Nvidia Corp. had a good Thursday. The world’s most valuable chipmaker said surging demand for the chips it makes for artificial intelligence applications meant its revenue in the three months through June would be about $11 billion, some 53 percent more than analysts had expected. Susquehanna Financial Group said it might be the “greatest beat of all time.”
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The announcement prompted one of the largest market capitalization jumps in history: the stock rose 24 percent on May 26, adding $184 billion to the Santa Clara, California-based company’s valuation. To put that in context, Intel Corp., for a long time the world’s biggest chipmaker, is valued at $114 billion. So Nvidia, at $939 billion, is eight times bigger.
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The massive price jump put it close to similar one-day leaps from Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. last year. Some $59 billion of Nvidia stock changed hands on May 26, more than the next four most traded stocks in the S&P 500 — Tesla Inc., Microsoft Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Apple — combined, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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But even as the share price soared, in one respect Nvidia actually became cheaper. As analysts revised their earnings estimates upward, the chipmaker’s valuation as a multiple of its expected earnings declined. Wells Fargo analysts led by Aaron Rakers, for instance, had predicted full-year earnings per share of $4.45. Now they’re predicting $7.72. The earnings estimates have risen far more sharply than the shares themselves.
Analysts inevitably also revised their target prices — where they expect the stock to trade in 12 months’ time. For much of the year, analysts saw very little upside in the shares.
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Even though Nvidia, by some measures, is getting cheaper, it's still the most expensive stock in the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index, where chipmakers trade at an average of 26 times their forward earnings.
