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Such is the clout of NVIDIA that its earnings release on Wednesday has become the highlight financial event of the week despite a relatively busy macroeconomic calendar. While the market appears to be pricing in a fair amount of volatility around the much-anticipated event, Wall Street is busy doing what it usually excels at doing: doubling down on momentum.
$NVDA: Baird Raises Target price to $1,050 from $750
The analyst comments “Per our Asia field trip, demand for Nvidia’s AI solutions remains unabated, with momentum from enterprise customers now rapidly building. Upcoming Blackwell architecture will drive another significant…
— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) February 20, 2024
To wit, Baird analysts have now followed in the footsteps of their Wall Street brethren by hiking NVIDIA’s stock price target from $750 to $1,050, implying an upside potential of around 44 percent.
To justify this bullish endorsement, Baird analysts cite robust demand for NVIDIA’s products in Asia, the sizable potential to increase performance and ASPs on the back of the upcoming Blackwell architecture, an increase in TSMC’s capacity to manufacture greater volumes of NVIDIA’s chips, and persistent tailwinds from the company’s GH200 offering (Grace Hopper Superchip).
As the AI-driven demand for NVIDIA’s chips shows no sign of slowing, Wall Street is literally tripping over itself to broadcast uber-bullish projections. Goldman Sachs announced last week that it no longer saw NVIDIA’s data center revenue in a decline in the second half of this year. Rather, the Wall Street behemoth has now modeled “consistent growth through 1HCY25 driven by continued spending on Gen AI infrastructure by the large cloud service providers, a broadening customer profile, and multiple new product cycles (e.g. H200, B100).”
Do note that NVIDIA’s shares are up around 400 percent relative to the start of 2023. More astonishing still, since the beginning of 2024, NVIDIA has added around $650 billion in market capitalization, which eclipses the entire market-based value of Tesla!
I know eyes are on $NVDA…but if you wanted a first tell that stocks were due for an overall consolidation…a 1-day 20% $SMCI decline would have to be it…right? pic.twitter.com/CTp4aTthZE
— SpotGamma (@spotgamma) February 20, 2024
The GPU manufacturer’s tailwinds are so strong at the moment that they are pushing even its co-dependent companies to the stratosphere. For instance, NVIDIA’s association with Super Micro Computer (SMCI) has pushed the high-performance server manufacturer’s stock to unfathomable heights in recent months, with gains of over 800 percent in the past year alone!
NVDA is now 3rd as the biggest component of the SPY. Earnings this week. Something to 👀 pic.twitter.com/YHKs0krzVK
— Menthor Q (@MenthorQpro) February 20, 2024
NVIDIA is now the third-largest component of the SPY ETF that tracks the performance of the S&P 500 index.