Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) is scheduled to release its fiscal third-quarter financial results after the markets close on Thursday. The consensus estimates are $1.71 in earnings per share (EPS) and $3.24 billion in revenue. In the same period of last year, the company said it had $1.33 in EPS and $2.64 billion in revenue.
Nvidia may not be a company that most investors buy for dividends, but its hyper-growth and exponential share price gains of the past are unlikely to continue forever, and we’ve seen this recently (its market cap is now $120 billion!). Its graphics chips dominate in video games, augmented and virtual reality, and crypto-mining, and it has serious opportunity in automated cares and in machine learning.
Nvidia’s current 15 cent per quarter payout comes to a $0.60 per share annualized dividend, and that generates a mere 0.3% yield based on its $197 share price. This is very far shy of what many of the top money-making semiconductor and technology companies offer shareholders in their dividend yields.
Nvidia earned $4.65 per share in calendar 2017, and its earnings a few years out are expected to rise to almost $10 per share. Maybe it doesn’t want to chew into its research and development and potential acquisition dollars too much yet, but if there is a tech giant that looks set to boost its dividend if it wanted to, Nvidia fits that bill.
Excluding Thursday’s move, Nvidia has underperformed the broad markets, with its stock down about 8% in the past 52 weeks. In just 2018 alone, the stock is up about 2%.
A few analysts weighed in on Nvidia ahead of the report:
- B. Riley has a Buy rating and a $240 price target.
- Susquehanna has a Positive rating with a $230 target.
- UBS Group has a Positive rating.
- Citigroup has a Buy rating with a $270 target price.
- Morgan Stanley has an Overweight rating and a $260 target.
- JPMorgan has an Overweight rating with a $255 price target.
Shares of Nvidia were last seen up less than 1% at $198.50, with a consensus analyst price target of $287.91 and a 52-week trading range of $176.01 to $292.76.
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