14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA may be just about ready to launch its new graphics cards and, depending on how they turn out, they might finally enable the company's shares to one again rise on the stock market. The past few months haven't exactly been generous to the Santa Clara GPU maker. Though its shares sold at $16.99 two months ago, they are barely above $10 now and are still going down. Some analysts even downgraded the outfit from buy to hold, because of concerns regarding future marketing performance.
At present, the GPU maker is experiencing a slump in prices that can be attributed to market trends. After having lost a significant deal by letting AMD have free reign over the DirectX 11 market for months, the company was unable to stun the consumer base when it launched the GF100 products. As such, the $16.99 trading price of its shares fell to $12.10 last month and, even more recently, to $10.34. Analysts eves issues some sell alerts on NVIDIA during this time and, whether justified or not, they have definitely taken their toll.
Granted, this isn't the first time such a thing occurs. About 18 months ago, shares were priced at $7.95, but they eventually grew to $18.68, in December 2009 to be exact. Nevertheless, current conditions can't even begin to compare to 2007, when the stock was trading at over $35. As it it, the Santa Clara, California-based outfit will have to put a significant effort into its GF104, GF106 and GF108 products.
The reason NVIDIA hasn't managed to recover so far is that it only has enthusiast-grade video cards on sale. This market segment isn't exactly large, however, which means that the task of recovering lost ground will fall to the mainstream and entry-level products. The Tegra SoC, on the mobile front, may also contribute to the recovery. What remains to be seen is when these newcomers actually manage to again drive earnings upwards.