(This is CNBC Pro’s live coverage of Friday’s analyst calls and Wall Street chatter. Please refresh every 20-30 minutes to view the latest posts.) An electric vehicle maker and a major cloud player were in focus in Friday’s analyst chatter. Piper Sandler raised its rating on Rivian to overweight, noting the stock can rally 96% from here. Guggenheim also became more positive on Snowflake, upgrading shares to neutral from sell. Check out the latest calls and chatter below. All times ET. 5:56 a.m.: Baird stands by outperform rating on Nvidia ahead of next week’s GTC conference Ahead of Nvidia’s GTC global AI conference next week, Baird reiterated its outperforming rating on the chipmaker. Baird’s $1,050 price target implies that Nvidia stock could still rally another 19%, adding onto its eye-watering 78% gain so far this year. As a catalyst, analyst Trista Gerra noted Nvidia would most likely unveil its next-gen architecture, Blackwell, at the conference. “We expect a very significant step up in performance specs versus H100, as inferred by our channel feedback about the higher pricing versus H100,” he wrote. “Nvidia’s yearly cadence of new product introductions and performance step up will place increasing pressure on ASIC architectures trying to catch up, in our view.” Meanwhile, ongoing robust demand means that Nvidia continues to demand more capacity. Gerra also sees opportunity growth in the enterprise solutions category for Nvidia. These enterprise solutions “are unique to Nvidia, with the weight of the company’s entire ecosystem resulting in customizable turnkey solutions in turn now driving rapid adoption of Nvidia’s L40S AI architecture in the enterprise,” he said. “AI adoption at enterprise is at a very early cycle, boding well for the sustainability of the AI ramp, with no competition so far.” After soaring more than 200% last year, Nvidia shares have surged another 77% in 2024. NVDA YTD mountain NVDA year to date — Lisa Kailai Han 5:50 a.m.: Piper Sandler upgrades Rivian to overweight, predicts stock could nearly double Piper Sandler upgraded shares of electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian to an overweight rating from neutral. Analyst Alexander Potter accompanied this move by lifting his price target to $21 from $15, implying that shares could rally 96%, or nearly double. Troubles have plagued the electric vehicle space this year, with Tesla and Fisker as two notable examples. With its stock down 54% this year, Rivian hasn’t been exempt. “Make no mistake: buying RIVN is risky and a botched midyear re-tooling effort could yet surprise investors negatively,” Potter wrote. “But the newly-unveiled R2 SUV generated 68k orders in less than 24 hours, and we think its sibling, the R3, could be one of the most compelling designs on the market when it is released.” The analyst added that this excitement around the new product launch, alongside the company’s plans to delay capex and build R2 in an existing plant, should lead to investors feeling more bullish in general about the stock. If the R3 vehicle is priced right, Potter believes it could become Rivian’s top seller. Meanwhile, Potter’s new model reflects cost savings efforts at Rivian, which would also require only half as much new capital as the firm would previously have needed. The “real endgame,” Potter added, was that Rivian was the only automaker following Tesla’s vertical integration strategy by scaling up and monetizing its services. “If Rivian can achieve cash flow breakeven in the late 2020s, which is our expectation, then the company should be able to self-fund the production of an internet-connected vehicle fleet and, ultimately, unlock operating margins in the teens,” he wrote. “Now that near-term balance sheet concerns have (mostly) been addressed, we think investors can turn their attention back to this bullish thesis and stop fretting so much about cash burn.” — Lisa Kailai Han 5:50 a.m.: Guggenheim upgrades Snowflake Things should starting to turn for the better for Snowflake , according to Guggenheim. Analyst John DiFucci upgraded the cloud stock to neutral from sell. He also pulled his $120 price target, which implied downside of more than 24%. “We believe SNOW has a mountain of challenges in front of it that will continue to feed material investor worry, and this likely won’t dissipate any time soon,” DiFucci wrote Thursday. “At the same time, even if Snowflake only remained a strong cloud-based data warehouse vendor with little success in penetrating the adjacent markets it aspires to, it will remain a valuable asset, in our view; though perhaps not as valuable as it is even today.” Snowflake shares have struggled this year, losing 20%, in part due to Frank Slootman stepping down his CEO role. The stock rose slightly in the premarket. SNOW YTD mountain SNOW year to date — Fred Imbert
