Nvidia Stock Heading Into May 20 Earnings: Wall Street Sees Roughly 24% Upside — Here’s the Average Target Price

Nvidia reports earnings next week, and Wall Street is leaning bullish.

The chipmaker confirmed in a press release on April 30 that it will release first-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, with a conference call scheduled for 2:00 p.m. PT (5:00 p.m. ET). The quarter ended April 26, and CFO Colette Kress will post written commentary about 90 minutes before the call.

The setup matters. Nvidia’s own February guidance pinned Q1 revenue at $78 billion, plus or minus 2%, after Q4 fiscal 2026 sales jumped 73% from the prior year. That guidance was already $5 billion above the consensus at the time it was issued. Heading into the May 20 print, the question is no longer whether the company beats — the question is by how much, and whether it can reassert the $1 trillion data center demand opportunity through 2027 that CEO Jensen Huang highlighted at GTC 2026.

What Wall Street Expects from the May 20 Print

The current sell-side consensus, aggregated by Benzinga from 35 analysts, calls for first-quarter revenue of about $78.6 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $1.74. That would translate into year-over-year revenue growth near 78% and roughly a 115% jump in profitability.

Goldman Sachs analyst James Schneider is more aggressive. In a note out this month, Schneider modeled revenue of $80.05 billion — about $2 billion above the Street — and earnings of $1.86 per share, roughly 7% above consensus. He maintained a Buy rating and a $250 price target. The bank’s thesis is straightforward: hyperscaler capex commitments for 2026 keep getting revised higher, Blackwell architecture shipments are tracking ahead of plan, and the company’s own $78 billion guide already had cushion baked in.

The Q1 FY27 period also captures the first full quarter of the Blackwell Ultra GB300 rollout, which carries higher average selling prices than the original Blackwell platform. That mix shift, combined with rising sovereign-AI orders from the Middle East and Asia, is the swing factor most analysts cite when justifying the above-consensus models.

The Target Price: $274.91 Average, $360 at the High End

Here is how the sell-side actually sits today, based on Benzinga’s tally of 35 analysts covering the stock:

• Average 12-month target price: $274.91
• Low end of the range: $210
• High end of the range: $360
• Goldman Sachs (James Schneider): $250, Buy
• Susquehanna (Christopher Rolland): raised to $275 from $250 on May 7, Buy
• Cantor Fitzgerald: $300, Overweight
• Rosenblatt: $325, Buy
• Loop Capital (Ananda Baruah): $350, Buy

Against the May 9 close near $221, the average target implies about 24% upside over the next 12 months. From the May 6 trough of $207.83, the upside math is closer to 32%. The high-end $360 target would require a roughly 63% rally.

A handful of names are leaning explicitly bullish into the print. Susquehanna’s Rolland — ranked in the top tier of semiconductor analysts on TipRanks — flagged “growing Blackwell momentum” and rising chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) capacity at TSMC as reasons to take numbers higher. Loop Capital’s Ananda Baruah, who carries a $350 target and a Buy rating, has said publicly that “$400 is ultimately in NVDA’s sights” as GPU shipments roughly double over the next 12 to 15 months.

What Could Move the Stock: Three Things to Watch

The May 20 release will be parsed for far more than the headline beat. Three line items tend to dominate after-hours trading:

1. Data center revenue. The segment accounted for roughly 88% of total sales in Q4 fiscal 2026. Anything materially below the implied $68-70 billion would crack the AI capex narrative. Anything above $72 billion would likely re-rate the multiple.

2. Gross margin guidance. Management guided Q1 gross margins to about 71%, down from the mid-70s on the Hopper cycle, as Blackwell production ramps. A guide for Q2 margins back above 73% would confirm the cost curve is bending the right way. A guide below 70% would re-open the bear case on production yields.

3. China commentary. U.S. export controls on advanced AI chips for the Chinese market have been a moving target for two years. Nvidia took a $4.5 billion charge in Q1 fiscal 2026 on stranded H20 inventory after Washington tightened licensing rules in April 2025, and management has since worked to qualify a compliant successor product. Any update on China revenue contribution, H20 follow-on shipments, or further licensing changes will be the wild card on the call.

The Bear Case: Concentration Risk and the $1 Trillion Test

Not everyone is convinced. The lowest target on the Street — $210, roughly flat with recent levels — reflects concern that hyperscaler concentration leaves Nvidia exposed to a single-customer air pocket. Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and Oracle together account for more than 40% of Nvidia’s data center revenue, and even a temporary pause in AI capex from any one of them would force the growth math to reset.

There is also the valuation question. Nvidia currently trades at roughly 30 times forward earnings, a premium to the broader semiconductor index but a discount to where it traded at the start of 2025. Whether that multiple is “cheap” or “expensive” depends entirely on the fiscal 2027 earnings trajectory: a consensus outcome leaves the stock fairly valued, while a Loop Capital-style outcome — meaningfully above consensus — would re-rate the multiple lower without the stock having to fall. For context on how the price/earnings ratio frames the same earnings power through different growth assumptions, the gap between consensus and the most bullish Street estimate is roughly 15-20% on EPS, which at today’s multiple is equivalent to about $40 of stock price on the same fundamentals.

What This Means for Investors

The May 20 print is the most important single data point of the current earnings season. Nvidia’s shares account for roughly 7% of the S&P 500 by market capitalization, the largest weighting in the index. The options market is pricing in a roughly 7% move in either direction over the next week — well over $300 billion of implied market value swing on a single release.

For a long-horizon investor, the central question is whether Nvidia can keep growing into the AI capex cycle for three more years without a hyperscaler pause. The sell-side is voting yes, with an average target 24% above current prices and a high-end target near $360. The bears are voting no, but they are outnumbered roughly 30 to 5.

The number that will settle the debate is the Q2 fiscal 2027 guide, not the Q1 beat. Watch the 5:00 p.m. ET press release on May 20, and watch the gross margin commentary on the call that follows.

Sources: Nvidia Investor Relations press release, April 30, 2026; Benzinga “Nvidia Q1 FY27 Earnings Preview,” May 9, 2026 (aggregate of 35 analyst targets); Goldman Sachs research note, May 7, 2026, via TipRanks; Susquehanna research note, May 7, 2026, via TipRanks; Loop Capital research note, via Walter Bloomberg / X; Nvidia Q1 FY26 financial results, May 28, 2025 (H20 inventory charge of $4.5 billion); Slickcharts S&P 500 component weights, May 2026.