To say Nvidia's fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report next Wednesday will be closely watched would be an understatement. Nvidia stock investors are breathlessly waiting to see if the AI-chip maker can keep up its recent run of big beat-and-raise reports.
"It could be the most important earnings in all tech year to date, and possibly the entire stock market," Jordan Klein, managing director for tech, media and telecom sector trading at Mizuho Securities, said in a client note. "Nvidia is not up 47% year to date to $1.8 trillion market cap because nobody cares, right?"
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company will release its fiscal Q4 results late Wednesday. Analysts polled by FactSet expect Nvidia to earn an adjusted $4.59 a share, up 422% year over year, on sales of $20.37 billion, up 237%, in the quarter ended Jan. 28. That would be the company's third straight quarter of triple-digit percentage growth in sales and earnings.
Investors will key in on Nvidia's guidance to see how long the spending boom for data center-based artificial intelligence will continue. Cloud service providers have been aggressively buying graphics processing units, or GPUs, to run generative AI applications.
For its fiscal first quarter, analysts expect Nvidia to deliver earnings of $5 a share, up 359%, on sales of $22.12 billion, up 208%.
Another Bull Joins The Stable
Nvidia stock is up nearly 50% this year on the AI euphoria.
Loop Capital analyst Ananda Baruah joined the party on Thursday, initiating coverage of Nvidia stock with a buy rating and 1,200 price target.
On the stock market today, Nvidia stock dipped a fraction to close at 726.13.
"We are at the front end of a 3-5 year GPU compute and Gen AI foundational build across hyperscale" service providers, Baruah said in a client note. "Our work suggests Nvidia's largest customers will be taking everything Nvidia can give them in 2024 and 2025."
Nvidia Stock On 5 IBD Stock Lists
BofA Securities analyst Vivek Arya on Thursday reiterated his buy rating on Nvidia stock with a price target of 800.
In a client note, Arya said he wouldn't be surprised to see Nvidia stock pull back after its earnings given "the recent parabolic run-up in the stock."
"Any potential mismatch versus bullish expectations is likely supply (memory, packaging) rather than demand or competition related," Arya said.
After Nvidia's fiscal Q4 earnings, the next possible catalyst for Nvidia stock will be the company's GTC conference for AI developers. GTC will be held March 18-21 in San Jose, Calif. At the show, Nvidia is likely to preview its next-generation B100 GPU platform.
On Jan. 8, Nvidia stock broke out of a flat base at a buy point of 505.48, according to IBD MarketSmith charts. Nvidia stock has a best-possible IBD Composite Rating of 99.
Further, Nvidia stock is on five IBD stock lists: IBD 50, Leaderboard, Big Cap 20, Sector Leaders and Tech Leaders. Nvidia also is one of the Magnificent Seven stocks.
Follow Patrick Seitz on X, formerly Twitter, at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks.
