Nvidia (NVDA) Stock Drops Pre-Market While Wall Street Lifts Price Targets After GTC

TLDR

• NVDA fell ~2.6% in premarket trading Thursday despite positive analyst reactions to GTC
• Raymond James raised its price target to $323 from $291, maintaining a Strong Buy
• Truist raised its target to $287 from $283, also reiterating a Buy rating
• Nvidia revealed $1 trillion in cumulative GPU order visibility through 2027
• Wall Street consensus is Strong Buy: 40 Buys, 1 Hold; average target $274.16

Nvidia stock dropped around 2.6% in premarket trading on Thursday, March 19, even as two Wall Street analysts raised their price targets following the company’s annual GTC conference.

NVIDIA Corporation, NVDA

The event, which Truist analyst William Stein called “the Super Bowl of AI,” featured product updates, partnership announcements, and a major revenue visibility update from management.

Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold raised his price target to $323 from $291, keeping his Strong Buy rating. He pointed to Nvidia’s updated outlook for $1 trillion in cumulative GPU sales through 2027, calling that figure potentially conservative.

Leopold added that when contributions from Vera Rubin Ultra and the Groq LPX are factored in, total AI data center revenue through 2027 could reach closer to $1.3 trillion.

Truist’s Stein also raised his target, moving it to $287 from $283, and reiterated a Buy rating. His note focused on three key themes from day two of GTC.

First, management declared 2025 “the year of inference,” marking a market shift from training-focused builds to production inference at scale. Stein cited three demand drivers: generative AI boosting token demand, OpenClaw creating what Nvidia calls a “ChatGPT moment” for Agentic AI, and rapid growth in physical AI projects like autonomous driving and humanoid robotics.

Second, Nvidia is leaning into “tokenomics” — tokens per second per watt — as the key performance metric for inference. The company is addressing this with its rack-scale Vera Rubin platform, which lets customers mix and match five different resource rack types.

$1 Trillion in Revenue Visibility

The headline number from GTC was Nvidia’s stated revenue visibility of $1 trillion based on Blackwell and Vera Rubin orders through 2027. That’s up from $500 billion through 2026 that the company cited last year.

Wall Street’s current data center revenue estimate sits at around $950 billion from 2025–2027. Stein sees “at least modest upside” in 2026 and 2027 given management’s comments.

He revised his calendar year 2027 data center revenue estimate up to $468 billion from $439 billion. His EPS estimate for that year moved to $11.48 from $10.12.

Despite the bullish analyst tone, the stock didn’t respond in kind. NVDA was down roughly 2.6% before the opening bell on Thursday.

NVDA Price Target and Consensus

Wall Street’s consensus on NVDA remains Strong Buy, with 40 Buy ratings and just one Hold. The average price target stands at $274.16, implying around 52% upside from current trading levels.

NVDA is up 56% over the past 12 months but sits more than 3% in the red year-to-date heading into Thursday’s session.

The average analyst target of $274.16 is notably below both the Raymond James and Truist targets raised this week.

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