Nvidia (NVDA) stock rose nearly 5% on Tuesday, following bullish notes from Wall Street analysts citing strong chip demand ahead of its earnings report set for Wednesday afternoon.
In a client note this week, Stifel analyst Ruben Roy raised his price target on Nvidia to $180 from $165, while Truist Securities’ William Stein raised his price outlook to $167 from $148.
Roy cited “a diverse set of data points,” including continued high spending on AI infrastructure by hyperscalers and demand for Nvidia’s latest Blackwell AI chips.
“We believe that NVDA is well positioned in markets that combine to yield an overall TAM [total addressable market, or revenue opportunity] of more than $100 billion exiting 2025 and a longer-term opportunity funnel that could approach $1 trillion,” Roy wrote.
Nvidia stock also rose on news that one of its customers, cloud provider Nebius Group (NBIS), is launching its first GPU cluster in the US, which will use up to 35,000 Nvidia chips. A GPU cluster is a network of graphics processing units, or AI chips, with massive compute power used to train and run artificial intelligence software.
For reference, Nebius’ order of 35,000 Nvidia chips is equivalent to about 4% of the volume of Hopper AI chips Wall Street analysts expect Nvidia to have shipped in the October period, Bloomberg consensus data shows.
Nvidia declined to comment on the deal.
Nvidia stock’s climb comes a day after shares fell on a report by the Information about overheating issues with its Blackwell AI servers. In August, Nvidia was reportedly dealing with design flaws related to the individual Blackwell chips themselves, which prompted the company to push back the chips’ production ramp to the January quarter.
Nvidia has not confirmed overheating issues with its Blackwell servers, and the company told Yahoo Finance Monday that “the engineering iterations are normal and expected.”
Truist Securities’ Stein said of the overheating issues reported this week, “Conversations with our industry contacts don’t precisely corroborate this latest data point, but they do reflect supply chain challenges around the production ramp.”
Despite reported Blackwell issues, Dell Technologies (DELL) said it has already shipped its latest AI hardware product, the PowerEdge system, with Nvidia’s latest GB200 NVL72 systems.
“[C]ommentary from NVDA, partners, and our industry contacts feel overwhelmingly positive,” Stein wrote in a note to investors. He pointed to emerging demand for Nvidia chips in the robotics and “traditional” computing sectors as well as that from AI software developers.
KeyBanc analysts took a more cautious outlook on Nvidia ahead of earnings, lowering their earnings and revenue outlook for Nvidia for the January quarter, citing a squeeze on demand in China for Nvidia H20 chips.
“We believe H20 demand in China is getting pushed out as there is increased pressure among China hyperscalers to use domestic AI solutions,” they wrote in a note on Tuesday.
They also stated fears that Nvidia’s latest Blackwell chips could cannibalize Nvidia’s prior-generation Hopper chips. “Regarding H200, we are hearing that some demand is getting pushed out given the availability of Blackwell (B200).”
KeyBanc lowered its fiscal fourth quarter sales guidance for Nvidia to $37.7 billion from $40 billion and its earnings outlook to $0.83 per share from its prior guidance of $0.88 per share. Still, KeyBanc maintained its Overweight rating on the stock and its price target of $180.
Overall, analysts see Nvidia’s adjusted quarterly earnings rising 85% from the year-ago period to $0.74 per share and revenue rising roughly 84% to $33.2 billion, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates. About 90% of Wall Street analysts tracked by Bloomberg recommend buying the stock.
Laura Bratton is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X @LauraBratton5.
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Source: finance.yahoo.com