New York, Feb 9, 2026, 19:19 EST — Trading after the bell
- Applied Digital jumped 9.4% in Monday’s regular session, but showed little movement once after-hours trading kicked off.
- President Jason Zhang and CFO Saidal Mohmand are in line for multi-year equity grants, a fresh SEC filing shows. The payouts depend on hitting targets for leasing and profits.
- Northland’s Mike Grondahl lifted his price target to $56, citing the potential for fresh leasing deals by hyperscalers.
Applied Digital Corp (APLD.O) jumped 9.4% Monday after the company awarded long-term, performance-based stock grants to key executives. U.S. investors kept piling into AI infrastructure names. Once the bell rang, APLD shares held steady after hours. markets.businessinsider.com
Applied Digital’s valuation has taken a turn, increasingly pegged to its AI infrastructure ambitions rather than its roots in niche hosting. Investors are pressing for longer-term agreements with big cloud firms. There’s also a spotlight on whether the company can bring new megawatts online without losing control of expenses.
The board approved the grants for President and co-founder Jason Zhang, along with CFO Saidal Mohmand, on Feb. 6, a filing shows. Both were given performance stock units—convertible to common shares if specific goals are reached. The company called these awards “in lieu” of any equity grants for the next five years.
Zhang picked up 1.5 million performance stock units and 500,000 restricted stock units, the filing shows. The performance shares vest in phases — first, after securing long-term contracts with “investment-grade hyperscalers,” then on meeting “ready for service” milestones, which means turning over new data-center space to customers.
Zhang crosses the initial signing mark at 600 megawatts. After that, the threshold jumps to 1.6 gigawatts. According to the filing, those ready-for-service milestones are pegged to those exact figures. (For data centers, power is measured in megawatts; bigger numbers usually mean more servers, higher rent.)
Mohmand is sitting on 750,000 performance units tied directly to net operating income, or NOI, a real estate profit metric that excludes financing costs. The filing spells out his terms: those units vest only if the company’s high-performance computing hosting business pulls in $1 billion and $2 billion in trailing 12-month NOI by Feb. 28, 2031.
The board insisted dilution stay low, noting restricted and performance units together made up less than 1% of shares outstanding when granted. Form 4 filings show Zhang and Mohmand received restricted stock units as part of these awards. Applied Digital Corporation
Applied Digital’s latest filing runs through the story investors have latched onto: a pivot toward high-performance data centers and colocation, aimed directly at AI and cloud customers. The company says every bit of the 400 megawatts at its Ellendale, North Dakota campus has been leased out. There’s also a signed lease for 200 megawatts at another North Dakota site. Looking ahead, Applied Digital expects revenue to ramp up in 2026, once those extra facilities start operating.
Mike Grondahl at Northland raised his price target to $56, citing “600 of the 900 MW currently on the table” linked with a new investment-grade hyperscaler. Applied Digital is now his “Top Pick for 2026,” according to a TipRanks note released Monday. markets.businessinsider.com
These are ambitious targets, and reaching them will take serious capital. If major leases collapse, or construction stalls out, or grid connections face setbacks, or borrowing costs spike past forecasts, the company could easily miss the operational and capacity benchmarks it has now committed to on paper.
Investors are watching for the next big hyperscaler lease and updates on when new facilities will be operational. TipRanks points out that the earnings release is scheduled for May 8, before markets open. tipranks.com
