Analysts raised Nvidia's target for growth. Why are others expecting a 45% collapse?

At least ten analysts raised their target price for Nvidia's shares after its reports. Wall Street took the quarterly results of the world's main supplier of equipment for artificial intelligence more positively than investors: Nvidia's securities at the trading on August 28 were falling at the moment by almost 3%. But even among investment banks, not everyone shares the optimism: the main "bear" on Nvidia believes that its shares may lose 45% of their value.

The spread of forecasts reflects a combination of confidence in the long-term demand for AI chips and concerns about China and the overheating of the sector.

Analysts maintain a positive view on AI chip maker Nvidia: they are raising price targets despite the fact that the outlook for the world's most expensive company disappointed investors, Bloomberg writes.

Citing the chipmaker's long-term outlook, at least ten companies on Thursday raised their target price for the 12-month outlook, lifting the average by 3% to $202.6, Bloomberg calculations showed. That implies an increase of about 12% from the closing level on Wednesday, Aug. 27. At the same time, at least four analysts took a more cautious stance, CNBC noted.

Shares of Nvidia rose by 1.6% in the first minutes of the main trading on August 28, but immediately after that they lost all their gains and began to fall in price. At the moment, they were losing 2.9%, but by the time this text was published, the decline had slowed to 1.4%.

- Harlan Suhr of JPMorgan Chase advised buying Nvidia shares, raising his target price by a quarter to $215. His forecast assumes growth of quotations by 18% from the level of closing on Wednesday. Suhr pointed to the accelerating release of Blackwell chips for artificial intelligence. "We believe Nvidia's 12-month order book continues to exceed available supply," he said. In his view, Nvidia is growing steadily in all directions, and the data center segment will show strong growth due to the fact that large cloud customers are increasingly using its hardware to process large amounts of data, CNBC wrote.

- Bernstein analysts maintained their Buy recommendation on the stock with an Outperform rating and raised their target price to $225 (+24% from the last closing price). "Overall results were good, although the outlook was slightly weaker than recent expectations, and bears can point to lower compute revenue from the prior quarter and just meeting expectations for the data center segment - but this is mainly due to ongoing uncertainty in China. Nevertheless, we think the outlook remains decent as the company continues to view China as a potential upside rather than laying it at the base, and it appears to expect a sharp acceleration in the release of the Blackwell lineup in the next quarter, confirming the strength of the fundamentals. The overall outlook and market environment continue to look encouraging," CNBC quoted analyst Stacey Rasgon as saying.

- Truist Securities analyst William Stein said the sales numbers and outlook "came in slightly below investor expectations," but raised his target price on the stock by 9% to $228 (up 25.6% potential). "We view this as only a minor flaw and prefer to focus on management's solid long-term outlook," he said. Stein focused on Nvidia's long-term outlook and raised his 2026 EPS forecast to $6.5 versus the previous $5.99.

- Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore said that despite high expectations from the reporting, "the main points were met." He noted that the situation with China, where shipments of H20 chips have been interrupted due to Washington's temporary ban, remains unclear. "China remains unpredictable and management seemed cautious in assessing prospects for resolution," the analyst said, raising the target price from $206 to $210 (+15% from the last close).

- Jefferies reiterated a "buy" rating and raised its target price to $205 (implies 12.9% upside). "Demand signals remain exceptionally strong: [processors] Hopper and Blackwell are sold out across the board. Blackwell Ultra growth is well underway, alleviating concerns about future supply chain issues. We see a path to EPS above $7 next year and above $8 in 2027 and continue to favor Nvidia as our top investment idea," Jefferies said.

- Goldman Sachs analyst James Schneider reiterated a "buy" recommendation and a $200 target price. According to him, the short-term performance of Nvidia remains stable: sales of Hopper chips and the stability of directions outside the data centers are largely offset by the slower launch of Blackwell production. Goldman Sachs maintains a positive view on the securities due to the significant growth potential in 2026, which is expected to be driven by increased spending by hyperscalers (the largest cloud services) and demand from new customer categories, CNBC notes.

- Citi maintained a "buy" rating and raised its target price to $210 (15% above the last closing level). "We expect continued sales growth in the data center segment - with or without China. Nvidia has already obtained licenses for a portion of Chinese customers, but has not yet started shipments and has not put them in the forecast, and this market can bring in $2-5 billion per quarter. We have raised earnings per share estimates: for 2025 - by 2%, for 2026 - by 10%," the channel quotes the bank's analysts as saying.

- Loop Capital reiterated a "buy" recommendation and a target price of $250, implying a nearly 38% upside. Analysts note that spending on computing power for artificial intelligence could reach about $2 trillion by 2028. By their estimates, this could mean a market capitalization of $6 trillion for Nvidia.

- KeyBanc maintained a buy recommendation with an "above market" rating and raised its target price to $230 (implied up 26.7%). "Nvidia now trades at a forward P/E of 32x, while peers average 34x. We believe Nvidia remains uniquely positioned to benefit from the structural growth of the AI/ML data centers. With high barriers to entry [...] competitive risks are limited and we expect Nvidia to continue to dominate one of the fastest growing areas of cloud and enterprise computing," CNBC quoted the analysts as saying.

Wall Street remains almost unanimously optimistic about the stock: according to Bloomberg, Nvidia shares have 72 buy recommendations, with seven analysts advising to hold and only one recommending to sell. According to LSEG data cited by CNBC, of the 65 analysts tracking the company, 58 recommend buying Nvidia stock, while only six take a neutral stance.

Seaport Research Partners, D.A. Davidson, Deutsche Bank and HSBC took a more cautious stance.

- Seaport Research Partners maintained a "sell" recommendation on Nvidia shares and set a target price of only $100, implying a downside risk of about 45%. "Nvidia has performed broadly in line with expectations. The Blackwell launch is on track and progressing as forecast, but as we noted earlier, room for growth this year looks limited. Sales in the PRC remain an uncertain factor as the company awaits approval for shipments. We remain cautious in our assessment of Nvidia's near-term prospects and also express doubts about the industry's ability to digest the massive investment in AI this year," the company said in a commentary.

- Deutsche Bank reiterated a "hold" rating and raised its target price to $180 - roughly in line with the current valuation. "Overall, we believe Nvidia remains a technology leader in AI with prospects for strong revenue growth due to continued demand in a fast-growing market. While the company did not include revenues from Ma in its forecast, we believe they could return as early as 2026 and have factored this into our long-term estimates. [...] Our view of Nvidia's dominance remains unchanged, but the current valuation of the stock looks fair," the bank said in the report.

- Analysts at D.A. Davidson reiterated a Neutral rating and raised their target price to $195, implying a potential upside of about 7%. "Data center revenue came in slightly below expectations, and sentiment around the reporting was largely driven by ongoing concerns about the company's ability to sell H20 to China. Nevertheless, our research on AI models, particularly as it relates to algorithms, increasingly convinces us that demand for computing power is unlikely to decline in the foreseeable future given the trends we are seeing in pre-learning, post-learning and model application," D.A. Davidson noted.

- HSBC also reiterated a "hold" rating, raising its target price to $200. The bank's forecast implies upside of about 10% from Nvidia's current capitalization. "We raised our FY 2026 EPS guidance by 3% given slightly higher margin expectations, but left estimates for 2027 broadly unchanged. [...] We maintain a 'hold' rating as in the short term, we believe the stock will continue to be pressured by supply disruptions and uncertainty in China. To take a more optimistic stance, we would need to see further upside to cloud providers' capital expenditure forecasts in 2026," HSBC said.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor