Applied Digital Corporation stock (NASDAQ: APLD) sank sharply on Monday, December 15, 2025, extending a choppy stretch for one of the market’s most volatile AI-infrastructure plays. Shares traded around $24, down roughly 13% on the day, after swinging between about $23.75 and $28.30 with over 38 million shares changing hands.
The move is drawing attention because APLD has been a poster child for the “AI data center buildout” theme—benefiting from big lease headlines and investor enthusiasm about power-hungry AI workloads—yet it’s also the kind of stock that can drop hard when sentiment cools or when investors start demanding receipts instead of hype.
Below is a roundup of today’s (15.12.2025) news, forecasts, and analyses shaping the APLD conversation, plus the key fundamentals and catalysts investors are watching next.
Why Applied Digital stock is down today
Several market stories circulating on December 15 converge on the same takeaway: the selloff looks more like a momentum unwind than a single piece of catastrophic company news.
Benzinga reported that APLD’s decline appears tied to a broader pullback in momentum names—driven by profit-taking, sector rotation, and renewed caution around AI-infrastructure valuations—not a fresh, definitive negative announcement from Applied Digital itself. [1]
TipRanks’ auto-generated market note echoed the “sentiment shift” framing, pointing to heightened demand for downside protection in the options market and highlighting a “2.4 million shares” item adding uncertainty. [2]
Meanwhile, the tape confirms the vibe: Monday’s trading range and heavy volume underscore that APLD remains a high-beta stock where positioning and sentiment can dominate the day-to-day.
Options market signals: heavy flow, high volatility, and rising hedging demand
One of the most consistent threads in today’s coverage is unusual options activity—which can amplify moves as traders hedge, speculate, or force market makers to rebalance.
GuruFocus reported that APLD saw about 69,000 options contracts trade, with a put/call ratio around 0.54, alongside a sharp jump in implied volatility (noted near 113.97 for IV30), implying large expected daily swings. [3]
Barchart data broadly aligns with that picture, showing put volume ~24,894 vs. call volume ~46,376 (put/call ~0.54) and a put/call open interest ratio near 0.49, with implied volatility listed above 116%. [4]
Translation: even if calls still outnumber puts, the market is pricing big moves, and a growing appetite for protection can pressure a stock—especially one that ran hot earlier in the year and has become crowded.
The “2.4 million shares” headline: what the SEC filing actually says
A key nuance getting lost in quick-hit market blurbs is what that “2.4 million shares” item really is.
An Applied Digital Form S‑3 prospectus dated December 5, 2025 states it relates to the resale “from time to time” of up to 2,400,000 shares by selling stockholders, consisting of warrant shares issuable upon exercise of warrants issued October 6, 2025. Importantly, the prospectus explicitly says: “We will not receive any proceeds from the sale of the Warrant Shares by the selling stockholders.” [5]
What that means for investors:
- It’s not necessarily a “new” primary share issuance raising cash the way a typical public offering might.
- It can still matter because warrant exercises and share resales can increase effective float and create dilution/overhang concerns—especially in a momentum-driven name.
This is the kind of detail that doesn’t fit neatly into a two-sentence “why the stock is down” blurb, but it absolutely influences trader psychology.
The bigger backdrop: Applied Digital’s AI data center thesis is still the core story
The reason APLD draws such intense attention is that it sits at the intersection of three investor obsessions:
- AI compute demand
- data center power constraints
- long-term contracted infrastructure cash flows
Applied Digital has pivoted from its earlier identity tied more closely to crypto mining hosting toward high-performance data centers for AI workloads, as multiple market write-ups have noted. [6]
The leases: CoreWeave and hyperscaler demand
Two deal narratives have defined APLD’s 2025 re-rating:
- CoreWeave expansion at Polaris Forge 1 (Ellendale, North Dakota): Investopedia reported that with the expanded CoreWeave arrangement, Applied Digital cited roughly $11 billion in prospective lease revenue over a 15-year period, tied to the Polaris Forge 1 campus expansion trajectory. [7]
- A separate hyperscaler lease at Polaris Forge 2 (North Dakota): Reuters reported in October that Applied Digital signed a $5 billion lease for 200 MW at Polaris Forge 2, with the deal expected to run about 15 years, and noted total leased capacity across Polaris Forge 1 and 2 rising to 600 MW. [8]
The buildout: real facilities, real milestones
Data Center Dynamics reported that Applied Digital completed its first data center building at its Ellendale campus, noting the first 100MW of a 400MW campus now operational, with Building 1 completed in two 50MW phases. [9]
This matters because markets often punish infrastructure developers for “PowerPoint capacity” until megawatts convert into operating facilities and recurring lease revenue.
Cooling and power density: a quiet but crucial differentiator
Applied Digital also announced it led a $25 million funding round for Corintis, a chip-cooling technology company, explicitly framing the investment around advancing efficiency and enabling high-density, GPU-heavy AI data center deployments. [10]
In today’s AI era, “more megawatts” isn’t the whole story—cooling and power density are where the physics (and costs) get spicy.
Financial reality check: rapid growth, heavy spending, and balance-sheet questions
Applied Digital’s latest reported quarter remains central context for any APLD stock analysis, because it shows both the upside and the pressure points.
In its fiscal first-quarter 2026 results (quarter ended Aug. 31, 2025), Applied Digital reported:
- Revenue of $64.2 million, up 84% year-over-year
- A net loss attributable to common stockholders of $27.8 million
- Cash/cash equivalents/restricted cash of $114.1 million and debt of $687.3 million (as of Aug. 31, 2025) [11]
The company also attributed a major portion of the revenue increase to tenant fit-out services tied to its HPC Hosting Business—useful for near-term activity, but investors still want to see sustained, high-margin recurring lease revenue as campuses ramp. [12]
This is also where today’s “why down?” narratives connect: market commentary points to investor discomfort with how fast Applied Digital is expanding and how that expansion is financed. [13]
Forecasts and analyst outlook on Dec. 15, 2025: big upside targets, but not everyone agrees
On December 15, the forecast conversation around APLD is unusually split depending on the dataset you look at—often because aggregators pull from different windows of analyst updates.
The bullish consensus view (higher targets)
TipRanks lists an average 12‑month price target of $42.78 (high $56, low $35) based on 10 analysts in the last three months, and shows a “Strong Buy” consensus. [14]
A Zacks-linked analysis carried by Finviz emphasized the “contracted hyperscale operator” re-rating and referenced $11B in contracted lease revenues tied to the 400MW CoreWeave commitment at Polaris Forge 1, plus an expectation that once fully operational, Polaris Forge 1 could support about $500 million in annual net operating income. It also cited a Zacks consensus estimate for fiscal 2026 revenue of $280.9 million. [15]
The more conservative view (lower targets)
MarketBeat, in a report focused on institutional ownership activity, cited analysts’ consensus as a “Moderate Buy” with an average target price of $26.20. [16]
How to interpret the mismatch
This doesn’t automatically mean one source is “wrong.” It often means:
- targets are stale vs. recently updated, or
- the aggregator uses different covered analysts / weighting, or
- some targets were published when the stock traded at very different levels.
For readers, the practical takeaway is simple: APLD is priced like a company that must execute flawlessly, and forecasts will swing as new lease milestones, funding updates, and construction timelines become clearer.
Technical and sentiment snapshot from today’s coverage
APLD’s December 15 selloff comes with a mix of bearish and “not dead yet” signals in popular technical commentary.
Benzinga described the setup as mixed, citing the stock trading below short-term moving averages and identifying a resistance level around $25.50, while framing RSI as roughly neutral and MACD as still showing bullish momentum. [17]
Separately, the options metrics (put/call ratios and very high implied volatility) reinforce that traders expect continued turbulence. [18]
What investors are watching next
For a stock like Applied Digital, the next “big move” catalyst is rarely subtle. The market tends to react to clear signals in a few buckets:
1) Campus ramp and revenue conversion
Investors will keep tracking how quickly megawatts under development become operating facilities—and how quickly that shifts results toward recurring lease revenue. Progress milestones at Ellendale (Polaris Forge 1) have been reported, but the market will demand continued execution. [19]
2) Lease announcements and counterparties
Reuters’ October report on the $5B hyperscaler lease underscored that APLD’s valuation is increasingly tied to the pace of large-scale customer commitments. [20]
3) Capital structure, dilution, and share overhang
The December S‑3 filing around 2.4 million warrant shares is a reminder that even when the company isn’t directly raising new cash, the market can still price in dilution/overhang risk. [21]
4) Earnings timing
Barchart lists Applied Digital’s next earnings date as 01/13/26 (not an official company announcement, but a widely followed market calendar reference). [22]
Bottom line
On December 15, 2025, Applied Digital Corporation stock is falling hard, but the day’s reporting points more toward a valuation/momentum reset plus options-driven turbulence than a single definitive fundamental break.
At the same time, the bull case remains what it has been all year: AI data center demand + long-duration leases + megawatt expansion—with big-name counterparties and concrete buildout milestones. [23]
The bear case also hasn’t changed: execution risk, financing risk, and dilution/overhang risk in a stock that the options market is literally screaming is volatile. [24]
References
1. www.benzinga.com, 2. www.tipranks.com, 3. www.gurufocus.com, 4. www.barchart.com, 5. ir.applieddigital.com, 6. www.benzinga.com, 7. www.investopedia.com, 8. www.reuters.com, 9. www.datacenterdynamics.com, 10. ir.applieddigital.com, 11. ir.applieddigital.com, 12. ir.applieddigital.com, 13. www.benzinga.com, 14. www.tipranks.com, 15. finviz.com, 16. www.marketbeat.com, 17. www.benzinga.com, 18. www.barchart.com, 19. www.datacenterdynamics.com, 20. www.reuters.com, 21. ir.applieddigital.com, 22. www.barchart.com, 23. www.investopedia.com, 24. www.gurufocus.com
