Investing.com -- Citi has placed Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) on a 90-day Upside Catalyst Watch ahead of CES in January 2025.
The bank anticipates key announcements from Nvidia during the event, including updates on its Blackwell product line, improvements in gross margins, and growth opportunities in AI-driven industrial and robotics applications.
Citi noted that Nvidia delivered a "beat and raise," with October quarter revenue reaching $35 billion, beating expectations of $34 billion. The company’s guidance for the January quarter was $37.5 billion, aligning with market forecasts.
The investment bank's analysts said Nvidia's management addressed several critical topics during its earnings call. These included the accelerating Blackwell ramp, which is expected to contribute significantly to January-quarter sales, and the trajectory for gross margins, which are projected to trough in the April quarter before recovering to the mid-70% range in the second half of the fiscal year.
Citi highlighted Nvidia’s continued strength in AI scaling across pre-training, post-training, and inference, which is expected to fuel growing demand for compute power.
Although networking demand declined quarter-over-quarter due to supply chain issues in optics, Citi expects a rebound in the January quarter.
Citi analysts are optimistic about Nvidia’s prospects at CES. They noted, “NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang will give the opening keynote on Jan 6th and the company is hosting a financial analyst Q&A on Jan 7th.”
The firm expects Nvidia to outline increased Blackwell sales expectations, address the anticipated margin recovery, and discuss a “demand inflection” for AI-driven robotics in warehouses, manufacturing, and humanoid applications.
Citi maintains a Buy rating on Nvidia, raising its price target to $175 from $160, reflecting the company’s consistent 35x P/E multiple and projected earnings growth.