Goldman Sachs predicts that chipmaker Nvidia is headed for another banner year, a forecast that is bullish not only for shareholders but also ethereum miners.
Goldman Sachs Predicts Profitable 2018 for Nvidia
After last year’s 109 percent increase, one might assume that Nvidia’s share price is primed for a correction.
Goldman Sachs analyst Toshiya Hari, however, predicts that 2018 will be a banner year for Nvidia, citing growth potential in the gaming and VR/AR sectors.
“Nvidia is one of the few stocks in our coverage universe exposed to multiple secular growth markets … With the emergence of eSports and the potential proliferation of VR/AR, we view Gaming as a meaningful and sustainable growth driver for the overall company,” the analyst wrote in a note to clients Friday, according to CNBC. “In terms of single stock, our top picks in Semis and Semi Cap are Nvidia and Entegris.”
Though not mentioned, this bullish forecast also assumes a solid outlook for cryptocurrency miners because the industry served as a driving force for share prices of both Nvidia and AMD, its archrival and fellow GPU manufacturer.
The two companies have become so closely associated with mining that analysts have even characterized them as proxies for cryptocurrency market movements because as prices increase and mining becomes more profitable, demand for GPUs rises as well.
Both companies have leaned into the burgeoning cryptocurrency mining sector, releasing drivers and even graphics cards designed specifically for mining-specific applications, all the while incurring the ire of their traditional gaming-focused clientele.
Nvidia Exempts Miners from Data Center Restrictions
More recently, Nvidia has even structured the license agreement for its consumer-focused GeForce and Titan graphics cards to exclude cryptocurrency mining from restrictions on using these cards in data centers, according to a report from The Register.
“No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment, except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted,” the licensing agreement reads.
This exemption allows large-scale miners to purchase high-end GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards, which retail for $699 rather than being required to fork over as much as $9,000 for enterprise-level Tesla V100 chips.