Nvidia Stock Down Despite Topping Estimates, Credit Suisse Hikes Target Price

Nvidia stock price retreated from an all-time high of $360 after reporting stronger than expected results for the first quarter. The selloff is mostly blamed on the broader market volatility and trade war tensions between the largest economies as Trump administration has been taking steps to reduce the trade relationship with the second-largest economy.

Nvidia’s first-quarter revenue of $3.08bn grew 38.7% from the past year period, beating analysts by $80m.

Besides automotive, its rest of the business segments have generated substantial year over year growth in the first quarter, with gaming up 27% and data center revenue surged 80%. The first-quarter automotive revenue of $155m declined 5% sequentially.

In addition to strong top-line performance, the company’s margins and the bottom line jumped sharply from the year-ago period. Its net income of $914m rose 132% from the same period last year.

“NVIDIA had an excellent quarter. The acquisition of Mellanox expands our cloud and data center opportunities. We raised the bar for AI computing with the launch and shipment of our Ampere GPU. And our digital GTC conference attracted a record number of developers, highlighting the accelerating adoption of NVIDIA GPU computing,” NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said.

While Nvidia stock price surged close to 50% since the beginning of this year and the shares are up 150% in the past three years, Credit Suisse calls it the best secular growth stock in the semiconductor industry.

Credit Suisse sets a price target of $435 for the next 12 to 18 months, implying a massive upside from the current stock price of $350.

Its outlook is strong as the healthy cash position would permit it to invest aggressively in growth opportunities to sustain the revenue growth momentum. Its first-quarter operating cash flow came in at $909m.