NEW YORK, Jan 7, 2026, 10:36 EST
- Shares up about 2% in morning trade ahead of results due after the bell
- Freedom Capital and Arete start coverage with Buy ratings and $36 and $99 targets
- Investors looking for updates on AI data-center leasing and ChronoScale cloud spin-out plan
Applied Digital shares rose about 2% on Wednesday as the AI data-center builder headed into quarterly results later in the day and drew fresh analyst coverage.
The earnings print matters because investors are watching for signs that big customers are locking in power-hungry AI capacity, and whether new sites can be financed without heavy dilution. For Applied Digital, the story has shifted from one-off construction and “fit-out” work to longer lease revenue that could smooth out the numbers over time.
Freedom Capital initiated coverage with a Buy rating and a $36 price target, pointing to a ramp in contracted power tied to the company’s Polaris Forge projects, TipRanks’ The Fly reported. https://www.tipranks.com/news/the-fly/applied-digital-initiated-with-a-buy-at-freedom-capital-thefly
Arete also started coverage on Wednesday with a Buy rating and a $99 price target, according to MarketBeat. https://www.marketbeat.com/instant-alerts/arete-begins-coverage-on-applied-digital-nasdaqapld-2026-01-07/
Roth/MKM reiterated a Buy rating and a $56 target earlier this week, saying the coming quarter would likely be judged more on execution milestones and leasing commentary than near-term financial performance. The note also flagged an operational milestone of 100 megawatts now active at the company’s PF1 facility. https://www.investing.com/news/analyst-ratings/applied-blockchain-stock-price-target-reiterated-at-56-by-rothmkm-93CH-4430053
Applied Digital has been building out high-performance compute sites designed for artificial intelligence workloads, which rely on GPUs — graphics processing units — the chips that do much of the heavy lifting in modern AI. Zacks said the Polaris Forge 1 campus is fully leased at 400 megawatts with a single tenant, CoreWeave, and it laid out a staged ramp in revenue as capacity comes online through 2026 and 2027. 1
In late December, Applied Digital said it had signed a non-binding term sheet to combine its Applied Digital Cloud business with EKSO Bionics to form a new company called ChronoScale, with Applied Digital expected to own about 97% after closing. “ChronoScale is intended to bring together a proven operating platform and a clear mandate: deliver accelerated compute at scale for the most demanding AI workloads,” chairman and CEO Wes Cummins said at the time. 2
For the quarter due Wednesday, analysts tracked by Fiscal.ai expected revenue of about $90.5 million and a loss of $0.11 per share, Stocktwits reported. 3
