After meeting with representatives from IBM (IBM) and Kinetic, Raymond James analyst J. Steven Smigie said he came away with the impression that NVIDIA (NVDA) remains the "acceleration supplier of choice for alternative cloud/HPC solutions" versus Intel (INTC) and that adoption for GPU-accelerated enterprise and database management applications is "still in the earliest innings." He maintains a Strong Buy rating on NVIDIA, which was just downgraded to Underperform at BMO Capital and to Reduce at Nomura.

Barclays analyst Tom O'Malley raised the firm's price target on Broadcom (AVGO) to $1,500 from $1,405 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares after hosting management for meetings. Broadcom is one of the unique companies that has a comprehensive view of the semis industry while also capable of providing an "intimate look" at the artificial intelligence market via custom silicon, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm says management highlighted the company's inroads with the consumer-facing AI world, providing a differing viewpoint versus Nvidia's (NVDA) vision of the world - pointing to a two-part market of consumer and enterprise that could grow to a 50/50 split over time. Barclays came away from the meetings "with a valuable second opinion on the future of AI and a greater appreciation for the company's many ways to win."

Get caught up quickly on the top news and calls moving stocks with these five Top Five lists.  1... To see the rest of the story go to thefly.com. See Story Here

Get caught up quickly on the top news and calls moving stocks with these five Top Five lists. 1... To see the rest of the story go to thefly.com. See Story Here

Evercore ISI initiated coverage of Intel with an In Line rating and $40 price target. The firm views the risks for Intel as balanced. On the negative side, the center of gravity of computing is drifting away from Intel's x86 standard, the company is seeing competition not just from traditional processor companies, but also its own customers, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm noted, however, that on the positive side, Intel is one of only three companies in the world that can make leading edge transistors at scale, and the only one in the U.S. that can.

Friday's total option volume of 58.8 million contracts resulted in net open interest growth of 5.70 million calls and 5.17 million puts. Apple (AAPL), Tesla (TSLA), NVIDIA (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) saw the greatest growth. Top five new positions opened include 95k Meta Platforms (Facebook) (META) 6/18 weekly 1030 calls, 42k Tesla (TSLA) Apr-24 177.5 calls, 40k V F Corp (VFC) Mar-25 10 puts, 30k Alphabet Class A (GOOGL) Apr-24 165 calls and 30k Tesla (TSLA) 6/18 weekly 100 calls.

Evercore ISI is adding IBM (IBM) to the firm's "Tactical Outperform" list ahead of the company's March-end quarter results announcement on Wednesday April 24 as it expects the company to report revenue and EPS that are in-line to showing moderate upside compared to consensus estimates. Though there have been concerns surrounding the potential for weakness in Consulting given softness at Accenture (ACN), Evercore thinks recent macro and IT spending data points have been improving and Consulting momentum should continue, says the firm, which hsa an Outperform rating and $215 price target on IBM shares.