(BFM Bourse) – The semiconductor specialist gained almost 40% in two sessions and exceeded $1,000 billion in market capitalization. What only eight American groups had accomplished before him. Its performance leads it to be compared to Nvidia.
The hit at the end of the year on Wall Street is clearly Broadcom. The semiconductor group gained almost 40% over two sessions, Friday and Monday. This Tuesday, its stock took a small break and lost 5.4% at the start of the session.
This rally was triggered last week by comments from the American company’s CEO, Hock Tan, during the presentation of fourth quarter results.
The executive delivered thriving prospects for the group’s chips used for artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI.
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“XPUs”
Remember that with the rise of this technology, the “hyperscalers” (Microsoft, Amazon or Alphabet), that is to say the American big tech companies which provide important cloud computing services and develop major models of language (LLM), are increasingly using Broadcom products.
In particular its Ethernet chips and its XPUs processors which are dedicated to AI. These processors are more specialized than Nvidia graphics processors (GPUs) and therefore less versatile. But they are more suited to uses requiring significant computing power, such as AI or “machine learning,” explains TheStreet.com.
Over the entire 2023-2024 financial year, Broadcom’s products dedicated to AI experienced spectacular growth, worthy of that of Nvidia. Their turnover jumped 220% year-on-year to $12.2 billion. The company said the growth in this segment is expected to be around 65% for the first quarter of the financial year 2024-2025.
Above all, Hock Tan declared that chips for AI would represent an addressable market of 60 billion to 90 billion dollars in 2027. By this time three “hyperscaler” customers should have deployed millions of clusters of AI chips, Hock Tan added.
“We are well positioned to achieve a major market share on this opportunity,” he proclaimed. The manager also announced that the company had two “hyperscalers” among its new clients.
More than 1,000 billion dollars in market capitalization
For Bank of America, a buy on the stock, Broadcom enjoys booming opportunities in AI. The American bank estimates that its revenues from specialized AI chips should increase from $12.2 billion in the financial year ending in 2024 to $30 billion in the year ending at the end of October 2027.
This hypergrowth and these promising prospects have, therefore, caused a violent stock market rally in recent days, allowing Broadcom to exceed $1,000 billion in market capitalization (the value of all of its shares) on Friday.
A feat that very few American groups had achieved until then. The Magnificent Seven, named after these “bigtechs” who had a grandiose year in 2023 on the stock market (Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, Tesla) have all exceeded this threshold. But apart from these seven stocks, only Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet’s investment company, briefly achieved this during the summer of 2024.
Which begs the question: should we now add Broadcom to Wall Street’s Magnificent Seven?
Its stock market performance argues for such integration. At $1.167 billion (before Tuesday’s opening, Editor’s note), Broadcom’s market capitalization is not far from that of Tesla ($1.486 billion) and Meta ($1.575 billion).
Over the whole of 2024, Broadcom takes 124%. Over this period, only one member of the Magnificent Seven did better, namely Nvidia, with its increase of 166%. The average progression of this club of seven members is around 67.6%.
Last October, Fortune wrote that Broadcom, a “company most people have never heard of” had “kicked Tesla out of the Great Seven.” The semiconductor group then became, according to the American media, “the seventh magnificent neglected group”. Certainly, Tesla was then worth much less on the stock market. The stock has more than doubled since November 6 and the election of Donald Trump, the market anticipating measures favorable to the automobile group. But the Fortune article shows that Broadcom was already knocking on the door of the Magnificent Seven a few months ago.
Intra-sector rotation on Wall Street
The Sherwood News site, which is linked to the financial services company Robinhood, used the acronym “BATMMAAN” (Broadcom, Alphabet, Tesla, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia) to add Broadcom to the Magnificent Seven . With therefore a reference to the vigilante of Gotham City.
Beyond knowing whether Broadcom should join the Magnificent Seven club, comparisons with Nvidia’s stock market journey are rife.
“It’s kind of like when Nvidia delivered some eye-popping numbers, maybe a year and a half ago, and everyone had to catch up and chase the stock,” said Ken Mahoney, CEO of Mahoney Asset Management, to Bloomberg.
“If you look at Nvidia’s latest publications, which were very good, the stock hasn’t progressed that much. Which is typical of stocks where good news is already hugely included. We pulled the rubber band very hard on Nvidia “, explained Stéphane Deo, manager at Eleva Capital, on BFM Bourse on Monday.
But there is “a capillarisation” of the AI boom on other companies, added the specialist. And “the potential for rebound is perhaps stronger in a Broadcom or other stocks like that than in an Nvidia in which a very large part of the good news is already in the prices”, added the manager, who is invested in Nvidia and Broadcom.
This illustrates a market rotation that has been observed for several weeks within tech. Investors are looking for the next pockets of value and thus trying to identify slightly less obvious beneficiaries of AI than Nvidia or Microsoft. Like, therefore, Broadcom or even Salesforce.
“We expect what happened in AI on the Magnificent Seven to percolate more and more into the American economy through other companies. And the real winners of AI (on the stock market, editor’s note ) are perhaps no longer in the Magnificent Seven”, summarized Vincent Juvyns of JP Morgan AM, also guest of BFM Bourse, Monday.
Julien Marion – ©2024 BFM Bourse
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