Nvidia upgrade, Arista, Apollo & Papa John's: Trending Tickers

Market Domination host Josh Lipton and Tematica Research Chief Investment Officer Chris Versace track several of the day's top trending stock tickers, including Nvidia (NVDA) after getting an upgrade to Buy from HSBC analysts, the team out of Citi declaring Arista Networks (ANET) a buying opportunity, and Reuters reporting that Apollo Global Management (APO) has made a bid for pizza chain Papa John's International (PZZA).

Note: Apollo Global Management is the parent company of Yahoo Finance.

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Video Transcript

00:00 Josh

Thematica researchers Chris Versace, still with me here. take a look at NVIDIA, Arista Networks, maybe we'll talk a little Papa John's. to start off though with NVIDIA, that's a chipmaker getting upgrade over at HSBC Securities. is expects the market for NVIDIA's AI chips to keep growing. So this one, Chris, okay. So HSBC, they upgraded NVIDIA to buy, they raised their target to 320, which

00:27 Chris

Eye- eye popping, isn't it?

00:28 Josh

Bloomberg says, I'll tell you what that 320 is. Bloomberg says that's that's a street high, Chris. They expect the AI GPU TAM, total addressable market to keep increasing. They say beyond the hyperscalers, beyond the cloud giants. That's going to lead they say to continuous earnings growth. With this upgrade, by the way, more than 90% of analysts who are paid to tell you what to do with NVIDIA, more than 90% say, you know what, you buy this one. Do you?

00:59 Chris

Uh, I'm not going to buy it because I already own it. So we own it in the Street Pro portfolio.

01:05 Josh

When did you get in, by the way?

01:07 Chris

Roughly. After the split, I want to say 45, 60, something like that.

01:13 Josh

You're still a believer here?

01:14 Chris

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, look. We're still to carry our conversation earlier, we're still in a rising tide, lifting a lot of boats. I don't think NVIDIA is the only winner. I think there are others out there and we kind of positioned the portfolio for that. In fact, we'll be talking about one of them coming up. Um, but as long as we continue to see the rising demand and capacity needs, I think we're going to be fine. Where I get a little concerned is exactly where this analyst took his numbers up significantly. 2027. That's a big jump. It's quite it's five quarters out. A lot can happen between now and then. So, you know, we'll we'll continue to update our thinking and revise our EPS expectations for NVIDIA, but that's a big swing.

01:58 Josh

Let me ask you as an NVIDIA shareholder, I'm just curious. You see NVIDIA making these investments. Open AI, Core Weave, XAI, do you think Jensen knows what he's doing? That's a smart use of capital?

02:14 Chris

Uh, I do think he knows what he's doing. They do have the balance sheet and they've done other investments in Core Weave, for example, which has turned out very well. Um, you know, I also think it's kind of a competitive position, kind of reinforcing where where they want to play and help ensure the market along. So I like that, but is everyone in their investments going to make it? I mean, Jensen's smart. Don't make don't get me wrong, but you know, we'll see.

02:40 Josh

We'll see. All right, turning now to Arista, as City highlights a buying opportunity. So this one, Chris, all right, so City weighs in here on actually, by the way, Arista Networks and it looks like a Astera Labs, they would be buyers here, they say on weakness. Most on the street like both of these names it looks like. I'm just looking at Astera, your average target is around 188. Uh, average target for Arista is around 160. Arista, nice run. It's up around 30% this year and your portfolio owns it. How come?

03:14 Chris

Uh, well, for a couple of reasons. One, uh, we do like the growth prospects for network as it relates not only to AI and data center demand, that rising capacity we talked about, but also ongoing uh shift from broadcast to streaming. Remember, it's all carried across the network. So when we look at Arista Networks, we also like their, um, AI partners, right? You might have heard of some of these names, Josh. Uh, AMD,

03:47 Josh

Yes, that rings a bell.

03:48 Chris

Broadcom, Arm, and a little company known as Open AI. So, you know, we we do like that. And I agree with the city analyst that this pullback that happened after, you know, a nice win on the networking front by NVIDIA. But again, if we think about the big build out, that's got something like 500 plus hyperscalar data centers coming on stream in the next couple of years, we're going to see continued demand for networking equipment. I think the pullback is a nice opportunity for Arista. In fact, I will share with you that we started our position last week. We used the pressure on the shares earlier this week to buy a little more.

04:31 Josh

Buy that weakness, buy that dip. Lastly, all right, big switch here, Papa John's. We're moving to pizza, Chris. Reportedly facing a takeover offer from Apollo Global Management. It's according to Reuters. Apollo Global, of course, the parent company of Yahoo. Uh, so this one, all right, so Papa John's, when I hear, reports that Apollo submitted a bid, Chris, uh, they say within the last week, take the pizza chain operator private. Uh it looks like they are reporting at 64 a share. This is Reuters. Uh, now they're they're cautioning the situation is fluid, Reuters is saying, no deal guaranteed, doesn't look like, sound like at this point anybody is is commenting, but you can see the pop in the stock.

05:14 Chris

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, it's taking a pizza a pizza company private. We've seen other deals in the food space before. You know, the question to me is, are they going to ring the costs out? Are they going to try and accelerate international expansion? Right? Because with these restaurant stories, it's all about geographic expansion, whether it's across, you know, west east in the US or internationally, right? Those those are the legs. So they've got to be thinking about this, but that also means at some point they'll have to monetize it, come back out. Maybe they make it lean and mean. We will see.

05:46 Josh

You a Papa John's guy?

05:47 Chris

No, that's not pizza.

05:49 Josh

Leave it there. Thank you, Chris. As always, my friend. Appreciate your time and those picks.

05:54 Chris

Happy to do it.

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