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Time to Buy Nvidia (NVDA) Stock on the Dip Before Q3 Earnings?

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Shares of Nvidia (NVDA - Free Report) have plummeted over 30% since they hit their all-time high at the start of October. Amid broader market uncertainty, concerns remain that historically cyclical chip stocks will continue to decline. But we need to understand what to expect from Nvidia’s Q3 results to know if a turnaround could be coming to help us see if NVDA stock might be one to buy on the dip?

Recent News & Overview

Nvidia’s chips help power everything from gaming to datacenters. The company has long been known as a leader in cutting-edge graphics chips that have driven the rise of more life-like video games. Nvidia is also set to benefit from the expansion of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

Plus, investors should note that after nearly two years of anticipation Nvidia launched its new graphics-processing units based on its new Turing architecture earlier this year. But these Turing chips have not had much time to become widely used just yet. “Turing is Nvidia’s most important innovation in computer graphics in more than a decade,” CEO and founder Jensen Huang said at a conference in August.

 

On top of that, Nvidia announced Monday that its new T4 GPU “received the fastest adoption of any server GPU.” The company boasted that two months after introduction, the Turing architecture-based T4, which is designed to speed up workloads, is featured in 57 separate server designs. The firm noted that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE - Free Report) , IBM (IBM - Free Report) , Lenovo, and other server giants have featured the T4. Plus, the Google (GOOGL - Free Report) Cloud Platform just became the first major cloud vendor to offer availability for the T4 GPU.

Stock Price Movement

Now that we have covered some of Nvidia’s recent news and given a brief picture of the company, we need to know where its stock price currently stands in a historical context. Nvidia stock closed Monday at $189.54 per share, which marked a roughly 35% downturn from its 52-week and all-time high of $292.76 that it touched on October 2. 

Yet, including its recent decline, shares of NVDA have skyrocketed roughly 565% over the last three years, which blows away the S&P 500’s 33% climb, Amazon’s (AMZN - Free Report) 156% jump, and its industry’s 88% surge. However, the last 12 months have been less kind to Nvidia, with its shares 5% in the red over this stretch. It is also worth noting that shares of NVDA popped roughly 6% through late morning trading Tuesday to hit $200.93.

 

 

Valuation

Transitioning again, Nvidia’s is currently trading at 24.9X forward 12-month Zacks Consensus EPS. This marks a premium compared to its industry’s 10.3X average, which includes the likes of Intel (INTC - Free Report) , Advanced Micro Devices (AMD - Free Report) , Micron (MU - Free Report) , and Texas Instruments (TXN - Free Report) . However, the recent downturn has made NVDA stock look much more attractive compared to where it has traded in the past year.

Nvidia stock has traded as high as 57.4X over the last 12 months, with a one-year median of 36.8X. Better still, NVDA is currently trading nearly in-line with its recent one-year low of 24.5X. Jumping back over the last five years we can see that Nvidia’s valuation picture is hardly stretched at the moment and actually looks rather attractive compared to where it has traded at times.

 

Q3 Revenue & Earnings Outlook

Nvidia is projected to see its Q3 revenues jump by 22.9% to hit $3.24 billion, based on our current Zacks Consensus Estimate. Meanwhile, the company’s full-year revenues are expected to surge 33.6% to $12.98 billion. To help put these figures in context, the company posted record full-year revenue last year of $9.71 billion, up 41% from the previous year. Third-quarter revenues climbed 32% to hit another record of $2.64 billion last year. Meanwhile, Q1 revenues soared 66% and Q2 revenues jumped 40%.

We should also note that Nvidia’s gaming unit is projected to jump roughly 20% from $1.56 billion to $1.88 billion in Q3, based on our NFM estimates. On top of that, Nvidia’s growing data center business is projected to hit $816.36 million, which would represent a 63% climb from the $501 million the company reported in the year-ago period.

At the bottom end of the income statement, Nvidia is expected to see its adjusted quarterly earnings jump 43.6% to reach $1.91 per share. Looking a bit further down the road, the company’s full-year earnings are projected to surge over 60%. However, investors should note that Nvidia’s earnings estimate revisions have all trended in the wrong direction over the last 30 days. The chart below helps show the recent, more pessimistic earnings trend.

 

 

Bottom Line

Nvidia is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) that sports an “A” grade for Momentum and a “B” for Growth in our Style Scores system. The firm also has an impressive history of quarterly earnings beats, which includes solid beats in the trailing four quarters.

With all that we have touched on, it seems that there are many reasons to think about buying NVDA stock before its quarterly earnings release. But it might still be best to remain cautious amid this market uncertainty and see if the company can establish any real post-earnings momentum before buying Nvidia.

Nvidia is scheduled to release its Q3 financial results after the closing bell on Thursday, November 15.

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