After a strong showing late last week as the Federal Reserve opted to increase interest rates, the stock market was mostly flat on Monday, with major indexes fluctuating between positive and negative territory. But amid a flurry of encouraging analyst notes, there were a few individual companies that managed to buck the trend, and shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD +2.75%), Snap Inc. (SNAP 2.42%), and NVIDIA (NVDA +1.11%) were among those stocks that delivered outsized gains today. Let's take a closer look at what drove these unusual moves.
AMD's new chips could offer a lift
Shares of AMD climbed more than 7% as two optimistic analysts chimed in regarding the prospects of the company's new Ryzen 7 chips. First, Jefferies analyst Mark Lipacis reiterated his buy rating on AMD stock, but also increased his per-share price target to $16 from $13. To justify his bullishness, Lipacis noted AMD's Ryzen 7 (which was launched on March 2, 2017) and Ryzen 5 (which will be available on April 11, 2017) processors should help the company take significant market share considering they offer comparable performance and more attractive pricing than similar chips from Intel. Lipacis further cited the potential for further share gains and revenue growth to come from the launch of AMD's more affordable Ryzen 3 processors later this year, noting they believe the company is still "in the early innings of its multi-year turnaround story."
And AMD received more love in a separate note today from Susquehenna's Christopher Rolland, who maintained his own neutral rating on the stock but similarly increased his per-share price target to $12 from $9. Rolland outlined his belief that AMD is likely to exceed Wall Street's consensus revenue expectations in the coming quarter thanks to the Ryzen line's ongoing rollout, especially as sales to larger PC original equipment manufacturers like HP and Dell should commence as early as next month.
Image source: AMD.
Snap gets its first thumbs-up
Meanwhile, after falling 27% over the past two weeks, shares of Snapchat parent Snap Inc. climbed as much as 4.7% -- but settled to gains of 2% at market close -- after the stock received its first buy rating, courtesy of Monness Crespi Hardt analyst James Cakmak.
More specifically, Cakmak initiated coverage on Snap stock with a buy rating and price target of $25 per share, a healthy premium over Snap's current price just shy of $20 per share. But while Cakmak believes Snap should continue to outgrow its competition, he appeared to temper his enthusiasm by stating, "We recognize we are potentially giving too much credit for unproven skills in building a business, rather than just a product, but we see more to Snap than many suggest."
With Snap shares having given up much of their initial gains following the company's IPO earlier this month, it's not terribly surprising to see Wall Street taking notice.
NVIDIA is poised to sustain its stellar growth
Finally, shares of NVIDIA jumped more than 3% on the day as Goldman Sachs analyst Toshiya Hari reiterated the graphics chip specialist's status on his firm's "Conviction Buy" list with a $130-per-share price target. Tari technically didn't boost his already positive opinion of NVIDIA, but he did express admiration for the importance of NVIDIA's off-the-shelf machine learning models and customer support after attending NVIDIA's Deep Learning Connect event in London last week.
Moreover, Hari believes NVIDIA's planned strategic investments in the automotive, data center, and enterprise markets should be able to drive results similar to its successful core gaming segment. So even with shares having more than tripled over the past year, the analyst believes NVIDIA shares should have plenty more room to run.
