Analysts

Don’t just look at share price appreciation. Why? It doesn’t tell the whole story. Thousands of stocks pay dividends. And those dividends often significantly boost the stocks’ total returns.

You can especially make a lot of money when you invest in stocks with juicy dividend yields in addition to tremendous share price growth potential. Here are two ultra-high-yield dividend stocks with a total return potential of up to 41% over the next 12 months, according to select Wall Street analysts.

Kenvue

Kenvue (KVUE 1.98%) ranks as the largest pure-play consumer health company in the world. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ 0.31%) spun off Kenvue as a separate entity in 2023. The new business inherited an impressive lineup of products, including Band-Aid bandages, Listerine mouthwash, Neutrogena skin care products, and over-the-counter pain relievers Motrin and Tylenol .

In addition, Kenvue inherited J&J’s status as a Dividend King. The consumer health company has continued to increase its dividend since the spin-off two years ago. It now boasts an impressive streak of 63 consecutive annual dividend hikes. Kenvue’s forward dividend yield also tops 5.1%.

However, one reason why Kenvue’s yield is so high is that its stock has performed dismally. Revenue growth has been weak. Profits have declined sharply since the company became a stand-alone entity.

More recently, Kenvue announced a shake-up at the top in July with Kirk Perry stepping in as interim CEO while Thibaut Mongon was shown the door. The company also underwent a public relations crisis after President Donald Trump and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that the use of Tylenol during pregnancy could be linked with autism in children.

Kenvue responded quickly to refute those claims adamantly. So did several healthcare organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Autism Science Foundation, and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

Several Wall Street analysts think that the worst could be over for Kenvue. For example, Bank of America (BAC 5.11%) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM 2.80%) have price targets for the stock that reflect an upside potential of roughly 29%. If they’re right and Kenvue continues to pay dividends at least at the current level, investors could enjoy a total return of more than 34% over the next 12 months.

United Parcel Service

United Parcel Service (UPS 0.10%) is the world’s largest package delivery company. It operates in more than 200 countries and territories. UPS delivers roughly 22.4 million packages every business day.

Image source: United Parcel Service.

Although UPS isn’t a Dividend King like Kenvue, it has a pretty good dividend pedigree. The company has increased its dividend for 16 consecutive years. It has never cut the dividend since going public in 1999. UPS’ forward dividend yield is a mouthwatering 7.9%.

The bad news is that UPS’ tremendous yield is due largely to its atrocious stock performance over the last few years. Plenty of factors contributed to this decline, including higher costs resulting from a contract with the Teamsters union and lower shipment volumes following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Management’s decision to significantly reduce the shipments handled for Amazon (AMZN 0.05%) is causing revenue to decline. The Trump administration’s tariffs are especially hurting UPS’ business in its most profitable lane between China and the U.S.

However, some analysts on Wall Street are nonetheless upbeat about UPS’ prospects. As a case in point, Citigroup‘s (C 0.66%) latest 12-month price target is around 35% higher than UPS’ current share price. With such an ambitious target and the package delivery giant’s hefty dividend yield, UPS stock could deliver a total return in the ballpark of 42%.

Are these analysts right about Kenvue and UPS?

I’m iffy about whether or not Kenvue and UPS can deliver the lofty total returns over the next 12 months that some analysts predict. However, I think both stocks could be winners for investors over the long run. Kenvue and UPS could also be solid picks for investors seeking income.

The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is transforming every corner of the global economy. Nvidia, the company at the center of this revolution, continues to be a Wall Street favorite for all the right reasons. As an undisputed leader in accelerated computing, the company’s hardware and software power much of the world’s AI infrastructure buildout.

Shares of Nvidia have already surged over 43% so far in 2025. However, despite the massive demand for its Blackwell architecture systems, software stack, and networking solutions, the stock may grow quite modestly in future months. With its market capitalization now exceeding $4.6 trillion and shares trading at a premium valuation of nearly 30 times forward earnings, much of the optimism is already priced in.

Memory giant Micron (MU 6.12%), on the other hand, is still in the early stages of its AI-powered growth story. Shares of the company have surged nearly 128% in 2025, which highlights the increasing investor confidence in its high-bandwidth memory and data center portfolio. Yet, Micron could still offer investors higher returns in 2026, while riding the same AI wave. Here’s why.

Image source: Getty Images.

Lower customer concentration risk

Wall Street has been highlighting one significant underappreciated risk for Nvidia. Nvidia’s revenues depend heavily on a few hyperscaler customers, with two accounting for 39% and four accounting for 46% of its revenues in the second quarter of fiscal 2026 (ending July 27, 2026). Many of these hyperscaler clients are developing proprietary chips, which may offer a price-performance optimization in their specific workloads. This may reduce their dependence on Nvidia’s chips in future years.

Micron’s revenue base is significantly more diversified than Nvidia’s. The company’s largest customer accounted for 17% of total revenue, while the next largest contributed 10% in fiscal 2025 (ending Aug. 28, 2025). The company has earned over half of its total revenues from the top 10 customers for the past three years. The company has a reasonably broad customer base, including data center, mobile, PC, automotive, and industrial markets.

Hence, compared with Nvidia, Micron’s lower concentration risk makes it more resilient in the current economy.

HBM demand and AI memory leadership

Micron’s high-bandwidth memory (HBM) products, known for their superior data transfer speeds and energy efficiency, are being increasingly used in data centers. HBM revenues reached nearly $2 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, translating into $8 billion annualized run rate.

Management expects Micron’s HBM market share to match its overall DRAM share by the third quarter of fiscal 2025. The company now caters to six HBM customers and has entered into pricing agreements covering most of the 2026 supply of HBM third-generation extended (HBM3E) products.

Micron has also started sampling HBM fourth-generation (HBM4) products to customers. The company expects the first production shipment of HBM4 in the second quarter of calendar year 2026 and a broader ramp later that year.

Beyond HBM, Micron’s Low-Power Double Data Rate (LPDDR) memory products are also seeing strong demand in data centers. The data center business has emerged as a key growth engine, accounting for 56% of Micron’s total sales in fiscal 2025.

Hence, Micron seems well-positioned to capture a significant share of the AI-powered memory demand in the coming years.

Valuation

Micron appears to offer a stronger risk-reward proposition than Nvidia, even in the backdrop of accelerated AI infrastructure spending. The company currently trades at 12.3 times forward earnings, significantly lower than Nvidia’s valuation. Hence, while Nvidia’s premium valuation already assumes near-perfect execution and continued dominance, Micron still trades like a cyclical memory stock. This disconnect leaves room for modest valuation expansion to account for Micron’s improving revenue mix toward high-margin AI memory products.

Wall Street sentiment is also increasingly positive for Micron. Morgan Stanley’s Joseph Moore recently upgraded the stock from equal-weight or neutral to overweight and raised the target price from $160 to $220. UBS has reiterated its “Buy” rating and increased the target price from $195 to $225. Itau Unibanco analyst has initiated coverage for Micron with a “Buy” rating and target price of $249.

Analysts expect Micron’s earnings per share to grow year over year by nearly 100% to $16.6 in fiscal 2026. If the current valuation multiple holds, Micron’s share price could be around $204 (up 6% from the last closing price as of Oct. 9), with limited downside potential. But if the multiple expands modestly in the range of 14 to 16 times forward earnings, shares could fall in the range of $232 to $265, offering upside of 20% to 37.8%.

On the other hand, there remains a higher probability of valuation compression for Nvidia, leaving less room for growth. With diversified customers, increasing AI exposure, and reasonable valuation, Micron may prove to be the better semiconductor pick in 2026.

Despite periods of turmoil in the stock market this year, most of the “Magnificent Seven” stocks have stayed hot. Those tech-focused megacaps have histories of generating strong earnings and free cash flows, and they’re all investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI). Many investors expect them to be the primary beneficiaries of the AI revolution, which helps explain why their market caps have all now surpassed $1 trillion.

Despite their sheer size, some Wall Street analysts still foresee their shares making big moves upward. According to certain analysts, these two Magnificent Seven stocks could rise by 31% and 19%, respectively, over the next year.

Image source: Getty Images.

Microsoft: Reaping the rewards of AI investment

There was a time when investors had questions about Microsoft‘s (MSFT -0.44%) investments in artificial intelligence. But recent quarters have largely put those doubts to rest, and Microsoft’s stock has risen about 20% so far this year. In the company’s fiscal 2025 fourth quarter (which ended June 30), Microsoft’s Azure and other cloud services division, which houses a lot of its AI offerings, generated astounding revenue growth of 39% year over year.

“Cloud and AI is the driving force of business transformation across every industry and sector,” said CEO Satya Nadella in Microsoft’s latest earnings release.

Following the earnings release, Truist Securities analyst Joel P. Fishbein Jr. issued a research report, maintaining a buy rating on Microsoft and raising his price target on the stock to $675, forecasting a gain of about 31% over the next 12 months. Fishbein thinks the tech giant will continue to see strong growth from its cloud business, as well as tailwinds in the broader AI ecosystem. “Sustained strong cloud growth at scale & growing AI demand capture can lead to at least low teens double-digit rev, profit & CF (cash flow) growth over an extended period, while consistently returning cash via divs/repurchases,” he wrote.

Microsoft has been able to monetize AI by integrating AI models from OpenAI and charging clients that use these templates. Additionally, Microsoft sells its Azure clients enterprise AI tools through Azure Foundry that allow them to build and implement AI chat, conversational AI, and AI agents, among other tools. Further growth is likely as AI begins to spread to more parts of the economy and different types of businesses across sectors.

Though it can be hard to gauge how much more room for growth a company with a more than $3 trillion market cap might have, I don’t have any issue recommending Microsoft to long-term investors. In addition to AI, the company has a tremendous slate of businesses, including its popular suite of office productivity software, its traditional cloud business, video games, and social media platforms. Plus, Microsoft is one of the only companies with a debt rating higher than the U.S. government.

Alphabet: Overcoming challenges all year

It’s been a tremendously volatile year for Alphabet (GOOG 0.14%) (GOOGL 0.03%). Toward the end of 2024, a federal judge sided with the Department of Justice in a lawsuit, agreeing that the Google parent had employed monopolistic practices to protect its domination of the search engine space, as well as in its digital advertising practices.

The Justice Department then asked U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta to make Alphabet divest itself of its Google Chrome unit, a key element of the company’s search business, which drives over half of Alphabet’s revenue. But recently, Judge Mehta ruled that the company would not have to do this.

Furthermore, Mehta said Alphabet can continue to pay distributors like Apple to make Google the default search engine on their web browsers. Alphabet reportedly paid Apple over $20 billion in 2022 to make it the default engine on the Safari browser, which is installed standard on all iPhones. However, Mehta said that exclusive contracts will not be allowed and that Google would have to share some of its search data with rivals. Overall, investors considered this a positive outcome for Alphabet.

Many were also concerned earlier this year that AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT might significantly cut into Google’s search business. However, the AI Overviews results powered by Google Gemini that now top the responses to most Google search queries appear to be making progress and meeting the needs of consumers. Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney said the judge’s ruling had removed a clear overhang on the stock, which will allow investors to focus on the company’s fundamentals.

“What we see is a Core Catalyst, with Google Search revenue growth likely to remain DD% [double digit] for the foreseeable future,” Mahaney wrote in a research note. While generative AI  will undoubtedly continue to provide competition, Mahaney believes Google’s ability to innovate will keep its search engine competitive and allow the company to continue to generate solid growth. His new 12-month price target on Alphabet stock is $300, implying about 19% upside from current levels.

I largely agree with Mahaney, although I think investors should monitor competition from the likes of ChatGPT. But Alphabet also has many other strong and growing businesses, among them its cloud business, YouTube, its Waymo self-driving vehicle unit, and even its own AI chip design business. Even after its big run-up, Alphabet still trades at about 24 times forward earnings. Given that the company’s relevance is unlikely to fade any time soon, at that level, it looks like a good long-term buy.

Investors in search of stocks that can produce dramatic gains in a short time frame will want to turn their heads toward the healthcare sector. A handful of stocks in the space more than doubled in price recently.

Shares of Precigen (PGEN -4.61%) and Mineralys Therapeutics (MLYS 4.86%) have already risen more than 100% since the end of July. Despite the recent run-ups, Wall Street experts who follow these stocks believe they could soar even further.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Precigen

From the end of July through Friday, Sept. 5, shares of Precigen shot 155% higher. The market cheered because the drugmaker earned approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its first treatment. Papzimeos is a cell-based immunotherapy for the treatment of recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (RRP), a rare disease that results in tumors lining the respiratory tract.

Papzimeos is the first and only treatment approved by the FDA to treat an estimated 27,000 patients with RRP. The agency granted the drug full approval instead of waiting for a confirmatory study. In the single-arm trial supporting its application, 18 out of 35 patients responded well enough to avoid tumor removal surgery for at least 12 months after treatment with Papzimeos.

The agency and analysts following Precigen were encouraged by the fact that 15 out of the initial 18 responders remained surgery-free 24 months after treatment with Papzimeos. In response, Swayampakula Ramakanth from HC Wainwright reiterated a buy rating and an $8.50 price target that implies a 95% gain in the year ahead.

2. Mineralys Therapeutics

Shares of Mineralys Therapeutics rose 146% from the end of July through Sept. 5. Investors were excited about a successful new funding round to support continued development of lorundrostat, its lead candidate. On Sept. 2, Mineralys suspended an at-the-money equity offering and, within a couple of days, completed a secondary offering that ended up raising $287.5 million.

In August, investors hardly noticed a presentation of phase 3 trial results regarding lorundrostat. Patients who added the aldosterone inhibitor to the medications they were already taking reduced their systolic pressure by 16.9 millimeters of mercury after six weeks on treatment, compared to just 7.9 millimeters of mercury for patients who received a placebo.

Mineralys’ stock shot higher after AstraZeneca reported arguably inferior 12-week data for an aldosterone inhibitor it’s developing called baxdrostat. At week 12, it reduced patients’ systolic pressure by 15.7 millimeters of mercury, compared to 5.8 millimeters of mercury for the placebo group.

Less than a week ahead of Mineralys’ successful secondary stock offering, Bank of America analyst Greg Harrison boosted his target for the stock to $43 per share. The raised target implies a gain of about 24% from recent prices.

Time to buy?

Before you get too excited about Mineralys and its hypertension candidate, it’s important to realize the pre-commercial-stage business finished June with $325 million in cash, or enough to last into 2027. Diluting shareholder value to raise additional capital that could now push the stock price higher means the company isn’t super confident that it can quickly submit an application and earn approval for its lead candidate before the beginning of 2027.

MLYS Shares Outstanding data by YCharts.

At recent prices, Mineralys sports a huge $2.7 billion market cap that could shrink significantly if it looks like timing will become an issue that allows AstraZeneca’s candidate to gain and maintain a large share of the market for new hypertension drugs. It’s probably best to wait and see whether this company can earn approval for lorundrostat in a timely manner before adding the stock to your portfolio.

With a market cap of $1.3 billion at recent prices, expectations for Precigen are lower than they probably should be. Papzimeos is already approved and will launch unchallenged in its niche market.

Papzimeos’ addressable patient population is small, but a list price north of $200,000 per year per patient means it could rack up more than $1 billion in annual sales at its peak. Since drugmaker stocks generally trade at mid- to high-single-digit multiples of total sales, adding some shares to a diversified portfolio now looks like a smart move.

Arguably, nothing has commanded the attention of professional and everyday investors quite like artificial intelligence (AI). In Sizing the Prize, the analysts at PwC forecast AI would provide a $15.7 trillion boost to the global economy by 2030, with $6.6 trillion tied to productivity improvements, and the remainder coming from consumption-side effects.

Excitement surrounding this technology has sent some of the market’s largest and widely held AI stocks soaring, including AI-data mining specialist Palantir Technologies (PLTR 2.37%) and electric-vehicle (EV) manufacturer Tesla (TSLA 1.42%).

But just because these stocks have been (thus far) unstoppable, it doesn’t mean optimism is universal among analysts. Two Wall Street analysts who are respective longtime bears of Palantir and Tesla stock believe both companies will lose most of their value.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Palantir Technologies: Implied downside of 72%

There’s a solid argument to be made that Palantir has been the hottest AI stock on the planet since 2023 began. Shares have rallied approximately 2,370%, with Palantir adding more than $360 billion in market value, as of the closing bell on Aug. 22.

Both of the company’s core operating segments, Gotham and Foundry, lean on AI and machine learning. Gotham is Palantir’s breadwinner. It’s used by federal governments to plan and execute military missions, as well as to collect/analyze data. Meanwhile, Foundry is an enterprise subscription service that helps businesses better understand their data and streamline their operations. Neither operating segment has a clear replacement at scale, which means Palantir offers a sustainable moat.

But in spite of Palantir’s competitive edge, RBC Capital Markets’ Rishi Jaluria sees plenty of downsides to come. Even though Jaluria raised his price target on Palantir shares for a second time since 2025 began, his $45 target implies downside of up to 72% over the next year.

If there’s one headwind Jaluria consistently presents when assigning or reiterating a price target on Palantir, it’s the company’s aggressive valuation. Shares closed out the previous week at a price-to-sales (P/S) multiple of roughly 117!

Historically, companies that are leaders of next-big-thing technology trends have peaked at P/S ratios of approximately 30 to 40. No megacap company has ever been able to maintain such an aggressive P/S premium. While Palantir’s sustainable moat has demonstrated it’s worthy of a pricing premium, there’s a limit as to how far this valuation can be stretched.

Jaluria has also previously cautioned that Foundry’s growth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Specifically, Jaluria has opined that Foundry’s tailored approach to meeting its customers’ needs will make scaling the platform a challenge. Nevertheless, Palantir’s commercial customer count surged 48% to 692 clients in the June-ended quarter from the prior-year period, which appears to be proving RBC Capital’s analyst wrong.

There’s also the possibility of Palantir stock being weighed down if the AI bubble were to burst. History tells us that every next-big-thing trend dating back three decades has undergone a bubble-bursting event early in its expansion. While Palantir’s multiyear government contracts and subscription revenue would protect it from an immediate sales decline, investor sentiment would probably clobber its stock.

Image source: Tesla.

2. Tesla: Implied downside of 94%

Over the trailing-six-year period, shares of Tesla have skyrocketed by more than 2,200%. Though Tesla hasn’t moved in lockstep with other leading AI stocks, its EVs are increasingly reliant on AI to improve safety and/or promote partial self-driving functionality.

Tesla was the first automaker in more than a half-decade to successfully build itself from the ground up to mass production. It’s produced a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) profit in each of the last five years, and it delivered in the neighborhood of 1.8 million EVs in each of the previous two years.

In spite of Tesla’s success and it becoming one of only 11 public companies globally to have ever reached the $1 trillion valuation mark, Gordon Johnson of GLJ Research sees this stock eventually losing most of its value. Earlier this year, Johnson reduced his price target on Tesla to just $19.05 per share, which implies an up to 94% collapse.

Among the many concerns cited by Johnson is Tesla’s operating structure. Whereas other members of the “Magnificent Seven” are powered by high-margin software sales, Tesla is predominantly selling hardware that affords it less in the way of pricing power. Tesla has slashed the price of its EV fleet on more than a half-dozen occasions over the last three years as competition has ramped up.

Johnson has also been critical of Tesla’s numerous side projects, which are providing minimal value to the brand. Although energy generation and storage products have been a solid addition, the company’s Optimus humanoid robots and extremely limited robotaxi service launch have been grossly overhyped.

This builds on a larger point that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a terrible habit of overpromising and underdelivering when it comes to game-changing innovations at his company. For instance, promises of Level 5 full self-driving have gone nowhere for 11 years, while the launch of the Cybertruck is looking more like a flop than a success.

Furthermore, Tesla’s earnings quality is highly suspect. Though the company has been decisively profitable for five straight years, more than half of its pre-tax income in recent quarters has been traced back to automotive regulatory credits and net interest income earned on its cash. In other words, a majority of Tesla’s pre-tax income derives from unsustainable and non-innovative sources that have nothing to do with its actual operations. Worse yet, President Trump’s flagship tax and spending bill, the “Big, Beautiful Bill” Act, will soon put an end to automotive regulatory credits in the U.S.

What investors are left with is an auto stock valued at north of 200 times trailing-12-month earnings per share (EPS) whose EPS has been declining with consistency for years. While Johnson’s price target appears excessively low, paying over 200 times EPS for a company that consistency underdelivers is a recipe for downside.

In just a little under one week, Nvidia (NVDA 1.65%) will report its earnings for Q2 2025.

For the most part, analysts are optimistic about the report, due out after the close of trading on Aug. 27. Consensus forecasts have the semiconductor company growing earnings 48.5% year over year, to $1.01 per share, as insatiable demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips drives a near-53% rise in revenue to almost $46 billion.

That’s a lot of money Nvidia will be raking in for a single quarter. This is one of the primary reasons why a staggering 58 analysts polled by S&P Global Market Intelligence give Nvidia stock either a “buy” or an “outperform,” or an equivalent rating — versus only one single analyst who says “sell.”

Image source: Getty Images.

One reason why two analysts are worried about Nvidia

And yet, not everything’s unicorns and rainbows for Nvidia stock. As the final countdown to earnings day begins, two separate Wall Street analysts chimed in Wednesday morning to raise reservations about Nvidia stock and the challenges that lie ahead for it.

First up was Deutsche Bank, where analyst Ross Seymore set a price target of $155 that implies the stock could fall 12% over the next 12 months. Ordinarily, the prospect of a 12% near-term loss in a stock would inspire an analyst to recommend selling that stock. But perhaps fearing to deviate too far from the herd on this popular AI stock, Seymore only reiterated a “hold” rating on Nvidia. (Seymore is still one of only a half-dozen analysts with neutral ratings on Nvidia).

No matter. Whether any one analyst thinks Nvidia is a “buy” or just a “hold” probably shouldn’t concern us as much as why he rates the stock as he does. And in Seymore’s case, the answer couldn’t be clearer:

Writing on StreetInsider.com on Wednesday, Seymore warns that U.S. trade restrictions on semiconductor exports to China will cost Nvidia about $8 billion in “foregone” revenue in Q2. True, a resumption of shipments upon receiving export licenses from the Trump administration should help rectify this situation by Q3. But there’s a cost to that solution — specifically, the Trump Administration’s requirement that, to obtain export licenses, Nvidia must fork over 15% of any revenue it generates in China to the IRS.

With China accounting for roughly $17 billion of Nvidia’s revenue over the last 12 months, that could amount to a $2.6 billion drag on Nvidia’s profits over the next 12 months.

KeyBanc chimes in

Investment bank KeyBanc shares Deutsche Bank’s concerns about Nvidia and China. On the one hand, KeyBanc anticipates Nvidia could book $2 billion to $3 billion in revenue from selling H20 and B40 chips in China next quarter. On the other hand, the banker believes this revenue is unreliable and dependent upon the receipt of export licenses from Washington.

For this reason, KeyBanc warns Nvidia may “exclude direct revenue from China” when giving revenue guidance next week, potentially creating a kind of guidance miss that could send Nvidia shares lower.

KeyBanc also cites the “potential 15% tax on AI exports” from the U.S. side as a risk, and adds that “pressure from the [Chinese] government for its AI providers to use domestic AI chips” could dampen Nvidia’s China revenues even further — adding a third risk that Deutsche didn’t mention!

Finally, some good news

Now, I hope I haven’t painted too bleak a picture for you here. Fact is, despite his reservations, Deutsche analyst Seymore still expects Nvidia to report a “typical” earnings beat next week, exceeding the company’s $45 billion revenue forecast by about $2 billion. Blackwell revenue is ramping, says Seymore, more than doubling sequentially between Q4 2024 and Q1 2025, to $24 billion.

With the prospect of an imminent earnings beat, it makes sense that Seymore would hesitate to recommend selling Nvidia stock — even if he does feel it’s a bit overpriced.

Furthermore, KeyBanc agrees that Blackwell production is ramping, and a new Blackwell Ultra (B300) chip is on the way, potentially boosting revenue even more in Q3. For these and other reasons, KeyBanc not only still rates Nvidia stock “overweight” (i.e., buy). KeyBanc actually raised its price target on the stock to $215 on Wednesday.

So, is Nvidia stock a buy or not?

That’s the real question, isn’t it? Wall Street’s confident Nvidia will “beat” on Q2 next week. It’s just worried that Nvidia will “miss” on guidance for Q3. Longer-term, though, is Nvidia stock a buy or isn’t it?

Here’s how I look at it, and I’ll keep this really simple:

Valued at 4.28 trillion dollars, earning nearly $77 billion in annual profit, and backing that up with roughly $72 billion in annual free cash flow, Nvidia stock costs about 55 times trailing earnings and about 59 times free cash flow. For Nvidia stock to be a clear-cut buy, I’d want to see the stock growing earnings at least 50% annually over the next five years.

The best that Wall Street analysts expect Nvidia to do, however, is 30% annual growth — even with nine out of 10 analysts polled saying Nvidia stock is a buy.

The math here isn’t hard. Nvidia stock is not a buy at this price — but it might be if it sells off after earnings.

Through the 12 days of the recent Israel-Iran conflict, China moved quickly to position itself as a potential mediator and voice of reason amid a spiralling regional crisis.

The day after Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran on June 13, Beijing reached out to both sides to express its desire for a mediated solution even as the country’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, condemned Israel’s actions as a violation of international law.

Chinese President Xi Jinping soon followed with calls for de-escalation, while at the United Nations Security Council, China joined Russia and Pakistan in calling for an “immediate and unconditional ceasefire”.

When Iran threatened to blockade the strategically important Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes, Beijing was also quick to speak out.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs instead called for the “international community to step up efforts to de-escalate conflicts and prevent regional turmoil from having a greater impact on global economic development”.

Beijing’s stance throughout the conflict remained true to its longstanding noninterference approach to foreign hostilities. But experts say it did little to help shore up its ambition of becoming an influential player in the Middle East, and instead exposed the limitations of its clout in the region.

Why China was worried

Unlike some countries, and the United States in particular, China traditionally approaches foreign policy “through a lens of strategic pragmatism rather than ideological solidarity”, said Evangeline Cheng, a research associate at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.

This approach means China will always focus on protecting its economic interests, of which it has many in the Middle East, Cheng told Al Jazeera.

China has investments in Israel’s burgeoning tech sector and its Belt and Road infrastructure project spans Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

Critically, China relies on the Middle East for more than half of its crude oil imports, and it’s the top consumer of Iranian oil. A protracted war would have disrupted its oil supplies, as would an Iranian blockade of the strategically important Strait of Hormuz – something threatened by Tehran’s parliament during the conflict.

“War and security instability not only undermines Chinese investment and trade and business… but also the oil price and gas energy security in general,” said Alam Saleh, a senior Lecturer in Iranian Studies at the Australian National University.

“Therefore, China seeks stability, and it disagrees and opposes any kind of military solution for any type of conflict and confrontations, no matter with whom,” he said.

John Gong, a professor of economics at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, told Al Jazeera that China’s top concern through the conflict was to avoid “skyrocketing oil prices” that would threaten its energy security.

Flexing diplomatic muscle, protecting economic might

Aware of China’s friendly relations with Iran and Beijing’s economic fears, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on Beijing to keep Tehran from closing the Strait of Hormuz as ceasefire negotiations stumbled forward this week.

It was a brief moment of acknowledgement of Beijing’s influence, but experts say China’s overall diplomatic influence remains limited.

“China’s offer to mediate highlights its desire to be seen as a responsible global player, but its actual leverage remains limited,” Cheng said. “Without military capabilities or deep political influence in the region, and with Israel wary of Beijing’s ties to Iran, China’s role is necessarily constrained.”

To be sure, Beijing has demonstrated its ability to broker major diplomatic deals in the region. In 2023, it mediated the normalisation of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. While seen as a huge diplomatic win for China, experts say Beijing owed much of its success to fellow mediators, Oman and Iraq. China also mediated an agreement between Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Fatah, in July 2024, under which they committed to working together on Gaza’s governance after the end of Israel’s ongoing war on the enclave.

But William Yang, a senior analyst for Northeast Asia at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said the odds were stacked against China from the beginning of the latest conflict due to Israel’s wariness towards its relationship with Iran.

In 2021, China and Iran signed a 25-year “strategic partnership”, and Iran is an active participant in the Belt and Road project. Iran has also joined the Beijing-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and this year took part in China’s “Maritime Security Belt” naval exercises.

Iran’s “resolute opposition to American hegemony” also aligns well with China’s diplomatic interests more broadly, compared with Israel’s close ties to the US, Yang said.

China’s dilemma

It’s a scenario that could be repeated in the future, he said.

“This case also reinforces the dilemma that China faces: while it wants to be viewed as a great power that is capable of mediating in major global conflicts, its close relationship with specific parties in some of the ongoing conflicts diminishes Beijing’s ability to play such a role,” Yang said.

For now, Beijing will continue to rely on the US as a security guarantor in the region, he added.

“It’s clear that China will continue to focus on deepening economic engagement with countries in the Middle East while taking advantage of the US presence in the region, which remains the primary security guarantor for regional countries,” Yang said.

“On the other hand, the US involvement in the conflict, including changing the course of the war by bombing Iranian nuclear sites, creates the condition for China to take the moral high ground in the diplomatic sphere and present itself as the more restrained, calm and responsible major power,” he said.

Ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine may soon be under way, but Ukraine’s economic recovery will be hobbled unless the European Union fast-tracks the war-torn country’s membership and provides hundreds of billions of euros’ worth of insurance and investment, experts tell Al Jazeera.

“I think what Ukraine needs is some kind of future where it will have a stable and defendable border, and that will only come, I would think, with EU membership,” historian Phillips O’Brien told Al Jazeera.

The US administration of President Donald Trump last month handed Ukraine and Russia a ceasefire proposal that excluded future NATO membership of Ukraine, satisfying a key Kremlin demand and leaving Ukraine without the security guarantees it seeks.

“What business is actually going to take the risk of getting involved there economically?” asked O’Brien. “With NATO off the table, I think if Ukraine is going to have a chance of rebuilding and being integrated into Europe, it will have to be through a fast-tracked EU membership.”

That membership is by no means assured, although the European Commission started negotiations in record time last June, and Ukraine has the support of EU heavyweights like France and Germany.

If Ukraine becomes an EU member, it would still face a devastated economy requiring vast investment.

The Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) estimated that between Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 and November last year, Moscow’s onslaught had destroyed $170bn of infrastructure, with the housing, transport and energy sectors most affected.

That figure did not include the damage incurred in almost a decade of war in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk since 2014 or the loss of 29 percent of Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) from the invasion in 2022. The estimate also did not put a value on the loss of almost a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, which Russia now occupies.

That territory contains almost half of Ukraine’s unexploited mineral wealth, worth an estimated $12.4 trillion, according to SecDev, a Canadian geopolitical risk firm.

It also does not include some types of reconstruction costs, such as chemical decontamination and mine-clearing.

The World Bank put the cost of infrastructure damages slightly higher this year, at $176bn, and predicts the cost of reconstruction and recovery at about $525bn over 10 years.

‘The Kremlin has certainly looted occupied territory’

Economic war has been part of Russia’s strategy since the invasion of Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014, argued Maximilian Hess, a risk analyst and Eurasia expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

“The Kremlin has certainly looted occupied territory, including for coking coal, agricultural products, and iron,” Hess told Al Jazeera.

The KSE has estimated Russia stole half a million tonnes of grain, included in the $1.9bn damages bill to the agricultural sector.

Using long-range rocketry, Russia also targeted industrial hubs not under its control.

Ukraine inherited a series of factories from the Soviet Union, including the Kharkiv Tractor Plant, the Zaporizhia Automobile Plant, the Pivdenmash rocket manufacturer in Dnipro and massive steel plants.

“All were targeted by Russian forces,” wrote Hess in his recent book, Economic War. “Russia’s attacks were, of course, primarily aimed at devastating the Ukrainian economy and weakening its ability and will to fight, but they also raised the cost to the West of supporting Ukraine in the conflict, something the Kremlin hoped would lead to reduced support for Kyiv.”

Through occupation and targeting, Russia managed to deprive Ukraine of a flourishing metallurgy sector.

According to the United States Geological Survey, metallurgical production decreased by 66.5 percent as a result of the war.

That is a vast loss, considering that Ukraine once produced almost a third of the iron ore in Europe, Russia and Central Eurasia, half of the region’s manganese ore and a third of its titanium. It remains the only producer of uranium in Europe, an important resource in the continent’s quest for greater energy autonomy.

Ukraine’s claims to have built a $20bn defence industrial base with allied help, a rare wartime economic success story.

That can make up for the losses in metallurgy, Hess said, “but only in part and in different regions of the country from which those mining and metallurgical ones were concentrated. Boosting [metallurgical activities] in places like Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and ideally territory ultimately freed from Russian occupation, will be necessary to win the peace.”

Trump’s minerals deal, and other instruments

Weeks ago, Ukraine and the US signed a memorandum of intent to jointly exploit Ukraine’s mineral wealth.

Ukraine committed to putting half the proceeds from its metallurgical activities into a Reconstruction Fund, but experts doubted the notion that mineral wealth can rebuild Ukraine.

“Projects have a long launch period … from five to 10 years,” Maxim Fedoseienko, head of strategic projects at the KSE Institute, told Al Jazeera. “You need to make documentation, environmental impacts assessment, and after that, you can also need three years to build this mine.”

The US and EU might invest in such mines, Fedoseienko said, because “we have more than 24 kinds of materials from the EU list of critical [raw] materials,” but they would only contribute to the Ukrainian economy if investments were equitable.

Trump presented the minerals deal as payback for billions in military aid.

“There’s nothing remotely fair about it. The aid was not given to be paid back,” said O’Brien.

As Fedoseienko put it, “It is not fair if everyone will say, ‘OK, we will help you in a time of war, so you are owned [by] us.’”

In addition to fairness, Ukraine needs money. Some of that needs to come in the form of insurance.

A state-backed war-risk insurance formula Kyiv reached with the United Kingdom in 2023, for example, brought bulk carriers back to Ukraine’s ports and defeated Russian efforts to blockade Ukrainian grain exports.

As a result, Ukraine exported 57.5 million tonnes of agricultural goods in 2023-2024, and was on track to export 77 million tonnes in the 2024-2025 marketing year, which ends in June, its agriculture ministry said.

“There needs to be a substantial expansion of public insurance products in particular, as well as a move to seize frozen Russian assets,” said Hess.

Seizing some $300bn in Russian central bank money held in the EU was deemed controversial, but the measure is now receiving support.

“The Russian state has committed these war crimes, has broken international law, has done this damage to Ukraine –  that actually becomes a just way of helping Ukraine rebuild,” said O’Brien. “[Europeans] have a very strong case for this, but they, right now, lack the political will to do it.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has already repeatedly asked Europe to use the money for Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction.

What Europeans have done in the meantime is going some way towards rebuilding Ukraine.

Some $300m in interest payments proceeding from Russian assets are diverted to reconstruction each year.

A European Commission programme provides 9.3 billion euros ($10.5bn) of financial support designed to leverage investment from the private sector.

Financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank are providing loan guarantees to Ukrainian banks, which gives them liquidity.

“So Ukrainian banks can provide loans to Ukrainian companies to invest and operate in Ukraine. This is a big ecosystem to finance investment and operational needs to the Ukrainian economy,” said Fedoseienko.

Together with the finance ministry, the KSE operates an online portal providing information about the various instruments available, which has already helped bring 165 investments to fruition worth $27bn.

“Is it enough to recover the Ukrainian economy?” Fedoseienko asked. “No, but this is a significant programme to support Ukraine now.”