Wall Street analysts bluntly state that "removing Jensen Huang" could lead to a 20% plunge in the stock price.
November 12 - Wall Street analysts and investors interviewed by CNBC warned that Nvidia's stock price could suffer a major shock if Jensen Huang is forced to leave the company.
Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said: "For a founder-led company without a clear No. 2, this situation is a precursor to a 20% stock pullback."
Jay Goldberg, an analyst at Seaport Research Partners, also expects Nvidia's stock could fall 20% if Jensen Huang suddenly departs. However, given Huang's central position in the company's management system, the actual decline could be even larger.
Goldberg said: "If he were fired tomorrow, or if anything else happened tomorrow that caused him to leave, the stock would fall 20%. But that would only be a short-term shock, meaning the turbulence after the news is announced."
He noted that Huang not only founded Nvidia but also personally grew the company to its current scale. He has been the company's only CEO since its founding and built its management system in a way that keeps him at the center of everything. Currently, 70 employees report directly to him.
This means that if Huang leaves, the market's concerns will not only be about who succeeds him as CEO, but also about whether the company's decision-making mechanism, business relationships, and management system can transition smoothly.