Shares of Nvidia (NVDA -10.01%) look set to end 2022 on a high -- the stock is up 20% in the past month, and the company's latest results seem to give Wall Street hope that its fortunes could turn around in 2023.
However, investors shouldn't miss the fact that Nvidia stock is rising despite reporting terrible results for the third quarter of fiscal 2023 (for the three months ended Oct. 30) which revealed a big drop in revenue and earnings. The guidance for the current quarter isn't great either, as Nvidia's revenue forecast of $6 billion points toward a 21% year-over-year drop. The company's earnings could drop 38% over the prior-year period to $0.81 per share.
However, analysts believe that Nvidia's growth could accelerate in fiscal 2024, which begins in February of 2023. They anticipate a 9% growth in the company's revenue and a 33% spike in earnings per share. What's more, Nvidia stock carries a median price target of $200 for the next 12 months, which would translate into a 26% upside from current levels.
Let's look at three reasons why Nvidia's fortunes could turn around in 2023, and why the stock may even crush the market.
1. Server processors could give Nvidia's data center business a big boost
The data center business was a bright spot for the chipmaker last quarter. The segment's revenue increased 31% year over year to $3.8 billion, accounting for 64% of the company's top line. The segment's impressive growth was driven by the growing adoption of Nvidia's data center graphics processing units (GPUs) by supercomputer operators and cloud service providers such as Microsoft and Oracle.
With sales of data center GPUs expected to hit nearly $30 billion by 2025, compared to just $3 billion in 2018, it wouldn't be surprising to see Nvidia's data center business sustain its healthy growth. However, 2023 will bring a new catalyst for Nvidia in the data center business in the form of server processors.
In 2021, Nvidia announced that it will be launching its first data center CPU, known as Grace, in 2023. The good news for Nvidia investors is that Nvidia's server chip could hit the ground running next year. That's because the likes of "Atos, Dell Technologies, GIGABYTE, HPE, Inspur, Lenovo and Supermicro are planning to deploy servers built with the NVIDIA Grace CPU Superchip and NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip," as Nvidia had pointed out earlier this year.
The server processor market is going to unlock a whole new opportunity for Nvidia and could supercharge its business in 2023. After all, Nvidia's rival Advanced Micro Devices sees a $42 billion long-term revenue opportunity in the server processor market. Nvidia could make the most of this massive market, as its Grace server processors are reportedly based on a 5-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process, which would give it an advantage over Intel, which is stuck on a 10nm manufacturing process.
The smaller node size means Nvidia's server processors should ideally be more powerful and consume less energy. With Intel being the leading player in the server processor market with a share of 82.5%, a stronger product from Nvidia could help the latter take share away from Chipzilla, and start its server processor journey on a solid note.
2. The cloud gaming business could get bigger
Nvidia's gaming business was a terrible performer in 2022. The segment's revenue was down 51% year over year last quarter to $1.6 billion, and a turnaround seems some time away thanks to weak consumer demand, dwindling demand from cryptocurrency miners, and weak sales of personal computers (PCs).
Nvidia's partners are reducing inventory levels to reflect weak gaming GPU demand. However, there's one niche within gaming that's reportedly enjoying solid growth: cloud gaming. Market research firm Newzoo estimates that the cloud gaming market could generate $2.4 billion in revenue this year, a 74% increase over 2021, driven by a paying subscriber base of 31.7 million gamers.
Nvidia's GeForce Now cloud gaming service had 20 million members in August this year, suggesting that the company has already cornered a nice chunk of this market. It is also worth noting that GeForce Now membership has increased at an eye-popping pace -- it had only 1 million users in February 2020. Newzoo estimates that the cloud gaming market is built for impressive growth, and it could generate $8.2 billion in revenue by 2025.
Nvidia's solid membership base indicates that it is on track to make the most of this opportunity given that it is continuously boosting its gaming library. The company added 85 games to GeForce Now last quarter and has built a library of 1,400-plus titles. So cloud gaming could help mitigate the weakness in the gaming market in 2023 for Nvidia, and the business could turn out to be a huge source of revenue for the company in the long run.
3. The automotive segment is racing ahead nicely
Nvidia's automotive and embedded revenue shot up 86% year over year last quarter to $251 million. This impressive growth isn't surprising considering the chipmaker's partnerships with multiple automakers and component manufacturers that are deploying its systems.
Nvidia's impressive automotive growth is here to stay, as its offerings continue to be adopted by leading automakers. Zeekr, a subsidiary of Chinese automotive company Geely, will start deploying Nvidia's next-generation Drive Thor automotive computing platform into its electric vehicles beginning in 2025. Volvo, on the other hand, is already using Nvidia's offerings in the new all-electric EX90.
Nvidia management pointed out on the latest earnings conference call that "automotive has great momentum and is on its way to be our next multibillion-dollar platform." That shouldn't be surprising, as Nvidia has built an automotive revenue pipeline worth $11 billion that it expects to convert into revenue over the next four fiscal years.
So there are quite a few areas that could help Nvidia come out of its slump and give the stock a nice boost in 2023. That's why investors holding this tech stock should keep doing so -- it could keep flying higher in the new year, and may even outperform the broader market.
