Nvidia shares hit record high as AI demand fuels record results

Aug 24 (Reuters) – Shares of Nvidia (NVDA.O) rose as much as 6.7% on Thursday, hitting an all-time high, after the company unveiled a $25 billion stock buyback plan and record quarterly revenue powered by strong demand for its artificial intelligence (AI)-focused chips.

Nvidia beat analyst expectations late on Wednesday when it reported late on Wednesday second-quarter revenue of $13.51 billion, and predicted revenue would reach $16 billion in the third quarter.

Santa-Clara, California-based Nvidia also said it would buy back $25 billion worth of its shares, one of the largest planned buybacks of the past decade.

Nvidia’s stock rose as high as $502.66, topping a record hit earlier this week and further entrenching itself as the first trillion-dollar chip maker. It pared some gains and was last up 3.08% at $485.48. The stock is now up 230% year-to-date.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), buoyed by Nvidia, rose in early trade before falling by 1.16%. Some investors took profits after the rally triggered by Nvidia’s earnings report, said Michael James, equity trading managing director at Wedbush Securities.

“The entire market has been in ‘sell the news’ mode, everybody was breathlessly awaiting Nvidia’s print and guide. Clearly it was much better than expectations, but it was an incredibly crowded long, as was technology in general, given that big rally we had yesterday going into the Nvidia print and traders were primed to sell initial up moves,” James said.

More than 20 brokerages raised their target price on Nvidia after the earnings. Among the most bullish were Elazar Advisors with a target of $1,600 and Rosenblatt Securities with a target ot $1,100, according to Refinitiv data. The median analyst price target on the stock has nearly doubled to $600 since May when the company forecast a 50% jump in second-quarter revenue.

“The most important thing in what Nvidia said is that there’s trillion-dollar plus of data centers servicing the cloud that are basically converting a lot to their chips and I think that’s a brand new item, which is one of the reasons you’re seeing people jerk up their price targets,” said Tom Plumb, chief executive and lead portfolio manager at Plumb Funds, which owns Nvidia shares.

Investor euphoria for Nvidia is driven by its dominance in the rise of ChatGPT and other generative AI technology, most of which is powered by its high-end graphics chips.

Short sellers of Nvidia’s stock have made $826 million in mark-to-market losses on Thursday, data from analytics firm S3 Partners showed. “A holy crap report; double beat with a buyback; high bar and they jumped it,” said Matthew Tuttle, chief executive at Tuttle Capital Management, which had bet against Nvidia.

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