Cramer: Why investors can trust that Nvidia's stock is bottoming

• CNBC's Jim Cramer ticks down the reasons why he believes Nvidia's call that its weakest end markets are turning positive.
• Nvidia's stock ended the fourth quarter of 2018 as the S&P 500's worst performing stock.
• But its latest earnings report was so upbeat that Cramer thinks the worst could be over.

Investors can trust that Nvidia's stock has bottomed following its upbeat earnings report for a few key reasons, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Friday after the chipmaker's shares gained 1.82 percent.

The first is CEO Jensen Huang's own outlook for his industry, which he put quite simply on the post-earnings conference call: "The world needs more computing."

"That simple statement is the main reason why I believe Nvidia can ultimately turn things around," Cramer said on "Mad Money."

Following several months of sharp declines in Nvidia's shares — tied largely to a breakdown in cryptocurrency mining, a gaming slowdown in China and slower-than-expected data center build-out — Cramer could understand why investors might be wary.

Add on the fact that Nvidia's newest graphics cards, powered by its proprietary next-generation technology called Turing architecture, haven't yet seen monster sales because Nvidia's customers don't seem to need that level of processing power, and the company's outlook did seem quite grim.

But "the biggest theme on last night's call was that, yes, things are about to normalize, first in gaming and then in the data center," Cramer said. "There will be no comeback of cryptocurrency mining — that's the chief reason Nvidia's business fell off a cliff in the first place. But anything high-powered like artificial intelligence or machine learning or autonomous driving continues to percolate, and I think Nvidia's the leader in these markets."

Why is the company so sure? First, data centers aren't that economically sensitive, so Nvidia sees building projects "coming back online" sooner rather than later, the "Mad Money" host said.

It also sees "the explosion in popularity of Fortnite and other free multiplayer games, which translates into more demand for their graphics processors. Remember, given that these games are free, the company believes there'll be far more players," Cramer said. "They see Dell, HP [and] Lenovo picking up the next-generation Turing platform. Well, that's the big three. They see no further slowdown in China because it's a growth economy. And it's now been over a year since the crypto crash began, so they've had enough time to work through the excess inventory."

And while he admitted that "that's a lot of bottoms to call at once," Cramer had one chief reason why he was on board with Nvidia's bullishness.

"Why should we believe them? Simple, because Nvidia is not a cellphone semiconductor company. It's not a supplier to Apple," he said. "Its product cycles are unique, with only AMD really being comparable, and AMD pretty much called the bottom, too, hence the parallel rally in their stocks."

So, as investors decide whether they want in, Cramer asked them to remember the CEO's succinct remark that "the world needs more computing."

"We know Nvidia's right about the driving need for more computing power," he argued. "That's why I think the stock can rebound, but I also think you need to be careful not to be too enthusiastic. There's no need to rush here now, something that the people, by the way, who bought Nvidia at $162 this morning found out as the stock gave back much of its gains and closed at $157."

WATCH: Cramer reviews Nvidia's share comeback

Disclosure: Cramer's charitable trust owns shares of Apple.

Questions for Cramer?
Call Cramer: 1-800-743-CNBC

Want to take a deep dive into Cramer's world? Hit him up!
Mad Money Twitter - Jim Cramer Twitter - Facebook - Instagram

Questions, comments, suggestions for the "Mad Money" website? [e-mail]