The NVIDIA (NVDA) stock price target was lifted to $144 from $116 by analysts at Morgan Stanley in a note Monday, with the bank maintaining an Overweight rating on the stock.
Morgan Stanley said it is raising the target for the semiconductor company's shares following positive data points in Asia.
"We had positive data points from both our Taiwan trip and our China trip that keep us confident on near term #s," said analysts at Morgan Stanley. The data doesn't surprise the bank, which is mindful of just how much market cap NVDA has added since the last earnings report, which they state does point to a higher bar.
However, "the catalyst path remains strong, as the very strong surge in H20 builds and demand removes any concern for us about a pre-Blackwell pause," add analysts at Morgan Stanley.
While the bank acknowledges that it is clear we are at the tail end of the Hopper cycle, and the frothiness and visibility are lower than it was, they state that demand side indications remain robust for Hopper.
"Hopper builds continue to go up, as H100 starts to transition to H200 (bringing better memory bandwidth from HBM3e as well as higher memory content), and we are hearing confidence that sales of both products will remain strong," state analysts at Morgan Stanley.
When assessing the current share price, while the bank isn't "pounding the table at these levels given the sharp appreciation since the last earnings report," they believe Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) "remains the most compelling narrative in the AI semis space," and that as the transition from H100 to H200 and then Blackwell progresses, "visibility and backlog will improve materially."