Nvidia Stock Couldn’t Save the Market, But It Could Be a Buy

Nvidia is the favored provider of artificial-intelligence chips. (Courtesy NVIDIA)

Nvidia stock struggled to find its footing on Friday a day after the shares sold off on the company’s earnings report. The results weren’t able to keep the market from falling on Thursday, but Wall Street analysts are backing the chip maker, despite fears of an artificial-intelligence bubble.

Nvidia shares spent some of Friday in positive territory, but ultimately closed down 1.0%, to $178.91.

Nvidia stock fell 3.2% on Thursday, a day after its earnings. Despite the selloff, Wall Street is even more positive on Nvidia than it was before the earnings. The average target price on the stock now stands at $250, according to FactSet—up from around $234 before the results announcement.

As Barron’s has noted, Nvidia’s accelerating revenue and comments on the usable life of its chips suggested the AI spending cycle has some way to go even as the market frets about shrinking cash flows and increasing debt loads at its customers.

“We see the telltale sign of a bubble as gear that has been ordered or shipped for which there is no operational or economic value,” wrote Truist Securities analyst William Stein in a research note. “On its conference call, Nvidia noted that its A100 chips, which began shipping six years ago, are all still in the field and are running at 100% utilization. We believe this is the clearest indication that we are not in a bubble…at least not yet.”

Stein raised his price target to $255 from $228 and kept a Buy rating on the stock.

“Odds are very high that EPS [earnings per share] is up again substantially in 2027 (we now model ~$11 vs. Street ~$8.50) so on these numbers, it is very hard to see how this stock does not keep moving higher from here,” wrote UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri in a research note.

“Ultimately, the AI infrastructure tide is still rising so fast that all boats will be lifted, but Nvidia seems to be actually tightening its grip on broadly enabling AI across modalities (text, video, etc..) and industries,” the analyst added.

Arcuri maintained a Buy rating and $235 target price on Nvidia stock.

Separately, Taiwan’s Foxconn said Friday that a $1.4 billion supercomputing center it is building with Nvidia will come online in the first half of 2026. The company, known formally as Hon Hai Precision Industry, said the facility will be powered by Nvidia GB300 NVL72 systems.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com