Investors looking at taking their investing futures by the scruff of the neck need to look no further than pouring capital into chip stock and a company that will be integral in building generative artificial intelligence technology Nvidia (NVDA).
The stock has muscled itself higher in 2023 doing a double in about 4 months.
Shares were languishing around $140 at the turn of the year, but have gone ballistic on its way to almost $280.
What was the trigger to such a short-term bull run?
Investors have bought into the hype around generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as chatbots, which could trigger the need for thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) - a market that's dominated by the chipmaker.
But the stock's extraordinary rally has made it quite expensive from a valuation perspective.
Sadly, PC shipment forecast is grim as well for 2023. PC shipments this year expect to come in at 260.8 million units, which would be a 10.7% decline over last year.
Nvidia sells graphics cards that go into personal computers and workstations.
The PC market's woeful performance in 2022 - when shipments declined a startling16.5% from 2021 - led to a collapse in Nvidia's gaming and professional visualization segments. Gaming revenue was down 27% in fiscal 2023 to $9 billion as sales of graphics processing units (GPUs) used by gamers dried up. Professional visualization revenue also declined 27% to $1.54 billion.
Nvidia's channel partners were left with excess graphics card inventory on account of weak demand.
Revenue is expected to increase by almost 10% to $29.6 billion, but a gloomy forecast indicates that the restocking of graphics card inventory may not happen soon.
The headwinds in a sizable chunk of Nvidia's businesses, when combined with its rich valuation, strengthen the case against investing in the company.
New catalysts such as generative AI applications could give the data center business a turbocharge effect.
For instance, market research firm TrendForce estimates that ChatGPT may eventually require more than 30,000 GPUs from Nvidia to cater to the huge demand. Given that each Nvidia data center GPU can cost between $10,000 and $15,000, the company could generate substantial revenue from supplying its graphics cards for powering chatbots such as ChatGPT.
Also, as many tech giants are now in a race to develop chatbots, Nvidia could turn out to be the biggest winner related to this industry.
That's because Nvidia leads the data center GPU market, with a share of over 90%. That puts it in pole position to take advantage of the chatbot market, which is expected to register annual growth of 30% over the next five years.
The bottom line is that the AI opportunity could send Nvidia stock higher in the long-term.
They continue to be one of the leading lights of the tech industry intersecting across a number of leading and meaningful sub-sectors.
However, I would wait for a small dip to dollar cost average into shares because the price action has gone a little too fast and too furious in the short-term.
