Is the "appetite" of the US stock market too big, making it difficult for Nvidia's performance to support its stock price?
NVIDIA's performance may struggle to support its stock price, despite its dominant position in the field of artificial intelligence computing. The market has high expectations for NVIDIA. Compared to its competitors, NVIDIA's stock price has shown a smaller increase. Although other artificial intelligence hardware manufacturers have performed strongly in the stock market, the market's response to NVIDIA's stock price has been relatively tepid
According to Zhitong Finance, most of the world's largest technology companies have brought good news in their financial reports. The performance sector of tech giants is currently only missing one piece: NVIDIA (NVDA.US). The company dominates the chip field that provides heavy work for artificial intelligence computing, making it the focus of the market attracted by this emerging technology. The company will not announce its financial report until May 22.
Prior to this, released data showed healthy growth in corporate profits, with demand for AI tools boosting sales of cloud computing services, indicating that spending on AI devices by enterprises will continue to increase. Among NVIDIA's largest customers, Meta Platforms (META.US), Microsoft (MSFT.US), Amazon (AMZN.US), and Alphabet (GOOGL.US) have all indicated that their capital expenditures for this year will either maintain the current pace or increase.
Mike Bailey, research director at Fulton Breakefield Broenniman LLC, said last Friday, "You will see a lot of chip buyers coming in, saying we have bought a lot, and we are buying more. The question NVIDIA faces is: is this enough?"
Since April 19, NVIDIA's stock price has rebounded, with AI hardware manufacturers plummeting before the first week of major tech companies' earnings releases. Since then, the stock has risen by 20%, but still dropped about 3% from its peak in March. As the stock prices of other AI hardware manufacturers fell after strong earnings reports, it is clear that market expectations are high.
Although its competitor, chip maker AMD (AMD.US), raised its sales expectations for AI accelerators from $3.5 billion to $4 billion this year, the company still plummeted nearly 9% on May 1. Server manufacturer Super Micro Computer (SMCI.US) has seen its stock price rise by over 190% year-to-date, but it fell 14% after announcing its earnings report, despite its revenue and profit guidance far exceeding analysts' average expectations.
With about 80% of S&P 500 index component companies having reported earnings, profits of tech and communication services companies are exceeding expectations at an astonishing rate. According to data collected by Bloomberg, around 90% of tech and communication services companies have exceeded earnings expectations, far above the benchmark index's average of 79%.
The problem lies in the fact that after driving the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index up by over 35% in the past 12 months, the above performances are unlikely to impact the stock market. Looking at the stock price trends on the second day after the financial reports were released, these two sectors are at the bottom of the major sectors of the S&P 500 index. The average decline in tech stocks is about 1.5%, while communication stocks have an average decline of 2.7%.
However, Solita Marcelli, Chief Investment Officer for the Americas at UBS Financial Services, believes that AI computing stocks still have appeal, with Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon expected to exceed $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, $200 billion higher than previous estimatesMarcelli said, "In the first quarter earnings season, there were many positive factors in the technology fundamentals that have encouraged us, which we believe will continue to support investments in companies capable of generating artificial intelligence."