Wedbush Lifts Nvidia’s PT Ahead Of 2Q Results

Wedbush raised Nvidia’s price target to $500 (8.1% upside potential) from $420 and maintained a Buy rating on the stock ahead of the chipmaker’s 2Q results scheduled this week.

Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson expects “only good news” from Nvidia (NVDA), on Aug. 19 when the company will report its 2Q results after the market bell. Bryson is optimistic about the company’s strong growth in gaming trends in the quarter and says it should continue into the third quarter. The analyst believes that the demand for Nvidia GPUs (graphics processing units) has exceeded supply in the data center segment.

As a result, the gaming trends and data center demand “should yield a strong outlook” for the third quarter, offsetting any potential weakness related to Mellanox network interface cards, he added.

Like Bryson, several analysts are upbeat on Nvidia’s 2Q results, especially the data center and gaming business. Last week, Raymond James analyst Chris Caso increased Nvidia’s price target to $500 from $370, with a Buy rating. James expects strong data center sales in 3Q adding that “October is likely to be stronger given strong pent-up demand for Ampere.”

On Aug. 13, Deutsche Bank analyst Ross Seymore raised the PT to $405 (12.4% downside potential) from $315, citing expectations for solid 2Q results and “another” strong outlook. However, Seymore believes that “much of this goodness” is already priced in the stock, and therefore, kept a Hold rating on the stock.

Currently, the Street has a bullish outlook on the stock. The Strong Buy analyst consensus is based on 26 Buys, 3 Holds and 1 Sell. Given the year-to-date stock price rally of over 96%, the average price target of $424.70 implies downside potential of about 8.2%. (See NVDA stock analysis on TipRanks).