Jefferies has initiated coverage on Iren (IREN) with a Buy rating and a $79 price target, sending the stock roughly 5% higher in premarket trading. The stock was changing hands around $58.11 at the time, giving implied upside of about 36% to the analyst’s target.
Analyst Jonathan Petersen pointed to IREN’s ~6-gigawatt powered land bank and its vertically integrated GPU cloud model as key differentiators. The company holds two marquee contracts: a five-year, $9.7 billion deal with Microsoft for Nvidia GB300 GPU capacity and a separate $3.4 billion AI cloud contract with Nvidia. Together, those are expected to generate $3.1 billion in annual recurring revenue.
The Microsoft contract includes a $1.9 billion prepayment and $3.65 billion in GPU financing at around 6% interest, allowing IREN to recoup its $8.8 billion investment within the contract term while generating unlevered internal rates of return above 20%. Jefferies sees IREN’s own-cloud strategy as more valuable over a 10-to-20-year horizon than a colocation model, with estimated returns of roughly 21% versus 13%.
IREN’s revenue has grown 105% over the past twelve months as it pivoted from Bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure. The company is expanding globally: it acquired Spanish AI data center developer Nostrum, adding 490 megawatts of grid power in Europe, and signed a transmission agreement for an 800 MW data center in South Australia. Other analysts have also raised their targets — B. Riley set a $96 target and Macquarie an Outperform with $90 — while Needham trimmed estimates citing a slower AI cloud ramp and lower Bitcoin contributions. The stock has returned around 493% over the past year, and on Wednesday it was trading at about $60.50, implying roughly 30% upside to Jefferies’ $79 target.
