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AMD, Nvidia shares to soar on new growth markets: Cowen

Key Points
  • Cowen initiates coverage on AMD and Nvidia shares with outperform ratings, citing the strong growth trends in the chipmakers' key markets.
  • "We view NVIDIA as the premier AI-driven growth story in semis and possibly the tech industry," the firm says.
AMD, Nvidia shares jump on bullish analyst report
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AMD, Nvidia shares jump on bullish analyst report

AMD and Nvidia shares will rise as the two chip companies benefit from promising secular growth technology trends, according to a Wall Street firm.

Cowen initiated coverage on AMD shares with an outperform rating, predicting market share gains for the company's server chips.

"While AMD server sales have taken several quarters to materially ramp, we anticipate an inflection during 2H18 when OEM sales should complement cloud growth," analyst Matthew Ramsay said in a note to clients Thursday. "We remain confident the impressive roster of cloud and OEM engagements including Dell, HP, Lenovo, Baidu, Microsoft Azure, Tencent, JD.com, Cray, and others will yield strong growth."

AMD issues stronger-than-expected Q2 revenue guidance
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AMD issues stronger-than-expected Q2 revenue guidance

Ramsay started his price target from AMD shares at $18, representing 40 percent upside to Thursday's close.

He also initiated coverage for Nvidia shares with an outperform rating, saying the chipmaker will dominate the autonomous driving and artificial intelligence markets.

"While datacenter and gaming/crypto understandably garner the majority of investor focus, we believe NVIDIA's auto computing business is on the cusp on significant high-margin growth," Ramsay said in the note. "In our view, no silicon company has the breadth of solutions and partnerships that NVIDIA has accumulated for end-to-end autonomous driving solutions. … We view NVIDIA as the premier AI-driven growth story in semis and possibly the tech industry."

The analyst gave a price target of $325 for Nvidia shares, representing 31 percent upside to Thursday's close.

Shares of AMD rose 1.4 percent Friday, while Nvidia's stock fell slightly.

— CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this story.

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