5 big analyst AI moves: Nvidia stock ’likely to outperform in 2H26’

Vahid Karaahmetovic

Sun, February 22, 2026 at 6:30 PM GMT+9 8 min read

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•                                       StockStory Top Pick 
  

  NVDA

  +1.02%

 AMZN  

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 DELL  

 +2.70%  

Investing.com – Here are the biggest analyst moves in the area of artificial intelligence (AI) for this week.

Buy Nvidia stock ahead of second-half outperformance, Citi says

Citi is urging investors to add to Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) positions ahead of what it expects to be a period of share outperformance in the second half of 2026 (1H26), citing strong product momentum and improving demand visibility into 2027.

In a preview note, analyst Atif Malik said the firm expects Nvidia to report January-quarter revenue of $67 billion, “above Street $65.6B,” and guide to April-quarter sales of $73 billion versus consensus of $71.6 billion.

The bullish view is partly driven by the company’s product cycle. Malik expects the continued ramp of the B300 and the Rubin platform to drive a 34% half-over-half acceleration in calendar second-half 2026 sales, compared with 27% in the first half of the year.

He noted that “most investors are looking past the earnings,” toward Nvidia’s annual GTC conference in mid-March, where the company is expected to detail its inference roadmap using Groq’s low-latency SRAM IP and provide an “early outlook for 2026/27 AI sales.”

On profitability, the analyst models fiscal 2027 gross margin at roughly 75% and assumes operating-expense growth in the high-30% range, broadly in line with fiscal 2026 trends.

Addressing concerns around elevated hyperscaler capital spending, the analyst said these investments “will deliver long-term returns” as AI infrastructure demand continues to drive cloud-revenue growth.

He also acknowledged rising competition in inference but expects Nvidia to “continue to be the leader across both training and reasoning focused inference workloads.”

Citi maintained its Buy rating and $270 price target, concluding the stock “looks attractive with the stock likely to outperform in 2H26 as demand visibility extends into 2027.”

Morgan Stanley sees Amazon as an underappreciated GenAI winner

Morgan Stanley has named Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) its Top Pick, arguing both AWS and Retail remain underappreciated beneficiaries of the GenAI wave and positioning the company to drive — and capture — the next phase of AI-led disruption.

While investors continue to debate the returns from heavy AI capital spending, analyst Brian Nowak said he remains bullish “through this uncertainty” and highlighted two catalysts that could help re-rate the shares.

The first centers on the durability of AWS growth. Nowak said demand trends remain robust, with backlog levels supporting 30%+ growth “for quite some time.” However, he noted that the pace of acceleration is currently constrained by data center capacity coming online.

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He evaluates AI returns using a “capex yield analysis,” which measures incremental revenue relative to prior-year capital spending. In his base case, the implied yield sits about 50% below the long-term average, pointing to potential upside for AWS revenue if data center openings begin to catch up with investment.

Nowak estimates that every 5% improvement in yield would add roughly 130 basis points to AWS growth, with a move toward about $0.45 capable of pushing year-over-year AWS growth into the mid-30% range.

“As AWS opens more data centers, this “yield” should improve and AWS should continue to accelerate,” he wrote.

The second catalyst is agentic commerce. According to Nowak, Amazon’s expanding last-mile inventory, growing infrastructure and ongoing technology investment position the company to lead in both vertical and horizontal agentic shopping.

He noted that the company’s platform-specific agent Rufus is already contributing about 140 basis points to fourth-quarter 2025 gross merchandise value (GMV) growth.

Amazon has also acknowledged the need to “collectively figure out a better customer experience” with horizontal AI agents and said “we continue to have a number of conversations,” pointing to potential partnerships ahead.

“We look for AMZN horizontal agentic partnerships to emerge, which will make investors feel more confident in AMZN’s long-term positioning,” Nowak wrote.

Evercore adds Dell to Tactical Outperform list ahead of results

Evercore added Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) to its Tactical Outperform list ahead of next week’s January-quarter results, saying the hardware maker is positioned to beat current revenue and earnings expectations.

The brokerage expects Dell to surpass consensus forecasts of $31.4 billion in revenue and $3.52 in EPS, supported by “strong near-term (NT) demand trends across traditional hardware (PCs/servers) and AI compute.”

Evercore also flagged memory pricing dynamics as a near-term tailwind. With concerns building around rising memory costs, it believes Dell “to have benefited from a demand pull-in across PCs and traditional servers as customers will have looked to get ahead of average selling price (ASP) increases.”

Within the Infrastructure Solutions Group, AI server demand remains central to the story. Dell exited the fiscal third quarter with AI orders of $12.3 billion and a backlog of $18.4 billion, and previously guided to fiscal 2026 AI server revenue of $25 billion. This outlook implies a step-up to more than $9 billion in January-quarter AI revenue, Evercore said.

On the client side, early IDC data indicates Dell gained about 100 basis points of market share in the fourth quarter, marking its first share gain in more than three years.

That said, Evercore expects some near-term margin pressure. Consensus currently points to roughly a 90 basis point sequential decline in gross margin to 20.2%, down 410 basis points year over year, partly reflecting early memory headwinds.

However, the firm noted that “DELL has already shifted to more dynamic pricing actions and a shorter quote window to better protect margins going forward.”

Looking further out, Evercore expects management to outline a path to at least high-single-digit revenue growth and low-to-mid-teens EPS growth into fiscal 2027, supported by gross profit dollar expansion, operating leverage and share repurchases.

In AI servers specifically, the broker forecasts a “sizable step-up with Rubin ramps” that could support $35 billion to $40 billion in revenue while maintaining stable mid-single-digit margins.

Evercore maintained its Outperform rating on the stock while lowering its price target to $160.

Needham upgrades Analog Devices on improving demand trends

Needham & Company upgraded Analog Devices (NASDAQ:ADI) to Buy from Hold on Thursday, citing strengthening operating trends, solid recent results and improving demand across key end markets that it expects will continue to support earnings and the share price.

Analyst N. Quinn Bolton said the firm “can no longer justify remaining on the sidelines” following fiscal first-quarter results that came in ahead of expectations and guidance that was “meaningfully above expectations.”

The upgrade comes despite a strong recent run in the stock. Shares have climbed more htan 40% since Analog Devices’ fiscal fourth-quarter 2025 report, compared with a 2.6% gain for the S&P 500, but Needham believes further upside remains.

The brokerage set a $400 price target, based on a 30-times multiple of its 2027 earnings estimate.

Bolton said customer dynamics appear to be improving, noting that “customers appear to have moved through the digestion phase,” with order patterns now better aligned with underlying consumption.

He also pointed to recovery potential in the company’s core industrial segment. Excluding automated test equipment and aerospace and defense, the business remains “20% below prior peak levels,” suggesting meaningful room for improvement as bookings strengthen.

The analyst further highlighted inventory dynamics as a potential tailwind, arguing that “a restocking cycle is still in front of the company.” He added that improved pricing and growing exposure to data center and AI applications — now roughly 20% of sales — should continue to support the growth outlook.

Truist upgrades Shopify to Buy on AI-driven pullback opportunity

In another upgrade this week, Truist Securities lifted Shopify (NASDAQ:SHOP) to Buy from Hold on Tuesday and raised its price target to $150 from $110, arguing that the recent software selloff tied to AI concerns has opened an attractive entry point for long-term (l-t) investors.

“Large drawdown in software valuations related to AI fears has created attractive buying oppty for L-T investors in Shopify,” analyst Terry Tillman said in a note.

He added that “Shopify is one of the few software co’s to show strong accelerating growth recently,” and believes multiple long-term drivers — including international expansion, payments, enterprise traction, B2B and “now, agentic commerce can sustain one of the best profitable growth profiles at scale in software & agentic AI.”

Addressing investor concerns around AI disruption and so-called “vibe coding,” Tillman said the risks appear overstated. Vibe coding refers to the use of AI-driven, prompt-based no-code tools to rapidly build applications with limited traditional programming.

Instead, the analyst emphasized Shopify’s scale, security and performance advantages. He highlighted the platform’s ability to manage peak demand, including $5.1 million in sales per minute on Black Friday and 14.8 trillion database queries during Cyber Week.

Tillman said he does “not expect Shopify to be impacted by vibe coding via prompt engineering/no code AI startups or it to impact its growth algorithm in the foreseeable future.”

Payments remain another key pillar of the bullish case. Tillman pointed to Shopify’s “market-leading” checkout experience and its long-standing investment in fintech capabilities.

Gross payment volume reached $84 billion in the fourth quarter, with penetration expanding to 68% of gross merchandise volume. Shop Pay now processes more than half of total U.S. payment volume, while Shopify Payments is available in more than 20 countries.

Looking ahead, Tillman outlined five reasons the company is well positioned for the rise of agentic commerce, including its global merchant network, deep commerce data, system-of-record role, protocol development work such as the Universal Commerce Protocol, and its position as a trusted operating system for brands.

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