00:08 Jared
Now time for some of today’s trending tickers. We are watching Nvidia, PNC and Baidu. First up, Nvidia, seeing a price cut, a price target cut at City. The new target is $200 per share and joining us with more is Yahoo Finance senior reporter, Ally Canal. Great to see you here. So, uh talk to us about this stock Nvidia. It’s been a few weeks since it’s had a record high and sometimes that makes investors a little bit nervous.
00:37 Allie Canal
Yes, and Data Track Research called that out in a note of this morning saying that Nvidia, Microsoft, two names that have really been leading this AI-driven rally, they haven’t seen those record highs in a few weeks. So, is the AI trade on wobbly footing? That has been some of the commentary and you saw City cutting that price target from the prior 210 bucks a share now to 200, but they did still keep their buy rating. The firm saying that competition from so-called XPUs, those are chips being developed by the likes of Google, Meta, Amazon, that that could shave about $12 billion off of Nvidia’s 2026 GPU sales. Now, City still sees Nvidia dominating this market with more than 85% market share, but does expect those XPUs to grow over time, especially as Google shifts to selling compute capacity to rivals like Meta and Open AI. City did call out some catalysts ahead such as China if those sales resume, although they did say the next big catalyst for the stock will be CEO Jensen Wong’s Keynote at Nvidia’s GTC conference in uh October. So October 28th is when that GTC conference will be. So still have a few weeks to go there. Uh so we’ll see if we can get a record high in between then and now, Jared, but a little less conviction out there on the street when it comes to the pricing of Nvidia shares.
1:50 Jared
I hear you. And next up, we got to talk about PNC, which is agreeing to acquire First Bank in a deal valued at $4.1 billion. The regional bank looking to expand its footprint through uh the deal. And Ally, this is a stock that is up really nicely off of those 2023 lows, but I’m noticing that it’s having a little bit of difficulty kind of punching through those late 2021, early 2022 highs, but that’s just the stock movement.
2:08 Allie Canal
Right. And financials as a whole XLF, that has really been outperforming over the past year. Regionals in particular, on the back of those expected rate cuts. Now, PNC, they want to have a more solid footprint in the Rocky Mountain region and this deal certainly gives them that. 120 branches, $26.7 billion in assets from First Bank, and it makes it the largest bank in Denver. Now, the acquisition also adds more than 70 branches in Arizona and boosts PNC’s total assets to roughly 575 billion dollars. Uh PNC has been on this buying streak in recent years including its $11.6 billion purchase of BBVA’s US operations, and it does put it closer in size to rivals like Capital One, like US Bank. Of course, it lags some of those bigger banks that we often talk about like Bank of America and Wells Fargo along with JP Morgan. Uh but you are seeing shares of just slightly today uh down about five tons of a percent. But like you were saying, Jared, we have seen a decent run up in recent months.
3:20 Jared
All right. And finally, we got to talk about Baidu. The shares are seeing their biggest jump in years, or at least one year as optimism in its AI efforts and robo taxis grows following an offering of new senior notes. And so robo taxis grabs a lot of headlines, Ally, and we’re seeing a nice pop today, but Baidu like a lot of Chinese stocks has just been really beaten down over the last few years and everybody’s wondering where the next stimulus is coming from. What about this latest news?
3:51 Allie Canal
Right. Well, because of the recovery that we’ve been seeing in the Chinese economy and therefore the Chinese stock market that is lifting some of these names that have been under pressure. Now, Baidu shares jumped nearly 13% in Hong Kong. Like you were saying, Jared, this was their biggest gain in a year and it was filled around a lot of that excitement around artificial intelligence, robo taxi technology that tends to get investors really excited when they think about the future. Not just for a company like Baidu, but even more US names like a Tesla, for example. Now, the pop does come as Baidu plans to increase again dominated senior notes and prepares to unveil an upgrade to its reasoning AI models at a developer conference in Beijing tomorrow. Now analysts are saying that the rally may reflect market exuberance more than fundamentals, especially considering how uh bullish uh some investors have been when it comes to putting their dollars overseas as opposed to parking it here in the US. Uh now, uh Goldman Sachs pointed out that Baidu is a global leader in driverless commercial rides with its Apollo unit among the top two players worldwide. So, a bit of a mixed bag when we look across Wall Street and whether or not they think this is just over exuberance or if Baidu really does have the fundamentals to support uh these gains here. But again, something that we’ll be tracking as we continue to watch that Chinese stock market and the Chinese consumer very closely as well.
5:11 Jared
You bet. And you at home can scan the QR code below to track the best and worst performing stocks with Yahoo Finances trending tickers page.