New York, May 29, 2026, 19:05 (EDT)
- Plug Power closed down 4.1% at $3.95, lagging a firmer Nasdaq and Dow.
- The drop followed a sharp midweek jump as investors weighed margin gains against cash needs.
- A UK hydrogen project and Q1 results remain the main supports for the turnaround trade.
Plug Power Inc. shares fell on Friday, giving back part of a recent rally as traders cooled on one of the year’s more volatile clean-energy rebound bets. The stock dropped 4.13% to close at $3.95, its second straight decline, even as the Nasdaq Composite and Dow Jones Industrial Average finished higher.
The move matters because Plug is no longer trading just on hydrogen-sector promise. Investors are now marking the stock against a shorter checklist: margins, cash use, project execution and whether new electrolyzer orders can turn into profit, not just revenue.
Plug had surged 7.81% on Wednesday to $4.14 on heavy volume, extending a post-earnings run before Thursday’s small pullback and Friday’s drop. The stock remains well above its levels from earlier in the month, but Friday showed the rally is still fragile when buyers step back.
Friday’s session was choppy. Plug opened at $4.14, traded as high as $4.17 and as low as $3.85, with about 68 million shares changing hands. Its market value stood near $5.49 billion, while the company still showed a negative price-to-earnings ratio, a reminder that it is not yet profitable.
Among related fuel-cell and clean-power names, Bloom Energy fell about 1.5% while FuelCell Energy slid about 11.3%, giving Plug’s move some sector context rather than making it a company-only selloff.
The bull case rests on better operating results. Plug reported first-quarter revenue of $163.5 million, up 22% from a year earlier, while gross margin — the share of revenue left after direct production costs — improved to negative 13% from negative 55%. CEO Jose Luis Crespo said the results “position us” to reach the company’s positive EBITDAS target in the fourth quarter; EBITDAS is an adjusted earnings measure that excludes interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and stock-based compensation. Plug Power
CFO Paul Middleton put the margin shift more bluntly after the call, saying the year-over-year progress reinforced management’s view that Plug had “hit an inflection point.” The company also said it expected sequential margin improvement through 2026. Plug Power
There is also a project story behind the stock. Plug said this month that the 30-megawatt Barrow Green Hydrogen project in the UK had reached final investment decision, or FID, the point at which financing, contracts and construction plans are firm enough for a project to move ahead. Plug will supply GenEco PEM electrolyzers, machines that use electricity to split water and produce hydrogen.
Crespo called Barrow Plug’s “largest UK project” moving from award into execution, while Eric Adams, hydrogen director at Carlton Power, said Plug’s electrolyzer technology and execution record made it a “strong partner.” The facility is expected to supply green hydrogen to Kimberly-Clark’s Barrow manufacturing site and cut natural-gas use there by up to 50%. Hydrogen Tech World.com
Wall Street remains split. MarketScreener listed recent actions including UBS raising its target to $4 while keeping a neutral rating, B. Riley lifting its target to $5 with a buy rating, and RBC pointing to revenue growth and margin improvement as key to the profitability case. That spread helps explain the stock’s sharp swings: investors are not arguing over whether the business improved, but how much that improvement is worth.
The risk is cash and timing. Plug ended the quarter with $223 million in unrestricted cash and $579 million in restricted cash, and management cited asset monetization plans, including more than $275 million in expected proceeds from data-center-related hydrogen project transactions. If those proceeds slip, margins stall or new hydrogen projects take longer to convert into revenue, Friday’s pullback could become more than profit-taking.
