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February 14, 2024 19 mins

Unlock the secrets behind NVIDIA's breathtaking ascent as we explore the company's grip on AI and GPU markets . With his deep insights, we navigate the powerhouse's role in gaming, crypto mining, and how its software, specifically CUDA, is at the forefront of AI development. Join us for a compelling dialogue on the driving forces behind NVIDIA's stock rally, and why this tech titan's narrative is one you can't afford to miss.

This episode isn't just about NVIDIA's skyrocketing success; it's about positioning yourself within the tempestuous world of AI investing. Steve and Clem dissect NVIDIA's financial health, scrutinizing the sustainability of its growth. We discuss maintaining a diversified portfolio in an AI-hyped market and offer a perspective on NVIDIA's influence on your asset allocation within the tech sector. Whether you're an investor, a tech enthusiast, or simply curious about the future of AI, tune in for an episode packed with critical analysis and strategic insights.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Clem Miller (00:02):
Welcome everyone to Skeptics Guide to Investing.
I'm Clem Miller and today weare going to talk about NVIDIA's
magnificent 7-stock, which ison a great run.
Steve Davenport and I will diginto the reasons for its
meteoric rise.
Steve.

Steve Davenport (00:19):
There's a lot to capture here, clem, but first
we probably need to define someterms.
Ai, you'll hear, is talkingabout artificial intelligence
and that's AI at many differentlevels from many different
industries.
So we'll use the general term.
But obviously AI and finance isgoing to be different than AI
and manufacturing GPU graphicalprocessing units.

(00:43):
That is the ability of whereNVIDIA has shown that they are
the leader.
They were the best people.
When my son wanted a good gamingcomputer, he made sure he had
an NVIDIA graphical processor.
I think it's something that youwouldn't think would lead to

(01:04):
their current efforts, but itreally has become their
differentiator.
And then there's gaming andcrypto mining.
Gaming and crypto both use alot of computing power to do
what they do, and I've thoughtabout the.
Gaming is not a real thing forthe businesses, but the

(01:29):
processing and gaming is a lotlike the processing that goes on
in AI, in that you havedifferent paths and different
outcomes and you have differentparallel events.
Then there's a term called CUDA.
Cuda is the software thatengineers use at various
companies to develop AI.
Their software has becomealmost as strong as their chips,

(01:51):
so when you take the twotogether, a person could develop
a better chip or a person coulddevelop software, but they have
an A lead in both, and I'lltalk about some competition from
AMD and other titans like Apple, google and Taiwan Center.

Clem Miller (02:10):
So, steve, did all of this hype around AI and
generative AI and NVIDIA happenjust in 2023?

Steve Davenport (02:20):
No, NVIDIA has been a leader for years.
The pie is getting a lot biggerbecause now people are saying
we're in this space withcomputing, we have to be
thinking about AI and computing,and when you do that, you're
asking people to use much morecomplicated algorithms and ideas
.
And they have made it thestandard of managing GPU design

(02:45):
and implementation.

Clem Miller (02:48):
So okay, steve.
How do we invest then in NVIDIAin 2024?

Steve Davenport (02:56):
Here are the basics and these are my thoughts
.
This is not advice, but it'sreally some education in this
space.
Where are you in your lifecycle, risk spectrum and
understanding of technology?
How does this fit in the assetallocation of your technology
sector?
You probably own it now as partof ETFs and index ETFs because

(03:19):
it's one of the largestcompanies in the world.
The MAG7 is starting to becomethe MAG4 and eventually it might
become the MAG1, with NVIDIAbeing the best company of all
the MAG companies.
So I try to tell clients thatgreater than 20% of equity or

(03:41):
10% of your assets, then youneed to sell or hedge.
I think that's a guideline andpeople will vary it.
But if you're owning all theMAG7 and nothing else, then
perhaps you need to think aboutthe other parts of the economy
and what happens when thesemultiples for this excitement

(04:01):
with AI starts to abate.
Competition is fierce and thesecompanies are all chasing to
apply artificial intelligence.

Clem Miller (04:11):
Steve, I totally agree with all the points you've
made, except maybe the oneabout MAG4 becoming MAG1.
I think there'll always be someroom for other companies in the
technology space in the future.

Steve Davenport (04:34):
Right now there's a 30,000 for these big
companies and I think thatNVIDIA might just have that
sweet spot for a little bitlonger.
Here are some numbers to thinkabout.
Nvidia and VID has a PE ofabout 83 times Its market cap is

(04:55):
right now 1.8 trillion, andthat's trillion with a T.
Price to sales is about 50times.
The gross margin over the last10 years is about 55%.
Now it's about 70%.
That's a 30% increase at alevel that was extraordinary at

(05:19):
55%.
Is that 30% borne out in whatthey're doing?
It may be, but my question ishow many years or how the law of
large numbers tells you that,at 1.8 trillion, going up 30%
more from there is going to bemore difficult.
The ROE is about 10.2 in 23 andthe ROE is about 18 in 2023.

(05:46):
Leverage is 1.8 times versusabout 1.2 over the last 10 years
.
Do you like to use price tobook or price to sales or price
to cash flow when you're lookingat these companies?

Clem Miller (06:04):
I think price to book is an old fashioned ratio.
I don't think price to book isrelevant, especially for a
company that is essentiallyinvolved in services.

(06:25):
Nvidia is a software designcompany.
All the chips are made inTaiwan, semi, I think.
For a services company, priceto book is irrelevant.
Price to sales is more relevant.
But you've got to be verycareful about price to sales,
especially for some of thesestartups, because price to sales

(06:47):
ignores profitability.
I give that a little bit lessweight.
Price to earnings I use andprice to cash flow I use as well
.
The only thing about those isthat you really need to look at
some of these on a forward basis.
Granted forward relies onanalyst expectations of earnings

(07:10):
and sometimes they can be alittle optimistic.
But still, when you look atsome of the numbers, like the
trailing PE of 83 times, thatnumber becomes a lot less over
time as NVIDIA grows.

(07:30):
So 83 times trailing is a lotless on a forward basis,
especially if you're talkingabout two and three years
forward.

Steve Davenport (07:41):
You and I are typical investors based on our
experience, but how do you thinkindividuals should think about
NVIDIA?

Clem Miller (07:52):
So I think, individual investors.
I think NVIDIA is a great stockfor individual investors.
A great stock.
A lot of people may say well, Idon't understand what NVIDIA
does.
We did another podcast aboutbanks.
I think it's much moredifficult to understand banks in

(08:14):
terms of what their lending is,credit quality is and so on,
than it is to understand NVIDIA.
I mean NVIDIA, as you pointedout, designs chips that are used
for some discrete applicationsAI, gaming and other
applications that you might haveout there for graphical

(08:37):
processing units.
I just think it's actuallyeasier to understand than some
other sectors might be.

Steve Davenport (08:48):
I hear people all day as strategists and
analysts talk about how worthyNVIDIA is of these multiples,
but I also learned that you needto understand their position
and where they're coming from.
People talking their own book,quote unquote to get others
invested so that their holdingswill do better.

Clem Miller (09:13):
So I think that these are really complex
companies to understand and Idon't think people are really
talking their book so much.
Well, let me take that back.
Some people, some investmentfirms, might be saying well,

(09:35):
look at my performance, becauseI've been heavily involved in
the Mag7 over the last year, Iwould discount those to a
certain degree because that kindof performance from the Mag7
might not continue into 2024 and2025.

(09:55):
So, yeah, I think it'simportant to keep diversified
and not necessarily be swayed bythose who think that only
investing in Mag7 and maybe afew others is a good idea

(10:17):
no-transcript.

Steve Davenport (10:19):
I think that the interesting thing about this
chip company is that we don'tknow what the future holds.
Self-driving cars, artificialintelligence on x-rays,
computer-generated investmentadvice, general automation when
do you think AI is?
On the four classes ofinvesting?

(10:43):
Where I'd say frontier is themost risky?
Emerging, developing anddeveloped tech scale.

Clem Miller (10:53):
Yeah, so just in terms of types of products and
so on, I would say that AI is.
I don't think generative AI isstill on the frontier.
I don't think the types of AIthat are used in a Tesla car are
frontier.
Those things are actually outin circulation now.

(11:14):
I think AI is somewhere betweenemerging and developing in
terms of a technology.

Steve Davenport (11:23):
Yeah, I think it depends on the application.

Clem Miller (11:25):
Right, it depends on the application.
One thing I read recently well,some months ago which really
struck a chord with me was thatas various AI applications
develop, you don't really thinkof them as AI anymore.
I mean they just become a partof normal life.

(11:49):
So, for example, automatedcalling when you call into a
call center and basically you'vegot a robot directing your call
.
We don't think twice about thatanymore.
And yet that's a majorapplication of AI and I think,
as we go along, some of theseapplications that sound really

(12:14):
cool and cutting edge right noware just going to become normal
for us.

Steve Davenport (12:19):
Yeah, when I think about this, I think about
my little electric circuit andmost things are used to computer
processing where it'ssequential you process something
, you get an output, you processthe next thing, and what AI and
what video is doing is reallygetting into the whole parallel

(12:41):
processing, doing multiplethings at the same time.
When your screen starts tochange, they're not doing pixel
one, pixel two, pixel three.
They're using 80 or 90 or 100parallel processing so that each
of parts of the screen come upmuch faster.
And I think that that conceptof parallel processing is really

(13:06):
, when you take it to theextreme that they can now deal
with design of these chips andyou've got so many processors
and you can run them in parallelit really does extreme things
for the speed.
The nano meters is anotherexample of when we're getting

(13:28):
thinner, when we're doing aprocessing better in terms of
the algorithms.
These are all advantages thatwhen I started, there was talk
about something calledirrational exuberance, and I
don't think I can really putthat term out here for Nvidia,
because I think some of whatthey're doing and their
leadership is really veryrational and I think some of

(13:51):
this is good governance, youknow, has some great future in
front of it.
So I don't know if this is thebest analogy, but the Supreme
Court was looking at a questionof pornography one time, and
then they said the way youdefine it is you know it when
you see it, nobody cares aboutyour assets as much as you do.

(14:14):
So I think this is a greattechnology, I think it's a great
idea and I think they have agreat vision.
But you just have to be careful.
Out there, right, theexcitement may be able to
continue, but competitionusually helps the consumer in
the marketplace by having otherswho will go after those high

(14:35):
margins, and they're the areaswhere there's huge profitability
and growth in the future.
So I would just try to keep yourhead up.
Look at this, put it in aproper perspective.
In the mailbag, I guess we havea question about do we own it?

(14:55):
So my answer is yes, we own itin a growth strategy.
We own it in a core strategy.
We own it in a faith-basedstrategy.
It's not in the value and it'snot in a dividend strategy, but
we believe it's one of theleaders and you should own it.

(15:16):
How about you Clim?

Clem Miller (15:18):
Yes, I definitely own NVIDIA.
I do not have a concentratedposition in NVIDIA.
I don't have as large aposition as I do in some of the
other MAG7 stocks.
Because of this, I do have someconcern that NVIDIA might be

(15:40):
getting ahead of itself in termsof or NVIDIA, not NVIDIA as a
company, but NVIDIA share pricesmight be getting out ahead of
themselves.
So it's not my number oneposition and I have some
significant exposure, but I'mnot putting a lot of my eggs in

(16:03):
that particular basket.

Steve Davenport (16:05):
We equal weight , so we're talking about one of
40 names.
Two and a half percent.
It's grown significantly sincewe put it in, but we also trim
when it gets above three and ahalf.
In summary, I'd say that growthmatters for your financial
wellness, but you've got to keepit in perspective.
Understand how much equity isright for you.

(16:27):
Understand then, once you're inthe equity space, how much tech
is right for you, and thenfigure out other great names
which you should own.
And, as we did in our otherpodcast, microsoft is a great
name Google, amazon, et cetera.
I think that there's a lot ofsmart people in this business,

(16:49):
and they're not all at Taiwan,semi, they're not all at
Microsoft, they're not all atNVIDIA.
So my point is I want to haveall these smart people working
for me.
Understand the tax impact ofselling Long term business long
term in an IRA versus in ataxable account.
Enact in a disciplined way.

(17:10):
Clem, is there anything elseyou think I should add?

Clem Miller (17:15):
No, I think that that about covers it.
I would just echo your pointabout being careful.
I think this is an exciting newtechnology.
I think an awful lot of us, anawful lot of investors, are
excited about it, and when youhave that, valuations go up, so
just be very mindful as we goalong about valuations.

(17:41):
Things could turn and you needto be prepared for that
possibility.

Steve Davenport (17:49):
Sure, maybe even think about hedging.
Thanks, for that's pushinganother one of our podcasts, so
I'm self promoting here.
Please like and share and tellyour friends about us and we
look forward to helping you withyour financial wellness.
Thanks, and have a good day.
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