Nvidia shares edged higher in early Thursday trading following a twin set of updates from two key tech-sector suppliers and two price-target updates from top Wall Street analysts.
Nvidia (NVDA) , which is scheduled to report its fiscal-third-quarter earnings next week, works closely with two key supply-chain partners — Foxconn and Taiwan Semiconductor — to assemble its high-end chips and processors and the servers that house them to power broader AI systems.
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Taiwan-based Foxconn, which is also a key Apple (AAPL) iPhone assembler, forecast "significant" full-year-sales growth Thursday after posting stronger-than-expected third quarter earnings tied partly to AI-server demand.
UBS analysts see the four biggest hyperscalers, Google (GOOGL) , Microsoft (MSFT) , Amazon (AMZN) and Meta Platforms (META) , which form the spine of the global AI-investment race, spending $267 billion on capital projects tied to the new technologies next year, a 33.5% increase from this year's forecast.
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Foxconn also said it was directing investments into production sites outside China, including the U.S., Mexico and Vietnam, following President-elect Donald Trump's sweeping November victory and the likelihood of stricter trade tariffs over the coming months.
"We'll be watching to see what changes there will be from the new U.S. government," said chairman Young Liu.
Chip-supply-chain optimism from ASML
ASML (ASML) , the biggest tech company in Europe and the maker of key chip-design machines used across the entire semiconductor sector, also issued a bullish outlook, tied to AI demand, ahead of its annual Investor Day presentation in the Netherlands.
The group's EUV lithography technology is used by Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) , which in turn uses it to manufacture chips for Nvidia.
"We expect that our ability to scale EUV technology into the next decade positions ASML well to contribute to and leverage the artificial-intelligence opportunity," said CEO Christophe Fouquet.
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The group estimated sales of between €44 billion and €60 billion (US$46.5 billion to $64.4 billion) by the end of the decade, with gross margin in the region of 58%.
The updates should solidify the bullish outlook for Blackwell demand, the latest line of chips and processors released by Nvidia earlier this year, following reports of design flaws that were originally tied to TSMC.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang later said, however, that the "functional" error, which had reduced the Blackwell system yields, had been resolved. He dismissed reports of tension with Taiwan Semiconductor as "fake news."
"What TSMC did was to help us recover from that yield difficulty and resume the manufacturing of Blackwell at an incredible pace," Huang said last month.
Nvidia's fiscal Q3 earnings on deck
Nvidia is slated to report its October-quarter earnings on Wednesday, with analysts looking for a year-on-year revenue surge of 82%, to just under $33 billion, thanks in part to ongoing demand for its legacy Hopper chips and gains from the newly released Blackwell.
Nvidia told investors in late August that Q3 revenue would be in the region of $32.5 billion, more than double the tally of the year-earlier period. However, the company faced some delays in shipping its new line of Blackwell processors amid design changes and supply-chain snarls.
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Raymond James analyst Srini Pajjuri boosted his price target on Nvidia by $30 to $170 a share. He sees a "strong quarter, supported by healthy demand for Hopper and initial Blackwell ramps," but he also noted that supply-chain constraints could limit the company's near-term revenue guidance.
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"Our base case is for Nvidia to ship around 100,000 Blackwell GPUs in 4Q, which is likely at the lower end of investor expectations," he said. "While demand remains robust, Nvidia’s balance sheet inventory is at a 4-year low (and) Blackwell cycle times are longer.
"That said, we anticipate an acceleration in Blackwell ramps in first-half 2025, with strong demand extending through 2025," he added. "Spectrum-X will also provide a tailwind as GPU cluster sizes expand rapidly."
HSBC analyst Frank Lee also boosted his Nvidia price target, taking it $55 higher to $200 a share, noting that Blackwell production is "back on track" and has the potential to contribute around $5 billion to Nvidia's fourth-quarter revenue.
Lee also sees Nvidia's market value, last pegged at $3.65 trillion, moving into "uncharted territory."
"We have pondered this amazing growth trajectory and not only do we see no signs of a slowdown, we expect further upside in [fiscal 2026] data center momentum, which in our view is still not fully priced in by the market," Lee said
Nvidia shares were marked 0.95% higher in early Thursday trading to changes hands at $147.57, a move that would extend the stock's six-month gain to around 61.5%.
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