If I Could Only Buy 1 Stock Right Now, This Stock-Split Stock Would Be It.

The past few years have marked a renaissance in the popularity of stock splits. The practice was commonplace during the 1990s but had fallen out of favor, only to be discovered by a new generation of investors over the past few years. Companies will generally make the decision to split their shares after years of strong growth and solid financial results that fuel a surging stock price.

This year provides a few excellent examples:

• Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) executed a 10-for-1 split payable June 7, 2024.

• Chipotle announced a 50-for-1 split payable June 25, 2024.

• Broadcom delivered a 10-for-1 split payable July 12, 2024.

• Super Micro Computer executed a 10-for-1 split payable Sept. 30, 2024.

The common thread that weaves these disparate companies together is years, if not decades, of market-beating returns.

If I could buy only one stock right now, Nvidia tops my list. Here's why.

Most investors (myself included) would point to the massive opportunity represented by artificial intelligence (AI) as the primary reason to own Nvidia stock. That's certainly one of the most important factors (more on that in a bit). However, one of the more intriguing aspects of the company is CEO Jensen Huang's uncanny ability to anticipate the next big thing and design solutions to meet that need.

Nvidia pioneered the graphics processing unit (GPU) that revolutionized gaming in 1999, but the company was already looking ahead and by 2006, had adapted the technology to accelerate supercomputing. The humble GPU is now the gold standard for cloud computing and data centers everywhere, with a dominant 98% of the data-center GPU market last year, according to data provided by TechInsights.

There's more. Investors might be surprised to learn that Huang positioned Nvidia to tackle the oncoming AI revolution all the way back in 2013, betting the company's future on technology that had not yet come into its own. When AI went viral early last year, Nvidia was able to reap the seeds Huang had sown a decade earlier.

"A picture paints a thousand words," or so the old saying goes. In this case, however, it's Nvidia's financial results that tell the tale. For the fiscal 2025 second quarter (ended July 28), Nvidia generated record revenue of $30 billion, which surged 122% year over year and 15% sequentially. The results were driven by record data-center revenue of $26.3 billion, which jumped 154%. Profits also soared, as evidenced by diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.67, an increase of 168%.