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Bitcoin Miner IREN’s 47% Slide Flagged as a Buying Opportunity by B. Riley
The bank kept its buy rating on the stock and $74 target, citing a Microsoft GPU ramp and ample funding options.
Dec 15, 2025, 3:23 p.m.
What to know:
- IREN is down 47% from its Nov. 5 high, sharply lagging mining/HPC and GPU cloud peers, according to B. Riley.
- The bank reiterated its buy rating and $74 price target, and said IREN is set up to outperform if AI sentiment improves.
- The company has about $8.9 billion of capital against $11.6 billion in planned HPC capex, with multiple funding levers still available, the report said.
IREN has dropped 47% from its 52-week high on Nov. 5, significantly underperforming mining and high-performance computing (HPC) peers, but investment bank B. Riley said it's keeping its buy rating and a $74 price target in a Monday report.
Miners are down about 25% on average over the same period, and GPU cloud names CoreWeave (CRWV) and Nebius (NBIS), are off 31% and 25%, respectively, the report, by analysts Nick Giles and Fedor Shabalin, noted.
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The two framed IREN's recent price moves as a sentiment-driven reset in a volatile AI proxy rather than a break in fundamentals.
The stock was 8.2% lower in early trading, at $36.82.
The analysts flagged the stock's volatility in recent weeks. IREN has also moved sharply in the other direction, rallying 47% between Oct. 22 and Nov. 5 versus roughly 13% for its HPC peer group over the same stretch, while CoreWeave fell 6% and Nebius gained 19%.
The analysts argued this pattern shows the stock tends to overshoot both ways and that AI-driven drawdowns can offer entry points for investors willing to live with sector volatility.
On funding, IREN faces roughly a $2.7 billion gap between available capital and about $11.6 billion in planned HPC capex, including around $900 million for 23,000 GPUs at Prince George, $1.85 billion for 40,000 GPUs at Mackenzie and Canal Flats and $8.8 billion for 76,000 GPUs tied to Microsoft at the Childress campus, the analysts noted.
The bank tallies about $8.85 billion in capital already lined up, including Microsoft’s 20% prepayment of $1.94 billion, an estimated $2.5 billion of financing for 76,000 GB300 GPUs related to the Microsoft deal, and roughly $1 billion in cash and equivalents.
The report also highlighted recent balance sheet moves, including roughly $2.3 billion in new convertible senior notes due 2032 and 2033, alongside prior 2029 and 2031 issues.
The bank said net proceeds of about $2.27 billion from the latest convert deal funded a $201 million capped call with an initial cap price of $82.24 per share and the repurchase of about $227.7 million of 2030 notes and $316.6 million of 2029 notes for a combined purchase price of roughly $1.63 billion, including interest. In addition, the company's Dec. 2 registered direct offering of 39.7 million ordinary shares at $41.12 per share, completed Dec. 8, further strengthens the miner's capital stack.
Taken together, B. Riley characterizes the 47% pullback in IREN as a function of weak AI sentiment in a highly cyclical corner of the market, not a structural shift in the Microsoft-centric GPU build-out. The bank said the recent slide gives investors a chance to accumulate IREN ahead of a potential rebound in AI enthusiasm and continued progress on its HPC expansion.
Read more: Bitcoin Mining Profitability Fell for Fourth Consecutive Month in November: JPMorgan
AI Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk's full AI Policy.
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