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If you're looking for a way to bet on the AI chip supercycle without picking individual chip winners, Applied Materials (AMAT) might be your ticket. The semiconductor equipment giant has been on a tear, and this week a parade of Wall Street analysts raised their price targets, arguing the best is yet to come.
Shares hit $440.74 on Thursday, up nearly 1% and flirting with their 52-week high of $448.45. The stock is up roughly 58% over the past year, and analysts think there's more room to run.
Lynx Equity raised its price target on Applied Materials to $540 from $440, a big jump that reflects a shift in how they're thinking about the company. Instead of focusing on 2027 earnings, they're now looking at 2028 — and they like what they see.
The firm expects NAND memory to drive a new wave of semiconductor fabrication investments in 2028, while Terafab could spark another cycle of advanced logic chip factory spending. Lynx projects Applied Materials' semiconductor systems revenue will grow 35% in 2027, with total revenue up 30% — well above the consensus estimate of around 20%. For 2028, they see 15% revenue growth versus Wall Street's 10%.
That's a multi-year growth story that most investors aren't pricing in yet.
Citi analyst Atif Malik raised his price target to $520 from $420, also pointing to a longer runway for growth. He increased his forecasts for wafer fabrication equipment spending through 2027, linking the boom directly to hyperscale data center capital spending.
Malik outlined a bullish scenario where wafer fab equipment spending reaches $145 billion in 2026 and $190 billion in 2027. That's a lot of machines. He also raised his 2027 silicon revenue growth estimate to 31% year over year and bumped his 2027 earnings-per-share forecast by 12% to $15.72.
The logic is simple: AI needs chips, chips need factories, and factories need Applied Materials' gear.
RBC Capital raised its price target to $500 from $430 while keeping an Outperform rating. The firm expects strong quarterly results driven by DRAM and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) demand — the kind of memory that powers AI training clusters.
RBC also thinks Applied Materials could deliver another beat-and-raise quarter, similar to what peers Lam Research (LRCX) and Tokyo Electron (TOELY) recently reported. The company's exposure to DRAM, HBM, and advanced logic manufacturing puts it in a sweet spot.
The charts are also telling a bullish story. AMAT is trading 8.6% above its 20-day moving average ($406.88) and 58.6% above its 200-day moving average ($278.71) — classic signs of a stock in a sustained uptrend. The 20-day SMA is above the 50-day SMA, and the 50-day is above the 200-day, forming a golden cross that occurred in July 2025. That structure remains intact.
Momentum, as measured by the MACD indicator, is above its signal line with a positive histogram. In plain English, that means buyers are regaining control of the trend's direction, even if the stock chops around near its highs.
From a levels perspective, the stock is in an "extended but intact" condition. Pullbacks are judged by whether they hold above key trend gauges. A deeper retracement would put focus on the 50-day SMA ($377.35) and 50-day EMA ($383.59).
The next major catalyst is the earnings report, expected around August 13, 2026. Here's what Wall Street is looking for:
The stock has a consensus Buy rating and an average price target of $444.30. Recent analyst moves include:
Applied Materials shares were up 0.95% at $440.74 at the time of publication on Thursday, according to market data.
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