own note to investors Thursday.
Luria is relatively bearish on Nvidia and has cautioned about risks to the company’s growth, including the potential of an AI bubble and Nvidia’s high concentration of revenue among relatively few Big Tech customers. But following Nvidia’s third quarter results, Luria raised his price target on the stock to $135 from $90, though he maintained his Neutral rating.
JPMorgan’s Harlan Sur reiterated his Buy rating on Nvidia shares and raised his price target to $170 from $155, noting continued strong demand for Nvidia’s Hopper chips even as tech firms race to buy its latest Blackwell lineup.
William Stein of Truist Securities, who also maintains a Buy rating on Nvidia stock, wrote in a note late Wednesday, “NVDA remains *the* AI company owing to its culture of innovation, ecosystem of incumbency, and massive investment in software, pre-trained models, and services.”
Despite the beat, shares of Nvidia were off about 1% on Thursday and lagging the broader market.
Analysts attributed the slip in shares to the company’s in-line guidance for the current quarter. Stein, for his part, countered any negative sentiment on the stock, writing, “NVDA’s increased confidence in the Blackwell ramp should overwhelm the drag on the stock from a Q4 revenue guidance number that was just ‘good’ rather than ‘great’.”
Nvidia earlier this year delayed production of its latest Blackwell AI chips from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, given design flaws that the company said have since been resolved. A report from the Information this week regarding overheating issues with Nvidia’s latest servers, which each include 72 Blackwell chips, renewed fears of delays and sent the stock down.
But Nvidia dispelled those anxieties, at least in the eyes of analysts.
In a note titled “Fake News?”, Evercore ISI analyst Mark Lipacis wrote, ”Consistent with our own sources, NVDA reiterated Blackwell production in full steam as it now anticipates JanQ shipments ahead of prior expectations.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang before a baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the Arizona Diamondbacks in San Francisco, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
Nvidia shares have come under pressure at times during recent months, with fears AI spending from Big Tech firms could hit a wall. Uncertainty surrounding how Trump 2.0 trade policies could affect the company, which sells specialized chips to China under the current trade restrictions, has also entered the picture. Sales to China made up 14% of Nvidia’s data center revenue during the company’s fiscal year ended Jan. 28, 2024.
“Chip War” author Christopher Miller told Yahoo Finance that semiconductors shouldn’t take too big a hit from tariffs directly, though they may come under pressure if tariffs on electronics assembled in China such as PCs and phones — which use the chips — cause demand for those products to wane.
“The change in administration is not going to make a big difference [for chipmakers],” Miller said.
Nvidia also has an advantage in the fact that it’s expanding into other markets beyond compute products for AI software developers, Voltron Data’s field chief technology officer Rodrigo Aramburu told Yahoo Finance. “NVIDIA is really well positioned,” Aramburu said. “[It’s] in more places than AI.”
Truist Securities’ Stein said this week he expects Nvidia to release a consumer CPU, which is used for “traditional” computing, next year, “opening up significant additional [total addressable market].”
Laura Bratton is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X @LauraBratton5.
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