Nvidia shares slide ahead of earnings

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia.Rick Wilking/Reuters

• Shares of Nvidia dropped as much as 1.2% to $256 in trading Thursday ahead of earnings.
• Wall Street expects earnings per share of $1.85 f0r the chip maker’s second quarter.
• UBS analysts said their field work had suggested a several-month delay beyond the original August plan of the Turing’s launch.
• They have a target price of $285 and maintain a neutral rating on Nvidia.

Shares of Nvidia slid as much as 1.2% to $256 in trading Thursday ahead of the chipmaker’s second-quarter earnings report after the closing bell.

Wall Street analysts expect the company to post adjusted earnings per share of $1.85 on revenues of $3.11 billion for the quarter ended June 30, according to Bloomberg.

On Monday, Nvidia announced a new graphics-processing unit (GPU) capable of supporting 8K video playback.

“With the launch of the Turing chip this week, Nvidia has solidified its market leadership position in the graphics and AI space,” Geeta Chauhan, chief technology officer with Silicon Valley Software Group, said in a recent note sent out to clients.

“The new ray tracing engine will further expand Nvidia’s footprint in the high end visualization for the movie industry and take over the large graphics rendering farms used for special effects generation,” said Chauhan.

However, UBS said August 14 in a note that their field work had suggested a several month delay beyond the original August plan of the Turing’s launch, which adds some gaming risk.

Analysts from UBS have a target price of $285 for Nvidia, and say they maintain a neutral rating for now.

Shares of Nvidia are up 27% since the start of this year.

Ethel Jiang/Business Insider