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To achieve a $300 share price by the end of the year, NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) simply needs to appreciate half as much as its underlying earnings.

Here’s the bottom line:  The stock trades around $219. So, to hit $300, it only needs to climb about 37%. That’s comfortably less than half of that 88.7% earnings growth.

Here’s more detail on the earnings trajectory. 

In Nvidia’s first quarter of fiscal year 2027, reported on May 20, 2026, NVIDIA achieved 85% year-over-year revenue growth. Earnings grew 140% year over year. The company also guided for even higher revenue growth in the second quarter.

Nvidia will announce results for its second quarter of fiscal year 2027 on August 26.

Related: Louis Navellier unveils five A-rated stocks for August

Second-quarter revenue is expected to jump 96.5% year-over-year to $91.85 billion. Earnings are forecast to surge 98.1% year-over-year to $2.08 per share. Analysts have also revised earnings estimates slightly higher over the past three months, so another quarterly earnings surprise is likely.

Is Nvidia a bargain buy?

For fiscal year 2027, NVIDIA’s revenue is expected to grow 82.4% year-over-year to $393.85 billion. Earnings are forecast to increase 88.7% year-over-year to $9 per share.

Now, NVIDIA currently has a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 34. Applying that same P/E to expected earnings gets us there ($9 x 34 = $306.)

So, I still stand by my prediction. And I still expect NVDA to trade up to $500 per share by the end of the decade.

My stock grading system rates NVIDIA as a C.

For more information about my stock grading system, click here.

Other strong AI plays apart from Nvidia

Here are three top AI stocks based on our analysis. These stocks are not only backed by superior fundamentals and positive analyst revisions, but also by persistent institutional buying pressure.

Also read: Cathie Wood buys $22.3 million of surging semiconductor stock

Ciena Corporation: Rating ‘A’

Ciena Corporation (CIEN) builds the highways data travels on.

As AI drives explosive growth in data traffic, copper wires can’t keep up – so Ciena moves that data on light instead, helping its customers keep pace with the AI economy.

In the wake of Ciena’s better-than-expected second-quarter results, analysts have revised third-quarter earnings estimates 9% higher in the past two months. Third-quarter earnings are now forecast to increase 156.7% year-over-year to $1.72 per share, while revenue is expected to grow 33.9% year-over-year to $1.63 billion.

My stock grading system rates Ciena as an A.

Micron Technology, Inc.: Rating ‘A’

Micron Technology, Inc. (MU) offers advanced memory and storage technologies built for the efficiency, reliability and performance AI workloads demand.

For its third quarter in fiscal year 2026, Micron Technology achieved total revenue of $41.46 billion and earnings of $28.86 billion, or $25.11 per share. That represented 73.8% year-over-year revenue growth and 1,223.1% year-over-year earnings growth.

Fourth-quarter earnings are forecast to soar 934% year-over-year to $31.33 per share, and revenue is expected to jump 349.3% year-over-year to $50.84 billion.

My stock grading system rates Micron Technology as an A.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc: Rating ‘A’

Seagate Technology Holdings (STX) provides an essential component of the AI Revolution and data center boom: storage.

The company develops the best-of-the-best AI-capable hard drives. Seagate Technology reported that fourth-quarter revenue grew 48.5% year-over-year to $3.63 billion, while earnings soared 120.5% year-over-year to $5.71 per share. The consensus estimate called for earnings of $5.09 per share and revenue of $3.49 billion. The company also achieved 34% annual revenue growth and 92.3% year-over-year earnings growth in its fiscal year 2026.

My stock grading system rates Seagate Holdings as an A.

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StubHub Holdings entered the second half of 2026 with one of the strongest quarters in its history, powered by record demand surrounding the FIFA World Cup.

Gross merchandise sales jumped 34% year over year to a record $3.1 billion, while revenue climbed 33% to $573.1 million, according to the company’s second-quarter earnings release.

StubHub (STUB) also reported adjusted EBITDA of $105.7 million, up 94% from a year earlier, as the ticket marketplace benefited from a wave of demand tied to the tournament.

Despite those numbers, Bank of America analyst Justin Post came away from the quarter with a more cautious view of what happens once the World Cup catalyst fades.

In a note given to TheStreet, Post downgraded StubHub to Underperform from Neutral and cut his price objective to $7.50 from $11.

The analyst believes the strength of the second quarter could be masking a much slower growth setup for the remainder of 2026 and into next year.

StubHub’s World Cup boom sets a high bar

StubHub’s record quarter also produced a sharp improvement in cash generation.

The company generated $321.9 million in operating cash flow and $309.7 million in free cash flow during the quarter, according to its SEC filing. Net leverage fell to 3.0 times trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA from 4.5 times at the end of 2025.

Management raised its full-year GMS outlook to between $10.1 billion and $10.3 billion, up from its previous forecast of $9.9 billion to $10.1 billion.

However, StubHub left its adjusted EBITDA guidance unchanged at $400 million to $420 million.

BofA estimated that second-quarter GMS came in roughly $500 million above Wall Street expectations, while StubHub increased its full-year GMS guidance by only about $200 million.

Post said the high end of the new outlook implies second-half GMS growth of roughly 4%.

The analyst now expects third-quarter GMS of about $2.46 billion, representing growth of just 1% year over year, before growth improves to around 7% in the fourth quarter.

BofA sees a risk that World Cup demand pulled ticket purchases forward or temporarily changed StubHub’s market-share dynamics during the quarter.

StubHub reported adjusted EBITDA of $105.7 million, up 94% from a year earlier.SOPA Images via Getty Images

Bank of America sees slower growth ahead

The bigger concern extends into 2027.

BofA cut its 2027 GMS estimate by roughly 5% to about $10.8 billion from $11.3 billion. The firm also reduced its 2027 adjusted EBITDA estimate to $499 million from $521 million.

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Post expects StubHub’s GMS growth to trail the broader internet sector next year, while the company will also face difficult comparisons against its World Cup-driven performance in the second quarter of 2026.

The analyst also changed the way BofA values the company, moving from a sum-of-the-parts approach to a total EBITDA methodology.

BofA now applies a 7.8 times multiple to projected 2027 EBITDA, less estimated net debt, producing the new $7.50 price objective.

Post argues that StubHub deserves a discount to the roughly 13 times multiple assigned to BofA’s broader gig economy and entertainment comparison group because of its slower expected growth.

The Federal Trade Commission confirmed an April settlement requiring StubHub to provide $10 million in consumer redress over allegations involving mandatory ticket-fee disclosures.

House Oversight Committee Democrats also sent CEO Eric Baker a letter in July requesting information about StubHub’s relationships with professional ticket resellers and an affiliated investment fund.

Stronger NFL and NBA ticket demand, major 2027 concert tour announcements, improving advertising initiatives, and strong free-cash-flow conversion could all provide upside.

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Every platform eventually learns that the number it shows the public and the number it pays on do not have to be the same number.

Keeping those two apart is rarely an accident. It is a design choice, and it tends to get made quietly.

For most of the last two decades, a view on the internet’s biggest video platform meant something roughly intuitive. Somebody clicked, and they stayed long enough that the click read as attention rather than a misfire.

Creators built rate cards on that number. Brands wrote checks against it. Agencies priced campaigns down to the dollar using it.

Almost nobody asked what the actual threshold was, partly because it never appeared on the pages creators read. It sat in advertiser documentation, where an organic view registered after ten seconds of playback, according to PPC Land.

That fuzziness held up fine while the number moved slowly and everyone treated it as a rough proxy for attention.

It stops holding up on Aug. 24.

That is the day YouTube begins counting a public view from the first frame of playback, with no minimum watch time, across every format it runs.

YouTube to start counting views from the first frame on Aug. 24.SOPA Images / Getty Images

How YouTube used to count a view

YouTube belongs to Alphabet (GOOGL), which does not report it as a standalone segment but does break out its advertising line. YouTube ad revenue reached $11.06 billion in the second quarter, up 13% from a year earlier, according to CNBC.

That business runs on advertiser confidence in what a view represents, which is exactly what makes the definition worth watching. 

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The two-system problem started with short-form video. YouTube moved Shorts to play-based counting on March 31, 2025, logging a view every time a Short started or replayed, according to TechCrunch.

Long-form video and live streams stayed on the older, stricter measure. A creator posting both formats was reading two numbers built from different rules and calling them the same thing.

The scale involved is what turns a definition change into a business story. More than three million creators now sit inside the Partner Program, according to the YouTube blog.

Related: Netflix joins Disney and YouTube in chasing World Cup

Those channels split ad revenue with the platform, which means every metric YouTube publishes eventually settles somebody’s invoice.

It is also why the platform has spent years tightening the rules around what creators can post, and why a quiet change to a definition lands harder than it reads.

What changes for YouTube views on Aug. 24

Beginning Aug. 24, “a view will be counted the moment a video begins to play,” according to the announcement posted to YouTube’s community forum. The standard applies globally to on-demand video, Shorts and live streams at once.

The older measure survives under a new name. It becomes Engaged views inside YouTube Analytics under Advanced Mode, showing how many viewers stayed past the opening seconds.

YouTube framed the change as a fix for its own inconsistency, saying creators had asked it to clear up the confusion between formats. The company also said the new metric will show up everywhere views are displayed.

Nothing gets recalculated backward. Videos uploaded on or after Aug. 24 use the new counter immediately, while existing videos keep the totals they already have, leaving an unmarked seam in every channel’s history.

The recent sequence matters more than any single date:

March 31, 2025: Shorts switch to counting every play and replay, aligning YouTube with TikTok and Instagram Reels, according to TechCrunch.

Aug. 10, 2026: YouTube announces that Partner Program entry thresholds will double, calling them “the first significant changes since 2018,” according to the YouTube blog.

Aug. 17, 2026: The view-counting change is posted to the community forum and the Creator Insider channel, reported Dexerto.

Aug. 24, 2026: First-frame counting takes effect across all formats, according to YouTube.

Feb. 1, 2027: The doubled Partner Program thresholds take effect, according to the YouTube blog.

Why the YouTube view count and creator pay now diverge

When I lined those two announcements up by date, the gap was eight days.

On Aug. 10, YouTube made the number that pays harder to reach. On Aug. 17, it made the number that does not pay easier to inflate.

New applicants will need 1,000 subscribers plus either 8,000 qualified watch hours over 365 days or 20 million qualified Shorts views over 90 days, double the current bar, according to the YouTube blog. Existing partners keep their status.

My own arithmetic on those thresholds is the part worth sitting with. Eight thousand watch hours works out to roughly 22 hours of combined daily watch time, every day, for a year. Twenty million Shorts views in 90 days averages about 222,000 qualified views a day.

Meanwhile the public counter under every video is about to climb faster for reasons that have nothing to do with whether anyone watched.

YouTube has been direct that earnings are unaffected, with creator pay still calculated from engaged Shorts views and engaged watch hours. The entry requirements simply get renamed to qualified Shorts views and qualified watch hours.

Both statements are true at once, which is the whole story. A counting rule with no minimum duration is, as PPC Land put it, “an impression count wearing the word view.”

What YouTube creators should check before February

For anyone selling sponsorships, the practical risk arrives before the opportunity does.

Public view counts become a weaker negotiating tool the moment every channel’s numbers rise together. A sponsor who indexed on raw views in July has every reason to ask for engaged views in September.

The creators who move first will be the ones who start quoting engaged views voluntarily, before a brand manager asks why the headline number jumped.

That shift is already visible elsewhere in media, where publishers have watched platform metrics reprice their work without warning and pushed back on who controls the economics.

For anyone still outside the Partner Program, the calendar is the more urgent document. The current thresholds remain in force until Feb. 1, 2027, which makes the next five months the cheapest window to qualify that will exist for a long time.

And for Alphabet shareholders, the read is quieter but not trivial. A platform that standardizes its public metric while tightening its payout gate is optimizing for advertiser legibility and creator supply at the same time.

Bigger public numbers make YouTube easier to sell against rival platforms that already count plays. Higher entry thresholds concentrate the payout pool among channels that clear a much higher bar.

Neither move costs Alphabet anything in the quarter it announces them. Both show up later, in what advertisers are willing to pay and in who is still uploading in 2028.

The number on the screen is about to get bigger. Whether it gets more useful is a separate question, and YouTube has already answered it by keeping a second number for itself.

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