The last five years have been incredible for NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) shares.
While the California-based chip designer was certainly not an unknown and had many admirers, few would have predicted that it would go on to surpass Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and become the world's most valuable company last month.
And while a pullback in December means that it has now given back this crown to the iPhone maker, this doesn't make its last five years any less impressive.
Why have Nvidia shares be charging higher?
A key driver of Nvidia's impressive ascent has been the emergence of ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence (AI).
Seemingly out of nowhere in November 2022, ChatGPT was launched by OpenAI and showed the world just how revolutionary AI could be.
Soon after launch, the generative AI chatbot quickly became the fastest-growing consumer app in history by achieving a staggering 100 million monthly active users within two months.
This was great news for Nvidia because its graphics processing units (GPUs) and other chips are well suited to make demanding applications like ChatGPT run. As a result, this has put a rocket under demand for its chips and underpinned stellar revenue and earnings growth.
But what has it done for investors that put money into Nvidia shares five years ago? Let's find out.
$5,000 invested
Firstly, it is worth noting that Nvidia has undertaken two stock splits during the past five years.
As a result, the real price that investors would have paid to buy its shares in 2019 will be different to the adjusted price. However, everything else remains the same (returns etc).
Five years ago, investors could have picked up Nvidia shares for the equivalent of US$5.98 per share.
This means that with a US$5,000 investment, investors would have ended up with 836 shares in their portfolio.
As of Thursday's close on Wall Street, the Nvidia share price was changing hands for a lofty US$130.68.
This means that those 836 shares now have a market value of approximately US$109,250.
That's almost US$105,000 more than they started with. In fact, their original US$5,000 investment accounts for just 4.6% of their holding now. The rest is pure profit.
The good news is that there could be more gains to come as well. A recent note from Well Fargo (NYSE: WFC) reveals that its analysts have put an overweight rating and US$185.00 price target on its shares. This implies potential upside of almost 42% for investors at the time of writing.
Here's hoping this is the start of more great returns for shareholders of this high-quality company.
