Iris Energy Is Positioned to Become One of the Biggest Listed Bitcoin Miners: Canaccord

Canaccord raised its price target on Iris Energy stock to $15 from $12.

The report states that the Bitcoin miner has sufficient power resources and high-performance computing options.

The brokerage firm said Iris could monetize the infrastructure it has built for bitcoin mining, cloud computing and artificial intelligence colocation.

Iris Energy (IREN) is positioning itself to become one of the most efficient and largest public bitcoin {{BTC}} miners with options in the high-performance computing (HPC) space by launching a pilot project in Childress, Texas, in the second half of the year, brokerage firm Canaccord said in a research report published on Tuesday.

The Sydney-based company has grown its business but has very few Bitcoin mining rigs left with the same amount of power, the report said.

“The company will build 510 megawatts (MW) of data centers by 2024, provide 2,160 MW of power capacity, and has a 1 gigawatt (GW) plus development pipeline,” wrote analysts led by Joseph Vafi.

The brokerage firm raised its price target on the company’s stock to $15 from $12, while maintaining a buy rating. Iris Energy was trading 1.6% higher at $11.06 in early trading on Nasdaq Wednesday.

Mining stocks have seen a resurgence in value in recent months following Core Scientific’s (CORZ) artificial intelligence (AI) deal with cloud computing firm CoreWeave, suggesting the market believes AI and HPC opportunities could offer alternative and more valuable use cases for bitcoin mining sites, Wall Street giant JPMorgan (JPM) said in a report last week.

Earlier this month, Iris Energy shares fell 14% after a short seller said the Childress site was not suitable for hosting artificial intelligence or high-performance computing. They are still priced well below their pre-drop levels of around $14.

Considering that Iris Energy is primarily an infrastructure company, “We believe management will be opportunistic in expanding the use case for its data centers beyond bitcoin mining and is well prepared from a power, cooling and network perspective,” Canaccord wrote.

The note noted that Bitcoin mining is a proven value proposition for Iris Energy and also helps finance infrastructure construction.

The report noted that there are several ways the company could monetize the infrastructure it has built, including “bitcoin mining, AI cloud, and AI colocation.”

Read more: Iris Energy Dedicates Majority of Childres Site to Bitcoin Mining Expansion: Bernstein