After Nvidia Analyst Day, Wall Street Talks AV Testing, Artificial Intelligence, GPUs

NVIDIA Corporation NVDA investors didn’t seem to get what they were hoping for at the tech company's analyst day Tuesday. The stock is now down more than 10 percent in the past two days.

Here’s a sampling of what analysts had to say about Nvidia after the company's presentation. 

Voices From The Street

• B. Riley FBR analyst Craig Ellis said the stock has been hit too hard following reports that Nvidia suspended its autonomous vehicle program following a fatal accident in Arizona. “We believe a ‘pause, analyze, learn and correct’ approach is prudent in the aforementioned AZ situation and believe this will ultimately be recognized as an appropriate approach by investors, which will ultimately help restore sentiment,” Ellis said. 
• Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore said advancements in AI inference and ray tracing could be big winners for Nvidia. “NVIDIA's analyst day and developer's conference keynote was clearly positive," with the company citing "breakthrough" developments in ray tracing, AI inference and other incremental AI improvements, Moore said. 
• KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Michael McConnell said Nvidia’s longer-term projected total addressable markets in its data center — $50 billion — and AV — $60 billion — businesses are staggering. “Finally, a bigger-than-expected opportunity in hyperscale inference was noted as a primary driver of the TAM increase, as the company now expects GPUs to be adept in inference for most data center workloads and not just for image workloads,” the analyst said. 
• Tigress Financial analyst Ivan Feinseth said GPU demand growth will remain the key driver for Nvidia in the near term. “Nvidia continues to benefit from growing demand for GPUs in data centers as well as desktops and continues to expand applications into other areas, including the recently announced health care initiative,” Feinseth said. 
• Loup Ventures managing partner Gene Munster said he expects AV testing will resume within three months. “The company did not give a timeline of when testing will resume, but given the hold is based on the Uber review, we would expect it to take a few months." 
• Stifel analyst Kevin Cassidy said the keynote address drove home the point that the more GPU-based solutions companies employ, the more money they save. “The need for GPUs is driven by the computational requirements associated with the need to improve graphics quality, medical imaging, AI and autonomous vehicles as well as the slowing of Moore’s Law for CPUs, which can be offset by the use of accelerators,” Cassidy said. 

Ratings And Targets

Wall Street is still mostly bullish on Nvidia stock, but some firms are more bullish than others:

• B. Riley has a Buy rating and $290 target.
• Morgan Stanley has an Equal-weight rating and $258 target.
• KeyBanc has a Sector-Weight rating and no target.
• Stifel has a Hold rating and $220 target.

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Photo courtesy of Nvidia.