Why Navitas Semiconductor Rocketed 164% in May

Shares of Navitas Semiconductor (NASDAQ: NVTS) rocketed 164.2% in May, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Entering the month, Navitas has been a small designer of gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) chip designs. These niche chips had primarily targeted electric vehicles and electrified infrastructure. But given the recent downturns in these markets, Navitas had seen its revenue go into reverse and its bottom line continuing to lose money.

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But in mid-May, Nvidia named Navitas as a key partner for Nvidia's upcoming Kyber data center infrastructure, which will be a new architecture to support Rubin-based sever racks beginning in 2027.

While other power chip providers were also named, the fact that Navitas was so small, at just $350 million or so market cap at the time of the announcement, caused a massive rally in the stock.

Navitas then used the opportunity to sell stock and bolster its balance sheet, extending its runway, likely until the 2027 time frame.

Nvidia helps out the tiny Navitas

As Nvidia explained in a May 20 blog post, the current 54 V DC power distribution systems in today's data centers will push up against their physical limits as AI server racks go to needing 200 kilowatts to power next-generation AI chips.

To counter this, Nvidia is developing a ground-up redesign of data centers to an 800 V HVDC power architecture. Nvidia also noted that it was collaborating with a number of power chip and infrastructure companies early on as it develops the new data center power infrastructure, which Nvidia plans to unveil in 2027 for its upcoming Rubin-based systems.

The following day, Navitas published its own blog post explaining how the new 800 V architecture will use both Navitas' SiC chips in the power room of data centers, which convert AC grid power to DC power for the data center, and then GaN-based power converters at the server rack level.

The day of the blogs, May 21, Navitas rocketed 150% higher, before retreating. But then the following week, Navitas disclosed it had exhausted its $50 million equity at-the-market sales facility, and that it had filed for a new $50 million facility. Normally, when a company notes it has and will dilute shareholders, the stock goes down. But since Navitas' stock had gone up so much, investors viewed the capital raise as a positive, in that it fortified Navitas' balance sheet to bridge more of the time gap between now and 2027.

Image source: Getty Images.

Navitas is an intriguing story, but risky

While the prospect of a small company partnering up with Nvidia is highly tantalizing, there weren't any financial terms disclosed in the announcements. That makes sense, as the platform isn't even fully developed yet, and revenues from the venture aren't likely to come before 2027.

So it's hard to say right now if Navitas has moved too far, too fast. Still, last month's cash raise will bolster Navitas' balance sheet, giving it more time to build out its platform in anticipation of the 2027 Kyber rollout.

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Billy Duberstein and/or his clients have no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.