Nvidia (NVDA) joins its mega-cap tech peers, becoming the fourth Magnificent 7 stock to split since 2022.
The chip giant’s 10-for-1 stock split, which begins Monday, follows significant price growth, with shares up 212% over the past year. This massive rally propelled Nvidia into the $3 trillion club, becoming the third American company to reach this milestone.
“A stock split is a vote of confidence from management that the stock will retain its value, because the stock [price] generally increases,” said Howard Silverblatt, senior analyst for the S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Adam Coons, chief investment officer of Winthrop Capital, expects the split to boost retail investor interest, but warns that an influx of retail traders could trigger volatility for the stock.
“They may be a little more quick and emotional in their buying and selling decisions, which can lead to increased volatility as you start to dilute the institutional buyers,” Coons told Yahoo Finance.
Julian Emanuel of Evercore ISI sees the increased volatility as an opportunity to buy Nvidia – a stock he considers a “generational opportunity” and the “flagship” tech stock of this era.
“While high-profile splits have often fueled stock volatility – speculative buying and profit-taking around the event – the thinning of trees in the forest after the split catalyzes the buying opportunity for the patient investor “, wrote Emanuel.
Historically, stock splits are generally bullish for companies that adopt them, with average returns a year later of 25%, compared to about 12% for the broader market, according to a Bank of America analysis.
Nvidia’s meteoric gains have propelled the broader market to record highs. Its rebound has accounted for about a third of the S&P 500’s return since the start of the year, and more than a quarter of the S&P 500’s return in May, according to Silverblatt.
Wall Street has become even more bullish on the stock since its May 22 earnings release. Last week, Bank of America’s Vivek Arya raised his price target to a high of $1,500.
“We’re at the start of what I think would be a decade-long conversion to accelerated computing… We think spending could be between $250 billion and $500 billion per year, and Nvidia is leading the charge “, Arya told Yahoo Finance.
Nvidia’s stock split signals not only management’s confidence in the chip giant, but also enthusiasm and optimism about the broader growth potential of the AI sector.
As Doug Bettinger, CFO of Lam Research (LRCX), explained to me at Bank of America’s Global Technology conference last week, we are still “very, very early” in the investment cycle in AI.
This next growth cycle – or the second wave of AI – is expected to come to fruition as businesses begin to integrate AI into their planning and spending.
“More and more companies are adopting hybrid cloud architectures and focusing on building modern applications and starting their…
