In this piece, we will discuss the 14 Best Extremely Profitable Stocks to Buy According to Wall Street Analysts.
Strong company earnings are instilling confidence in investors, helping justify continued investment in equities.
More than two-thirds into the first-quarter reporting season, S&P 500 companies are set to report their strongest quarterly earnings growth in over four years, Reuters reported on May 6, 2026. Most importantly, S&P 500 earnings are expected to have climbed 28.2% in the first quarter from a year earlier, per LSEG Data & Analytics. Deutsche Bank’s chief U.S. equity strategist, Binky Chadha, went further, calling that growth “arguably the strongest in two decades” when excluding special factors such as favorable base effects and corporate tax cuts.
Looking ahead, the overall setup is expected to improve further.
Full-year 2026 earnings are now projected to rise 22.6%, with estimates moving higher for each of the next three quarters compared to where they stood on April 1, per LSEG IBES. Analysts’ estimates for future 12-month U.S. earnings have also risen more than 10% since the start of the year, according to LSEG Datastream.
That gain is expected to be seen across sectors.
According to LSEG IBES, nine of the 11 S&P 500 sectors are on track for stronger first-quarter earnings, with eight up at least 10%. AI spending remains a crucial driver, with five hyperscalers projected to deploy $751 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, according to Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile, companies in AI-linked industries saw first-quarter earnings jump 50%, Deutsche Bank reported.
With that backdrop, let’s dive into our list of the best extremely profitable stocks to buy according to Wall Street analysts.
Photo by Vitaly Taranov on Unsplash
Our Methodology
To curate our list of the best extremely profitable stocks to buy according to Wall Street analysts, we used screeners to identify stocks with a net income (profit) margin exceeding 30%, narrowing that list to companies that have consistently delivered strong profitability over the past five years. Furthermore, we selected only stocks with market capitalizations above $2 billion, ignoring those with lower absolute profits and higher margins.
Finally, we assessed analyst sentiment toward these stocks, ranking them in ascending order by their upside potential.
Note: All data sourced on May 19, 2026.
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14. Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)
With a net income margin of 51.68% and upside potential of 20.30%, Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) ranks among the best extremely profitable stocks to buy according to Wall Street analysts. The company reported net income of $20.06 billion for the recently completed fiscal year (FY25), with that momentum carrying into 2026.
Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)’s April 28, Q2 2026 earnings update gave investors a stronger-than-expected quarter. Adjusted net income rose to $6.3 billion, or $3.31 per share, compared with $5.44 billion, or $2.76 per share, last year. Meanwhile, LSEG estimates had called for $3.10 per share.
The quarter was supported by steady volume growth.
Payment volume increased 9%, and cross-border volume grew 12% on a constant-dollar basis. Data processing revenue came in at $5.54 billion, up 18% year-over-year. On the back of that robust performance, Visa lifted its full-year 2026 EPS growth outlook to low-teens from low-double-digit, while its board authorized a new $20 billion multi-year share repurchase program.
The strong quarter drew immediate analyst attention.
A day later, UBS raised its price target on Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) to $410 from $390, keeping a “Buy” rating, pointing to a beat-and-raise quarter and growth it expects to accelerate into year-end, with low-to-mid-teens compounding carrying into FY27.
That analyst support extended into May.
On May 12, 2026, Truist analyst Matthew Coad raised the firm’s price target on Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) to $371 from $361 and kept a “Buy” rating, as part of a broader note on the payments space following the group’s Q1 results. The firm raised its top-line estimates to reflect stronger expectations for Data Processing and Other Revenue, supported by improved pricing, strong demand for marketing-related value-added services ahead of the FIFA World Cup, and the inorganic contribution from Prisma/Newpay.
Meanwhile, stablecoin momentum provided an additional catalyst.
CEO Ryan McInerney told analysts the company’s stablecoin settlement volume is now running at a $7 billion annual rate, up more than 50% from the prior quarter. Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) had already taken action in March 2026, expanding its Bridge collaboration to target stablecoin-linked card coverage across more than 100 countries in Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East before year-end.
Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) is a payment technology company operating in the United States and internationally. It operates VisaNet, a transaction-processing network that handles the clearing, authorization, and settlement of payments. The company offers its services under different brands, including PLUS, Visa, V PAY, Visa Electron, and Interlink.
13. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), featuring a net income margin of 55.60% and upside potential of 23.70%, secures a spot on our list of the best extremely profitable stocks to buy according to Wall Street analysts. The company reported net income of $120.07 billion for the latest fiscal year (FY26).
Building on that strong earnings run, NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) delivered another quarter of record results on May 20, 2026.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) reported first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $81.6 billion, up 85% from a year ago and 20% from the prior quarter. Data Center led the surge with revenue of $75.2 billion, up 92% year-over-year and 21% sequentially. Within that segment, Data Center compute revenue reached a record $60.4 billion, while networking revenue hit $14.8 billion, a 199% jump from a year ago. Meanwhile, the Edge Computing segment contributed $6.4 billion, up 29% annually.
GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins came in at 74.9% and 75.0%, respectively, while free cash flow for the quarter was $48.55 billion. Non-GAAP diluted EPS came in at $1.87, up 140% year-over-year.
Looking ahead, NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) guided second-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $91.0 billion, plus or minus 2%, with GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins expected at 74.9% and 75.0%, respectively. Importantly, the company noted it is not assuming any Data Center compute revenue from China in that outlook.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) also announced an additional $80.0 billion share repurchase authorization, approved by the board on May 18, 2026, with no expiration. The company raised its quarterly cash dividend from $0.01 per share to $0.25 per share, payable June 26, 2026, to shareholders of record as of June 4, 2026. During the quarter, NVIDIA returned a record $20 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends.
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), commented:
“The buildout of AI factories, the largest infrastructure expansion in human history, is accelerating at extraordinary speed. Agentic AI has arrived, doing productive work, generating real value and scaling rapidly across companies and industries. NVIDIA is uniquely positioned at the center of this transformation as the only platform that runs in every cloud, powers every frontier and open source model, and scales everywhere AI is produced, from hyperscale data centers to the edge.”
Even so, the next phase of AI demand may be harder to dominate, as Reuters noted a day earlier that the market is shifting toward inference, where AI systems respond to queries and carry out tasks in real time. Alphabet has struck deals worth tens of billions of dollars for its custom tensor processing units, while Amazon’s Trainium processors are also starting to see increasing traction and market adoption. Furthermore, Intel and AMD are developing processors that are more optimized for smaller, cost-sensitive inference workloads.
In response to that growing competition, NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) introduced a new central processor and AI system built on Groq technology in March 2026. Reuters noted those chips are not included in Nvidia’s $1 trillion Blackwell and Rubin sales forecast by the end of 2027.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is a fabless semiconductor and AI computing company that designs GPUs, AI accelerators, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and system-on-a-chip units. Through its CUDA ecosystem, the company enables industries ranging from autonomous vehicles to scientific research by advancing AI, accelerated computing, and data center infrastructure.
