Super Micro Computer (SMCI 8.89%) stock got crushed in Friday's daily trading. The server and storage technology specialist's share price closed out the daily session down 20%, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Notably, Supermicro stock actually started Friday's trading session on a bullish note. The company's share price had been up as much as 7.4% early in the day. The initial gains may have been thanks to the unveiling of Sora -- OpenAI's new text-to-video artificial intelligence software. But the stock appears to have lost ground due to new coverage from an analyst.
Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers published a note on Supermicro this morning. In the coverage-initiating note, Rakers gave an "equal weight" rating to the company and assigned a one-year price target of $960 per share. While the analyst championed strong performance catalysts for the company's business, his target actually came in below the $1,045 per-share price at which Supermicro had started today's trading. The neutral coverage appears to have triggered today's big sell-off.
Is Supermicro stock a buy on today's pullback?
Supermicro stock ended today's trading priced at roughly $803 per share. If the stock were to reach the price targeted by the recent analyst note from Wells Fargo, that would imply potential upside of roughly 19.6% over the next year. The neutral analyst coverage that appears to have triggered today's massive sell-off is could actually be viewed as meaningfully bullish on the heels of today's big valuation pullback.
Thanks to competitive strengths in the high-performance rack server market, Supermicro looks poised to see sustained demand tailwinds in conjunction with the rise of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Today's coverage from Wells Fargo's analyst actually suggested as much.
The analyst said that Supermicro should continue to benefit from the AI-driven investment cycle in servers. On the other hand, the analyst raised concerns about investors valuing the stock at a price that could potentially imply that the business was on track to post $30 billion in sales and more than $45 in earnings per share in its 2025 fiscal year.
Prior to today's big pullback, Supermicro stock had been riding high on a wave of bullish analyst coverage and favorable indicators for the broader artificial intelligence space. On the heels of excitement surrounding AI-driven demand, Supermicro has been pushed into speculative territory. While the business been serving up excellent growth and forward guidance that justify big increases for its valuation, there's still plenty of guesswork involved in charting the company's long-term business trajectory.
On the other hand, there are actually good reasons to think that the business will see powerful long-term tailwinds related to the rise of artificial intelligence. For the fiscal year that will wrap at the end of this June, Supermicro management is guiding for sales for sales to be between $14.3 billion and $14.7 billion. Even at the low end of management's sales target, revenue would more than double on an annual basis -- and there's actually a good chance performance will beat expectations this year and in 2025.
For investors who are willing to weather potential volatility, today's big sell-off could be a buying opportunity.
