Chip Equipment Maker Applied Materials Stock Is Up Over 9% YTD Even As Charts Point To Bearish Patterns: Here's What Investors Should Look At

Shares of Applied Materials Inc. AMAT have risen by 9.11% this year despite last week’s declines in semiconductor-linked companies fueled by the emergence of DeepSeek’s V3 chatbot. Here’s what the company’s technical and fundamental metrics reveal.

What Happened: Applied Materials is a U.S. company that provides equipment, services, and software for manufacturing semiconductors, displays, and solar products to chipmakers.

While most semiconductor-linked and chipmaker stocks took a hit after DeepSeek’s chatbot emerged as the top application on the Apple Inc. AAPL app store, AMAT has risen by 2.86% over the last five trading sessions.

However, the technical analysis of its simple daily moving averages signals a short-term downtrend with a potential for a slight rebound.

AMAT shares closed Friday at $178.80, significantly lower than its 200-day simple moving average of $197.50, and 20-day average at $180.68. Also, lower than its eight-day average of $178.64, according to Benzinga Pro. However, the stock was above its 50-day average of $174.63, which acted as support, and indicated some signs of stabilization.

The momentum indicators for the stock were mixed. The relative strength index of 50.47 shows that the stock is in the neutral zone. whereas the positive MACD (moving average convergence/divergence) indicator of 1.46 suggests potential for upward momentum in the near term.

Why It Matters: The company will report its first-quarter earnings on Feb. 13 after market close. Applied Materials has continuously exceeded its earnings expectations over the last 10 quarters, as tracked by Benzinga.

Benzinga’s consensus expects it to deliver earnings of $2.32 per share on the revenue of $7.19 billion in the first quarter.

Despite a mixed technical picture for the stock, the 27 analysts tracked by Benzinga remain positive on the company with a ‘buy’ rating and consensus price target of $207.7.

The targets range between $140 to $280, with the three recent issuances by Susquehanna, Keybanc, and Barclays indicating an average of $196.67 apiece, which implies a 9.86% upside.

Price Action: Applied Materials was up 0.22% in premarket on Tuesday, whereas the exchange-traded fund tracking Nasdaq 100, Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 QQQ was up 0.13% at $518.76.

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