One of the few Wall Street analysts bearish on Nvidia reverses course, saying his call 'did not work out' (NVDA)

Shares of Nvidia have skyrocketed this year, which has left those betting against the company hurting.
One bearish analyst upgraded his outlook on the company and says he got his previous calls wrong.
Strong performance in the data center and gaming businesses have been a point of pride for Nvidia.

Nvidia has been on a crazy upward burn, gaining 109.69% this year thanks to its strength in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies. The meteoric rise has left those bearish on the company in the dust, and on Monday, one of those bears decided enough was enough.

"We have had calls in the past that have not worked out and we are likely going to have calls in the future that may not necessarily work out," Ambrish Srivastava, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said in a note to clients. "We have been reluctant to change our view, but now recognize that our Underperform call did not work out, either."

Srivastava raised his price target from $135 to $200, a 48% increase, and upgraded his rating from a sell to a neutral based on strengths in business areas where Srivastava predicted weakness.

Srivastava said that he had expected Nvidia's gaming business to slow this year. But, a deal to power Nintendo's breakout Switch console has helped the company outperform Srivastava's expectations. Nvidia's GPU business has gotten a boost from cryptocurrency miners this year too. They have been buying up Nvidia graphics cards in great quantities, hoping to speed up their computers and mine currencies like ethereum faster.

In Nvidia's last earnings report, it reported revenue of $2.653 billion. The data center portion of Nvidia's business, which sells chips and software to be used in developing artificial intelligence applications, was one of the best performing, growing 175% year over year. Companies like Amazon and Google have been strong Nvidia customers as they look to improve their data centers' ability to handle a flood of new AI systems.

"Given what is now perceived as a blue-sky opportunity that the company has in front of itself in AI, we see investors continuing to value the stock at a high premium to the [semiconductor] group," Srivastava said.

Nvidia was down 1.08% trading around $213.88 a share on Monday after Srivastava released his note.