Arista Networks Jumped Today -- Is the Stock a Buy?

Arista Networks (NYSE: ANET) posted gains in Wednesday's trading. The networking technologies company's share price closed out the daily session up 3.8% and had been up as much as 5.2%. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) wound up flat, and the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) posted gains of 0.3% in the day's trading.

Following some recent valuation pullbacks, Arista stock posted significant gains today. The company's upward share-price movement was spurred by a rebound for bullish investor sentiment on artificial intelligence (AI) stocks ahead of Nvidia's fourth-quarter earnings report this afternoon.

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Is Arista Networks stock a buy right now?

Arista Networks stock has seen substantial swings lately as investors attempt to forecast what the outlook for growth in the AI space looks like. But a major new performance indicator has now arrived, and it bodes well for the company's future performance.

With its Q4 release today, Nvidia reported earnings per share of $0.89 on sales of $39.3 billion in the period. The performance topped the average analyst estimate's call for adjusted earnings per share of $0.85 on sales of $38.05 billion, according to the London Stock Exchange Group.

Even better, Nvidia said that it expected sales for the current quarter to come in at roughly $43 billion -- significantly ahead of the average analyst estimate's call for sales of roughly $41.8 billion. Based on that performance target, the AI hardware leader is looking at year-over-year sales growth of roughly 65% in the current quarter.

Signs that momentum for AI hardware build-outs continues to be very strong suggest bullish indicators for Arista stock. With shares still down roughly 26% from their recent high, Arista looks like a worthwhile buy right now.

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Keith Noonan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Arista Networks and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.