Bitcoin miner Iren soared Wednesday after receiving multiple price target increases following the company's late Tuesday earnings report. Meanwhile, the price of bitcoin rebounded strongly following Tuesday's retreat.
Iren, previously called Iris Energy, reported a Q1 2025 loss of $51.7 million, widening from a loss of $27.1 million and missing FactSet expectations for a $14.5 million loss.
Bitcoin mining revenue slid more than 8% to $49.6 million, driven by an increase in mining difficulty and lower bitcoin prices. The company reported 813 bitcoin mined for the quarter, down from 821 bitcoin in Q4 due to the higher network difficulty and halving event earlier in the year. FactSet analysts expected bitcoin mining revenue of $55.3 million.
AI cloud services revenue jumped 28% to $3.2 million, which Iren credited to additional GPUs commissioned in April.
Iren expects its bitcoin mining power to increase to 50 exahash per second (EH/s) in the first half of 2025 from around 31 EH/s for 2024. The company previously expected its hash rate to reach 50 EH/s in the second half of the year.
Iren reported its AI cloud business has 1,896 Nvidia H100 and H200 GPUs installed, and the contracting for its existing capacity is ongoing. The miner said it's "focusing on measured growth, only in response to customer demand."
Despite missing net income estimates, Canaccord and H.C. Wainwright both lifted their price targets on IREN stock, The Fly reported.
H.C. Wainwright in a research note wrote that Iren is poised to become one of the first public bitcoin miners to achieve 50 EH/s, with the company's timeline accelerating. The firm expects shares to "surge higher on a more bullish outlook for 2025." H.C. Wainright lifted its price target on Iren to 16 from 13 and kept a buy rating on the shares.
Canaccord said the playbook is materially changing for Iren, as it has one of the best at-scale costs of power compared to competitors, combined with its hash rate ramp-up and bitcoin's price above $90,000. The firm raised its price target on IREN stock by 2 to 17 and maintained a buy rating on the shares.
Iren Stock And Bitcoin Price Action
IREN stock jumped about nearly 30% Wednesday, leading a surge for bitcoin miners.
CleanSpark, Mara Holdings, Hive Digital and Bit Digital saw gains range 6.4% to 18.5% on the day. Bitcoin miners tend to have very weak EPS Ratings and Composite Ratings, two important IBD measures of growth-stock quality.
Meanwhile, bitcoin rebounded near $96,700 Wednesday afternoon. The cryptocurrency retreated as low as $90,784 on Tuesday. Bitcoin rallied to a record high of $99,768 in the wake of the U.S. elections. However, the crypto has faced stiff resistance at $100,000.
Bitcoin has soared 130% so far this year.
Among other crypto stocks, Coinbase swung 6% higher. MicroStrategy popped almost 10% Wednesday.
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