Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) stock price soared sharply since the beginning of this year as the company has been experiencing robust growth in gaming and data center demand. The shares of the visual computing company jumped 100% so far this year and shares are up 184% in the last twelve months.
The semiconductor company has topped second-quarter revenue by $210 million. Its second-quarter revenue of $3.87 billion grew 50 percent from the previous year quarter. The revenue growth is driven by a sharp increase in gaming and data center revenue. Its gaming revenue of $1.65bn grew 26% from the past year period while data center revenue of $1.75bn surged 167% from the year-ago period.
“Adoption of NVIDIA computing is accelerating, driving record revenue and exceptional growth,” said Jensen Huang, founder, and CEO of NVIDIA.
Growth in GeForce gaming accelerated as gamers increasingly immerse themselves in realistic virtual worlds created by NVIDIA RTX ray tracing and AI.
Its second-quarter earnings per share of $0.99 declined 10% from the past year period. The company also appears in a strong cash position to support growth activities.
Its operating cash flows for the first half came in around $2.4 billion. The company has paid $99 million in quarterly dividends. The market analysts are expecting Nvidia to make a big dividend increase in days to come.
Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland has provided a street high price target of $540. The firm claims that the expected launch of Ampere gaming GPUs would generate additional revenue in the coming months.
“While Intel and others prognosticate a 2H data center slowdown, we believe the setup remains favorable for Nvidia, helped by the relatively new launch of the A100,” Rolland said.
Oppenheimer has set Nvidia stock price target at $500, expecting a strong data center and AI demand. Wells Fargo has provided an outperform rating with a price target of $510.
