Image source: Getty Images
The Rolls-Royce Holdings (LSE: RR.) share price has doubled in 2025, up around 1,500% over five years.
But long-term opportunities are very hard to put numbers on. I’m really torn between expecting further gains and fearing a potential correction.
Let’s ask ChatGPT, and see where it pitches the price a year from now. And, as our school exams used to remind us, it’ll get extra marks for explaining its reasoning.
I’ve already done some research into analyst forecasts and price targets for Rolls. And I see a target price range from 790p up to 1,440p. From the 1,152p at the time of writing, that could mean anything from a 31% fall to a 25% rise.
That’s a wide range, and I wonder if a bit of AI smart might narrow it down. Or, at least offer some support for the future of one of the FTSE 100‘s top growth stocks.
Here’s what it said
I asked ChatGPT the simple question: “Where will the Rolls-Royce share price be this time next year?“
And it’s clearly been searching the same sources I have, reporting “high scenarios as high as 1,440p and low scenarios around 790p“.
As a summary, I got the suggestion that “a reasonable midpoint target might be somewhere in the 1,200-1,300p range after 12 months“.
That doesn’t really seem like much more than sticking a pin around the middle. And maybe weighting the suggestion towards more recent, higher, targets? A cynic might suggest AI models are trained towards the optimistic side.
In reality, they have no way to analyse what brokers are saying — as all they have to go on is those analysts’ words by themselves, with none of the underlying thinking.
Driving factors
What about the ‘explaining its reasoning’ bit?
I got little more than obvious banalities. Major contract wins and strong cash flow could drive the price up. And travel slowdown and order cuts could harm it. Who’d have thought? No bonus points.
I’ve tried using ChatGPT as a tool to summarise data on a number of stocks, and the results have been hit and miss. And largely a miss when it comes to Rolls-Royce.
I hoped it might uncover analysts’ thoughts on nuclear power. After all, a fair bit of the share price valuation is based on prospects for the company’s small modular reactors (SMRs). But it doesn’t look like it’s been trained on any of that yet.
Is AI any use?
I’ll continue to use AI tools like ChatGPT when I want a quick overview of what the market is saying about a stock. And that can be especially useful when it’s one I really don’t know much about yet. But I will always check myself before relying on what it says.
Large language models are what they are — the next step in searching and summarising large amounts of data. Used for that, I do find value. They can search lots of sources way quicker than I can. We just need to know the limits.
As for Rolls-Royce, I think investors who have a good feel for where future technology might go could do well to consider it, even after such big gains. But that rules me out, and I’ll stick to what I understand.
