We're raising our Nvidia price target after a great quarter and rosy guidance

CNBC

a day ago

Nvidia shares jumped in extended trading Wednesday evening after the AI chipmaker reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue and earnings. It also provided an upbeat view of its current second quarter despite restrictions on what it can sell to China. Revenue in its fiscal 2026 first quarter increased 69% year over year to $44.06 billion, beating the $43.31 billion the Street was looking for, according to estimates compiled by data provider LSEG. Adjusted earnings per share increased 57% year over year to 96 cents in the three-month period ended April 27, exceeding the consensus of 93 cents, LSEG data showed. Both EPS and the quarterly estimate excluded charges related to the H20 chip ban in China. Why we own it Nvidia's high-performance graphic processing units (GPUs) are the key driver behind the AI revolution, powering the accelerated data centers being rapidly built around the world. But Nvidia is more than just a hardware story. Through its Nvidia AI Enterprise service, Nvidia is building out its software business. Competitors : Advanced Micro Devices and Intel Most recent buy : Aug 31, 2022 Initiation : March 2019 Bottom line Nvidia's results are proof that there has been no slowdown in the buildout of AI. During the post-earnings conference call, CEO Jensen Huang pointed out four positive surprises since the company's annual GTC event in March that have driven a surge in demand. The first surprise was advancements in reasoning AI, which is included in popular large language models like ChatGPT. According to Huang, reasoning models are creating a step function surge in inference demand, which in turn increases the demand for chips because they are extremely compute-intensive. Another positive surprise was the rescinding of the so-called AI diffusion rules, which ended right at the same time that countries woke up to the importance of AI as an infrastructure, according to Huang. A third positive surprise was the development of enterprise AI agents, which he called "game-changing." The fourth and last surprise is related to industrial AI, and all the on-shoring manufacturing and the building of plants around the world, creating demand for the Nvidia Omniverse. These are important callouts, as they underscore the rapid pace of advancements in artificial intelligence, which continues to drive strong demand for Nvidia's chips. The growing integration of AI into everyday life further reinforces this trend. This is clear evidence that the AI story is still in its early innings. NVDA YTD mountain Nvidia YTD Accordingly, we're raising our price target to $170 from $165. But given Nvidia's rapid 55% stock rise from its 52-week low on April 4 through Wednesday's close of $134, we are keeping our hold-equivalent 2 rating. In after-hours trading, shares added another 5%. Commentary Heading into earnings , some of our key questions centered on the Blackwell ramp, Sovereign AI, hyperscaler demand, and developments in China. 1. Blackwell : After some early supply chain issues, the ramp of the new Blackwell superchip called GB200 has gone well. Despite the vast complexities of building it, Nvidia saw a significant improvement in manufacturing yields and an increase in rack shipments to customers. Blackwell contributed 70% of the $34.16 billion of data center compute revenue in the quarter. Overall, data center revenues, which also included networking sales, increased 73% year over year to $39.1 billion, slightly missing estimates of $39.36 billion, according to FactSet. Nvidia is always innovating its chipsets, making them more powerful and efficient with every new iteration, but also backwards compatible. The next product on its roadmap is the Blackwell Ultra or GB300. The company said samplings of these systems began earlier this month at the major cloud service providers, and it expects production shipments to start later this quarter. Nvidia is anticipating a smooth ramp of the Blackwell Ultra based on what it learned from Blackwell. 2. Sovereign AI: During the call, Huang called Sovereign AI "a new growth engine" for the company as countries around the world build out national AI factories. " Countries are racing to build national AI platforms to elevate their digital capabilities," the CEO said. Later, he likened the need for countries to invest in AI infrastructure to their past investments in electricity and the internet. Rules on how countries are purchasing AI chips from Nvidia have been dynamic lately, with President Donald Trump ending the AI diffusion rules in favor of a new policy to promote AI tech with trusted partners. One way is through trade agreements, like what we saw out of the Middle East a few weeks ago. Next up could be Europe. Huang said he will be traveling through the continent next week and " just about every country needs to build out AI infrastructure and there are umpteen AI factories being planned." 3. Hyperscalers : There's been no let-up or digestion in demand from the so-called hyperscalers, which is another term for large data center and cloud service providers like Alphabet and Oracle as well as Club names Amazon , Microsoft , and Meta Platforms . They all signaled alongside, their latest earnings reports, their intentions to keep spending aggressively on AI. Nvidia said Wednesday that on average, major hyperscalers are each deploying nearly 1,000 NVL72 racks or 72,000 Blackwell GPUs per week and are on track to further increase output this quarter. One example that CFO Colette Kress gave was that Microsoft has already deployed tens of thousands of Blackwell GPUs, but that's expected to increase to the hundreds of thousands. 4. China : As for its business in China, Nvidia shipped out $4.6 billion worth of H20s prior to the new export licensing requirement. It was unable to ship an additional $2.5 billion of H20 revenue in the quarter. The export license changes, which went into effect in mid-April, caused the company to disclose it will record a $5.5 billion charge in the quarter tied to H20 inventory, purchase commitments, and "related reserves." In a bit of good news, Nvidia said Wednesday it only had to record a $4.5 billion charge this quarter, less than originally anticipated, because it was able to reuse certain materials. Nvidia said it is still evaluating its options to supply chips to the region in compliance with the U.S. government's export control rules. Reuters reported over the weekend that Nvidia is planning mass production of a new AI chip for China that is compliant with restrictions. Huang said on the earnings call that Nvidia does not have anything right now to announce, but the company is "considering it" and "thinking about it." Losing access to the China AI accelerator market would have a material adverse impact on Nvidia's business, Kress said on the earnings call, a market she thinks will grow to nearly $50 billion. Huang echoed that sentiment in an interview with Jim Cramer for Wednesday evening's "Mad Money." Huang said that trade with China is important if the U.S. wants to be the global AI leader. "There are so many developers there [in China], and because the world is going to adopt technology from one country or another — and we prefer it to be the American technology stack," the CEO told Jim. Guidance Looking at Nvidia's fiscal 2026 second quarter outlook, the company expects revenue to be approximately $45 billion, plus or minus 2%. This view was slightly below the consensus estimate of $45.9 billion, according to LSEG. However, it reflects a loss of approximately $8 billion in H20 revenue due to the export control limitations. Moving down the line, Nvidia expects fiscal Q2 adjusted gross margins of 72%, plus or minus 50 basis points. That's roughly inline with the 72.1% expected per FactSet. According to an earnings snapshot note from Truist, Nvidia's implied fiscal second quarter EPS guidance is 98 cents at the midpoint, one penny shy of the 99-cent consensus, according to LSEG. This is pretty solid considering the loss of sales of H20 chips in China. (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long NVDA, AMZN, META, MSFT. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. 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