Nvidia shares fall ahead of earnings as Wall Street reiterates bullish outlook

Nvidia (NVDA) stock fell about 3% on Thursday as Wall Street analysts reiterated their bullish views on the chip giant ahead of a highly anticipated earnings report next week.

Nvidia shares have risen about 30% since early August.

KeyBanc’s John Vinh was among the latest Wall Street analysts to explain why the company should be prepared to beat lofty expectations in his Aug. 28 report.

“We believe that the modest expectations for Blackwell shipments in the third quarter were met by higher Hopper bookings,” Vinh wrote in a recent note.

“We expect NVDA to post better/higher results, with the rally driven by strong demand for Hopper GPUs.”

The analyst reiterated his recommendation to buy the stock with a target price of $180.

Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell chips are reportedly facing delays of up to three months, which could delay future orders and negatively impact plans for major customers like Microsoft (MSFT), Meta (META), Google (GOOG, GOOGL), and Amazon (AMZN), which together account for about 40% of the company’s revenue.

Citi analysts also reiterated their buy rating on the stock this week, writing that they expect “Blackwell’s comments to [from Nvidia] To reassure investors about the strong outlook for 2025, [the] “The stock is expected to hit a 52-week high.” The company’s analysts have a price target of $150 per share.

Goldman Sachs analysts recently reiterated their buy rating on the stock, which is also on the company’s “condemn list.”

Wall Street remains positive about big tech spending on AI infrastructure, with Goldman Sachs recently saying it believes “demand from customers across large cloud providers and enterprises is strong and NVIDIA’s strong competitive position in AI/accelerated computing remains intact.”

Analysts expect Nvidia’s revenue to grow 112% in the fourth quarter, though that would be a slowdown from the more than 250% growth the company saw in the same quarter last year.

Nvidia shares were the main driver of the market’s recovery in August, with the stock nearly up from its August low, when it fell below $100.

Shares hit an intraday high of $140 in June and closed at an all-time high of $135.58 on June 18. A majority of analysts are bullish on the AI ​​company’s stock, with 66 buy recommendations, eight hold recommendations and zero sell recommendations.

Ines Ferry is a senior business reporter at Yahoo Finance. You can follow her on X on @ines_ferre.

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