Samantha Lee/Business Insider
- Nvidia's stock shed nearly half of its value from November to January after the chipmaker delivered disappointing third-quarter results and later cut its fourth-quarter revenue guidance.
- But shares recovered a bit as its fourth-quarter results topped Wall Street estimates and after it beat out Intel in the race for acquiring Mellanox Technologies.
- To distill the latest arguments for and against investing in Nvidia, Markets Insider asked the Wall Street analysts carrying the stock's highest and lowest price targets the same questions.
- Watch Nvidia trade live.
Nvidia has sparked extreme views among Wall Street analysts.
The bulls say Nvidia is a dominant player in many segments including data center, professional visualization (pro-vis) and automotive.
However, bears say Nvidia's valuation has gotten out of control and that it faces pretty decent competition in the data-center market.
Nvidia shares shed 57% of their value from October to January after the chipmaker delivered disappointing third-quarter results and later cut its fourth-quarter revenue guidance. The company cited excess of mining graphics processing units (GPUs) following the crypto-currency boom, and declining macroeconomic conditions, particularly in China, for its underperformance.
But shares recovered a bit as Nvidia's fourth-quarter results topped Wall Street's expectations and after the company beat out Intel in the race for acquiring Mellanox Technologies, a supplier of computer-networking products. That deal is widely seen as a strategic bid that can help the chipmaker grab an even bigger piece of the growing data-center market. Shares settled at $165.56 apiece on Thursday - 43% below their record high set in October.
To be sure, Wall Street analysts are still pretty bullish on the name. Among those surveyed by Bloomberg, 29 have a "buy" rating, nine recommend "hold," and three say "sell."
The SunTrust analyst William Stein is the biggest Nvidia bull on Wall Street, according to Bloomberg data. He carries a $210 price target. (Ho Kang-Wei, an analyst from the Singapore-based Phillip Securities, has a price target of $274 on Nvidia, but he hasn't updated any of his recommendations since May.)
Meanwhile, Abhinav Davuluri, an analyst at Morningstar, is the biggest bear on the chipmaker, with a $120 price target. (The Exane BNP Paribas analyst David Connor also has a $120 target, but he didn't respond to a request for comment.)
These interviews have been edited for clarity and length.
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