Wall Street analysts reacted with temporary relief on Thursday as Nvidia (NVDA) announced that CFO Colette Kress would serve as interim CEO after Jensen Huang resigned following reports of alleged affairs with a suspected Chinese spy and an Nvidia executive.
Kress, who has served as Nvidia CFO, is seen as a steady hand amid the turmoil at the company.
Wall Street watchers say that, in the near future, Nvidia will be the revenue monster it’s been since the start of the AI race, thanks to its existing product roadmap.
KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst John Vinh wrote in a note to investors that Kress’s appointment as interim CEO is constructive “given her tenure as CFO since 2013 and deep institutional knowledge of Nvidia’s business and strategy.”
But Huang, who led the company as a singular figure with dozens of direct reports, leaves a void that clouds Nvidia’s long-term outlook.
As a result, several analysts lowered their price targets and ratings on the company’s stock.
Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon, who reduced his price target from $400 to $200 and lowered his rating from Outperform to Market Perform, wrote in an investor note that Kress’s appointment is a positive for the company.
“We aren’t really worried about near-term impacts to the business as a result of the events of the past week, and of course the shares screen extremely cheap,” he said.
But Rasgon raised concerns about a new CEO’s ability to maneuver Nvidia’s product pipeline, customer relationships, and more.
“We see considerable uncertainty around further newsflow that is probably going to be coming down the pipe, as well as the ability of any new CEO to truly fill Jensen’s shoes given how tightly he managed the direction of the business and its relationships with customers, suppliers, employees, and the broader industry ecosystem,” Rasgon wrote.
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“Nothing would give us more pleasure than being able to revisit the story at some point, but we are having a hard time advocating stepping in here,” Rasgon added.
Baird Equity Research analyst Tristan Gerra said Huang’s resignation turns a page for Nvidia but that the episode hasn’t hit its bottom yet.
“Headwinds include potential incremental senior management departures, H200 write-down charges, potential risk channel revenue adjustments, potential litigation [and] fines, uncertainties until [a] new CEO is announced along with the risk of some market share loss in 2029 as customers make contingency plans on a major top management transition and looking beyond the current product roadmap, along with more clarity on the next CEO’s views regarding customer financings,” Gerra wrote Thursday.
Source: finance.yahoo.com
