With just under an hour to go before the closing bell, STM stock is up 5.1%, bringing its weekly gains to over 8%. For the month of April, the equity has surged by more than 28%.

Mizuho upgrades to Buy with a 48 dollar price target

In a note published this morning, Mizuho raised its rating on STM's New York-listed shares to Outperform, with a price target of 48 dollars. The firm identified two major catalysts for the Franco-Italian group: the massive integration of artificial intelligence and a gradual recovery in industrial markets.

The broker highlights that AI-dedicated data centers, particularly the high-voltage architectures utilized by Nvidia, are expected to serve as a critical growth driver for power semiconductors by 2026-2027.

At the same time, signs of improvement are emerging in key segments such as aerospace, robotics, and energy. In China, the firm also noted a year-on-year price increase of over 10% in April, signaling a rebound in demand.

This bullish momentum is not limited to STM. Mizuho also upgraded Texas Instruments to Neutral, confirming renewed interest in analog and power semiconductor players.

A sector buoyed by TSMC results and the AI narrative

More broadly, investors are rotating back into tech stocks following solid earnings from Taiwanese foundry TSMC. These results have dispelled some of the geopolitical concerns that rattled the market in March following the Israeli-American offensive against Iran.

With the AI hype starting to yield tangible effects on the supply chain, rising prices for memory and wafers point to a tightening of inventories among major customers.

Attention will now shift to the group's upcoming earnings release, with first-quarter results scheduled for publication next Tuesday.