The AI (artificial intelligence) rally flagman flew into the next sky layer. Its share price quickly topped a $1000 per share barrier in the extended trading after Wall St closed on May 22 following its 5.6-fold growth in profit numbers YoY. The world's largest GPUs (graphic processor units) chipmaker released its EPS (earnings per share) at $6.12 in the quarter ended in April on sales of $26.04 billion, compared to $1.09 per share on sales of $7.19 billion in the same period of 2023. Both top and bottom lines clearly exceeded consensus estimates for EPS of $5.6 a share on revenue of $24.65 billion. The contrast between brave expectations and even more oversized reality indications was stark enough for the stock to soar by more than 6%, which seems to become the lowest possible reward for a very strong report.

The forward guidance provided by the company was also bright and even brighter. It projected the current quarter's revenue at $28 billion, plus or minus 2%, while the market analyst pool on Reuters expected $26.66 billion on average. NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang commented that its newest Blackwell AI chips line-up would allow additional production increase. Chief financial officer Colette Kress also added that demand for most effective Blackwell chips is going to "exceed supply well into next year". NVIDIA is now dominating 80% of the global segment for AI task relevant chips. Its sales for the data centres added 427% YoY to $22.6 billion, which reflects "higher shipments of the NVIDIA Hopper GPU computing platform" to train and inference with large language models and recommendation engines based on generative AI features, according to the company's statement.

One of its largest customers, Amazon, recently said it "has not halted" any NVIDIA chip orders. Another giant purchaser is Meta Platforms, which increased the midpoint of its 2024 capital expenditure forecast by nearly $4 billion. It is very difficult to try to replace NVIDIA's chips due to the high performance technology behind them. A 10-for-1 stock split will happen soon (starting on June 7) to attract even more investors with small and middle size of capital, thanks to lower cost of a share. NVIDIA showed its gross margin at 79% vs 77% on consensus forecast, while its closest peer AMD reported 52%. However, AMD share price added a couple percentage points as well.

The Wall St analysts' average 12-month price target immediately moved to $1040 overnight, and this is probably far from ultimate limits for this year. More upside moves in NVIDIA are highly likely. They may also support a bullish rally in other giant tech companies, including Microsoft, Google and Broadcom. Any leap in the market value of these flagship businesses may serve as an additional driver of stability for the overall bullish market mood.