In a note to clients on Tuesday, Susquehanna analyst Chris Rolland said that Nvidia Corp. has “one of the largest opportunity sets ahead” and that its stock trades at a “reasonable multiple.”
He has a positive rating on Nvidia shares NVDA 0.64% and believes that the company will once again have a strong earnings report. However, he does admit that the company’s comments could cause some “near-term noise” or concerns.
At the same time, Wall Street is curious about reports that Nvidia’s new Blackwell chip range will be shipped later than planned. Rolland said that the CEO of Super Micro Computer Inc. (SMCI -0.17%) “seemingly confirmed the Blackwell delay during that company’s earnings call.” Nvidia recently said that it didn’t comment on rumors and that Blackwell production was still on track to ramp up in the second half of the year. Nvidia works with Super Micro, a company that makes servers.
People who work for Rolland think that stories of shipment delays “deserve some explanation and reassurances around re-spin/renewed timetable.” If the company had to push back the delivery date by a few months, “this would likely push initial GB200 revenues into 2025,” he wrote, referring to a Grace Blackwell rack-scale product.
Next Wednesday afternoon, Nvidia will report its findings. “In short, we expect another strong report, but we note that expectations are already high going into the print. The story around the Blackwell ramp is important to drive further upside in the stock,” Rolland wrote.
Still, there are many signs that the price will go up. For example, Super Micro’s comments showed that there is strong demand, which is likely to continue. Even if the Blackwell shipment date is pushed back, Rolland said that “improving supply and availability of Hopper graphics processing units should help fill the void in the meantime.” He also didn’t change his $160 price goal.
Analysts say that there is still a lot of interest in Nvidia’s current Hopper chip family, even though people are excited about the new Blackwell family. For example, Ruben Roy of Stifel said that he has heard “positive” things about the Hopper series. He also said that his talks with people in the business have led him to believe that “potential delays [for Blackwell] are likely to be measured in months rather than quarters.”
Because of this, Roy wrote, “we are again expecting a beat/raise scenario for July results and October guidance.” It’s not likely that [Nvidia] will change its tone or message much from what it has been talking about since it reported its [fiscal first-quarter] results: its long-term plan and continued investment in open source and shared software.
He thinks the stock is a good buy and wants it to reach $165.
Oppenheimer’s Rick Schafer also spoke about the company’s earnings and forecasts on Tuesday morning. He said that the Blackwell B100 product will have a “low-volume… market introduction” in the January quarter, followed by a “meaningful ramp” in the April quarter.
It is important for generative AI to use Nvidia’s “entrenched [data-center] AI ecosystem,” he wrote. “We will keep buying for a long time.”
Schafer wrote that the company was “the purest scale play on AI proliferation” and praised its rack-scale efforts. He said that “Nvidia’s” unique end-to-end software connectivity accelerator tool is used in the move to rack-scale.
He thinks the stock will do well and wants it to go up to $150.
As of Tuesday morning, Nvidia shares were down 0.9%. They could lose their six-session win streak, which is the longest such run since March 25. In the last six sessions, the stock has gone up 24.1%.
