APLD is growing revenue at 139% year-over-year and has beaten earnings expectations in three consecutive quarters with an average positive surprise exceeding 100%, ranking it as the top growth performer among peers; however, free cash flow is deeply negative at 469% of revenue consumed, business quality is below minimum thresholds, 29% of the float is sold short, and a put/call ratio of 1.37 signals significant market skepticism—the investment case is a direct bet on whether the exceptional growth trajectory can eventually justify the cash consumption and silence the short thesis.
Thesis pillars
- Exceptional Revenue Growth Leadership→Stable
- Severe Cash Burn Quality Floor Breach→Stable
- High Short Interest Market Skepticism↑Improving
- +1 more pillar — see the Why tab for full reasoning
Applied Digital Corporation (APLD) Stock Analysis
Technology · Information Technology Services
Sell if holding. Engine safety override at $31.20: Quality below floor (2.1 < 4.0) triggers a hard block regardless of the otherwise-positive setup — overall score 5.0/10 and A.R:R 7.1:1 is above the 1.5:1 BUY gate. Specifically: High short interest: 27%; Below-average business quality; Below long-term trend.
Applied Digital designs, develops, and operates data center infrastructure for HPC/AI and blockchain hosting across two North Dakota sites totaling approximately 286 MW, plus its Polaris Forge 1 AI campus under construction in Ellendale. The company is highly... Read more
Sell if holding. Engine safety override at $31.20: Quality below floor (2.1 < 4.0) triggers a hard block regardless of the otherwise-positive setup — overall score 5.0/10 and A.R:R 7.1:1 is above the 1.5:1 BUY gate. Specifically: High short interest: 27%; Below-average business quality; Below long-term trend. Chart setup: No clear chart pattern; technical signals are mixed. Score 5.0/10, moderate confidence.
Passes 8/8 gates (positive momentum, favorable risk/reward ratio, clean insider activity, no SEC red flags, news events none recent, earnings proximity 53d clear, semi cycle peak clear, materials cycle peak clear). Suitability: aggressive.
About Applied Digital Corporation
About Applied Digital Corporation
Applied Digital's revenue is highly concentrated: one customer accounted for 93% of fiscal 2025 revenue, and just four customers made up 100% of the Data Center Hosting Business's revenue from continuing operations. The company operates approximately 286 MW of blockchain-hosting capacity across two North Dakota sites and is building its first HPC/AI campus, Polaris Forge 1, under two 15-year leases with a single HPC customer. Fiscal 2025 net loss totaled $231.1 million.
Applied Digital earns revenue by leasing energized data center space to compute-intensive tenants rather than owning the compute hardware itself. Its Data Center Hosting Business rents power-based capacity to a single remaining crypto-mining customer under a contract with roughly two and a half years left, while its newer HPC Hosting Business is building long-term (approximately 15-year) leases with GPU-cluster tenants at the Polaris Forge 1 campus, where the company entered two lease agreements in May 2025 covering 250 MW across two data center buildings. The company relies on a limited number of vendors for electrical infrastructure components and construction materials, and some contracts provide only a single source of supply, exposing project timelines to tariff and supply-chain risk. Applied Digital carries substantial secured debt, including a Credit and Guaranty Agreement with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and separate loan agreements with Starion Bank and Cornerstone Bank, and disclosed a material weakness in its internal controls over accounting for complex financial instruments. It competes with Digital Realty, Equinix, and NTT in data centers, and with Bitdeer and Riot Platforms in crypto-mining hosting.
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Applied Digital's physical footprint is entirely concentrated in one state: both operating data centers (Jamestown and Ellendale) and the Polaris Forge 1 campus under construction sit in North Dakota, and the 10-K states the company has concentrated its operations in the state of North Dakota and is therefore particularly exposed to that state's regulatory framework, market conditions, and natural disasters. That geographic concentration compounds an already-evolving federal regulatory backdrop for the company's crypto-mining tenant: the U.S. Energy Information Administration conducted an emergency survey of cryptocurrency miners' electricity consumption in January 2024, and the SEC's 2024 approval of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs has not resolved broader uncertainty over how digital-asset activity will be regulated going forward.
See also: Technology · Information Technology Services
From Applied Digital Corporation's most recent 10-K filing, extracted August 9, 2026.
Recent developments
updated 2026-08-16Recent Developments — Applied Digital Corporation
Latest news
- NEWS Tiger Global Management Takes New Stake In Applied Digital Corp With 885,000 Shares — benzinga Aug 14, 2026 neutral
- NEWS 10 Information Technology Stocks With Whale Alerts In Today’s Session — benzinga Aug 14, 2026 neutral
- NEWS Neocloud Stocks Catch Fire As CoreWeave Doubles Revenue — benzinga Aug 12, 2026 positive
- NEWS CoreWeave or Nebius? Analyst Says the Risk-Reward Now Favors One AI Stock — benzinga Aug 11, 2026 neutral
- NEWS Morgan Stanley Maintains Equal-Weight on Applied Digital, Raises Price Target to $37.5 — benzinga Aug 6, 2026 positive
Generated 2026-08-16T17:12:03Z.
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Rating Breakdown
3 floor-breakers
Hyper-growth tech sacrificing current profitability for scale. Floor tripped because model treats negative margins uniformly; the growth dimension tells the other half of the story.static
Technicals below the gate floor. Component breakdown shows what dragged the score down.static
Ranks in the bottom of its industry peers on the composite signal. Better names in the same sector exist.static
Price Targets
Position Sizing
Risk Alerts
Earnings
Verdict History
Frequently Asked Questions
Sell if holding. Engine safety override at $31.20: Quality below floor (2.1 < 4.0) triggers a hard block regardless of the otherwise-positive setup — overall score 5.0/10 and A.R:R 7.1:1 is above the 1.5:1 BUY gate. Specifically: High short interest: 27%; Below-average business quality; Below long-term trend. Chart setup: No clear chart pattern; technical signals are mixed. Prior stop was $29.02. Score 5.0/10, moderate confidence.
Take-profit target: $64.58 (+107.0% upside). Prior stop was $29.02. Stop-loss: $29.02.
Quality below floor (2.1 < 4.0); Value-trap signals (2/5): Margin compression (op margin 0.4%), Material insider selling (3 sells, 0.10% of cap).
Applied Digital Corporation trades at a P/E of N/A (forward -124.8). TrendMatrix value score: 5.5/10. Verdict: Sell.
20 analysts cover APLD with a consensus score of 4.1/5. Average price target: $74.
What does Applied Digital Corporation do?Applied Digital designs, develops, and operates data center infrastructure for HPC/AI and blockchain hosting across two...
Applied Digital designs, develops, and operates data center infrastructure for HPC/AI and blockchain hosting across two North Dakota sites totaling approximately 286 MW, plus its Polaris Forge 1 AI campus under construction in Ellendale. The company is highly customer-concentrated — one customer generated 93% of fiscal 2025 revenue — and reported a $231.1 million net loss for the year.