TLDR
- AMD rose 1.4% to $455.49 in premarket trading Monday.
- Oppenheimer upgraded the stock to Outperform and set a $600 price target.
- Oppenheimer sees AMD’s data center revenue growing 135% next year.
- Nvidia fell 5.2% to $176.90 as its board opened a probe tied to CEO Jensen Huang.
- AMD’s CEO expects sales growth of 80% or more next year.
Advanced Micro Devices stock was up 1.4% to $455.49 in premarket trading Monday. Nvidia (NVDA) went the other way, falling 5.2% to $176.90.
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., AMD
The push for AMD came from Oppenheimer. Analyst Rick Schafer upgraded the stock to Outperform from Perform and set a $600 price target.
That target is about 34% above Friday’s close of $449.04. AMD jumped 11% in that session, so it enters Monday with some momentum.
Both chip stocks have had a rough month. Through Friday’s close, AMD was down 24% and Nvidia was down 17%.
The Numbers Behind the Call
Schafer expects AMD’s data center revenue to climb 135% next year. He says that business would make up 85% of total sales.
His model also counts roughly 3 gigawatts for AMD in 2027 and 4 gigawatts in 2028. The whole call leans on those figures.
He expects OpenAI and Meta to drive growth through the first quarter. Anthropic is expected to ramp up late in that quarter.
Oracle, Microsoft and Saudi Arabia’s Humain are also named as big buyers. The top five cloud providers are expected to spend about $1.3 trillion in 2027, up from $800 billion this year.
Oppenheimer also expects data center GPU sales to pass EPYC server CPU revenue. Even so, the CPU line is projected to more than double next year.
AMD has promised a one-year chip cadence. That means the MI500 in 2027 and the MI600 in 2028.
What Came Before the Upgrade
Schafer pointed to last week’s third-quarter report. Revenue was $13.38 billion, up 45% from a year ago and $279 million above the top of guidance.
Data Center revenue rose 97% from a year earlier. CEO Lisa Su said the company expects sales to grow 80% or more next year.
Other analysts have weighed in. DA Davidson raised its target to $600 with a Buy rating, StoneX set $685, and TD Cowen kept a Buy at $675.
Not everyone is cheering. HSBC kept a Hold with a $540 target, and RBC stayed at Sector Perform with the same $540 target.
Schafer’s note did not address Nvidia’s situation. On Sunday, Nvidia’s board said it would independently investigate whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort, after he had a relationship with an executive suspected of working for Chinese intelligence.
Huang apologized in a letter to staff for being unfaithful to his wife. “I support the investigation and will cooperate fully,” he said.
A later premarket quote showed AMD at $463.31, up about 3%.
