(This is CNBC Pro’s live coverage of Wednesday’s analyst calls and Wall Street chatter. Please refresh every 20-30 minutes to view the latest posts.) Analyst chatter on Wednesday featured Nvidia and another possible way to capitalize on the artificial intelligence craze. Several analysts raised their price targets on Nvidia after the company’s GTC Conference, in which the chipmaker unveiled a new graphics processing unit. Elsewhere, Barclays reinstated coverage of Broadcom, noting the stock could be an alternative AI play. Check out the latest calls and chatter below. All times ET. 6:48 a.m.: JPMorgan upgrades bitcoin mining firm Riot Platforms, forecasts more than 35% upside Investors should look to bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms after the recent increase in bitcoin prices, according to JPMorgan. Although shares on Tuesday declined to their lowest level, $11.09, since the Securities and Exchange Commission’s bitcoin ETF approval, analyst Reginald Smith remains optimistic and upgraded the stock to overweight from neutral. His $15 price target assumes a $60,000 bitcoin price and suggests 35.2% potential upside for the stock. Smith cited the Riot’s decline as a result of the stagnant hashrate growth, equity dilution and broader industry profit taking. “We like Riot’s unique combination of industry-leading power contracts, scale and liquidity (Riot last reported ~$600M in cash and $470M worth of bitcoin), and think shares offer the best relative upside among the three largest and most liquid U.S.-listed mining stocks,” Smith wrote in a Wednesday note. Riot shares are down more than 28% year to date. RIOT YTD mountain RIOT in 2024 — Pia Singh 6:23 a.m.: Citi downgrades Wells Fargo Citi downgraded Wells Fargo to neutral from buy, saying the bank’s valuation has already priced in the potential for earnings per share revisions. Analyst Keith Horowitz raised his target price by $6 to $63, however, which implies the stock could gain 10.5% from Tuesday’s close. Shares are up 15.8% year to date. “We continue to see tailwinds from fixed asset repricing, growth across fee categories and improved efficiency, but our estimates are not too far above the Street. With WFC trading at a premium relative to peers on our implied cost of equity metric, we believe the risk/reward is fairly balanced,” analyst Horowitz wrote in a Tuesday note, saying Wells Fargo has been one of his top picks among the G-SIBs, or global systemically important banks. — Pia Singh 6:03 a.m.: Netflix shares should ‘trade at a premium,’ according to KeyBanc KeyBanc Capital Markets thinks Netflix can grow consistently going forward. Analyst Justin Patterson maintained his overweight rating and upped his price target by $125 to $705, suggesting shares of the streaming giant could gain 13.6% over the next year. He also increased his earnings per share estimates for this year and 2024. “We continue to see signs that: 1) Netflix’s content quality is improving; and 2) in our view, this creates a clear catalyst path as engagement should drive a monetization ramp (both in price increases and ad revenue),” Patterson wrote in a Tuesday, anticipating Netflix to have a more balanced growth between subscribers and monetization over the medium term. “Given more recurring revenue, an emerging ad revenue stream, and consistent 20%+ EPS growth, we believe NFLX should trade at a premium to peers.” Netflix shares are up 27.5% so far this year. — Pia Singh 5:55 a.m.: Analysts think Nvidia is still a buy after GTC conference Several analysts remain bullish on Nvidia after the darling chipmaker’s artificial intelligence GTC conference this week, during which CEO Jensen Huang gave a two-hour keynote speech about Nvidia’s growing lineup of software and hardware products. Here’s what some of them had to say: Oppenheimer analyst Rick Schafer raised his price target on the stock to $1,100, implying upside of 23%. “Nvidia has transformed from a graphics company to a premier leading AI computing platform company. GPUs were initially used for graphics in video games and film. Given its parallel processing capabilities and thousands of computing cores, GPU are now optimized for deep learning AI algorithms in datacenters.” Piper Sandler hiked its price target to $1,050 from $850, noting: “We view the new architecture as an expansion of the already dominant market positioning of NVDA’s hardware offering. We maintain that NVDA is the leading company in offering the full hardware and software stack to address the decade long transition to accelerated computing and generative AI.” The new price target implies upside of 17.5%. Bank of America reiterated its buy rating and $1,100 price target, naming Nvidia a “top compute pick” following the conference. Blackwell’s pricing should allow Nvidia to sustain mid-70% gross margins, and adoption of the new chips could be among the fastest in company history given its affordability across various customer bases, analyst Vivek Arya said. Nvidia shares closed at $893.98 on Tuesday. The stock — which is up 80.5% for the year — traded 0.2% lower in premarket trading. — Pia Singh 5:55 a.m.: Broadcom a strong play for ‘2nd wave of AI’, Barclays says Looking for another way to capitalize on the artificial intelligence craze? Barclays thinks investors should look no further than Broadcom . The bank reinstated coverage of the semiconductor stock at an overweight rating. Its price target of $1,405 implies upside of nearly 14%. “The company joins our preferred names this year as another way to play the 2nd Wave of AI via a best-in-class data center silicon portfolio,” analyst Tom O’Malley wrote. “In the near term, AI is all that matters and the custom silicon/switching businesses are driving a significant portion of near-term growth (we forecast a mid/high-20% range next year and for it to accelerate longer term).” “Outside of AI, the company is seeing many of the same cyclical downturns as Semi peers but a growing software business helps boost profitability and [free cash flow] generation,” he said. Broadcom shares are up 10% year to date, lagging Nvidia — which has soared 80%. That said, Broadcom is outperforming the S & P 500’s 8.6% gain. AVGO YTD mountain AVGO year to date — Fred Imbert
