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
Falling Knife setup
Technology · Information Technology Services
Sell if holding. Engine safety override at $26.36: Quality below floor (2.1 < 4.0) triggers a hard block regardless of the otherwise-positive setup — overall score 4.8/10 and A.R:R 11.0:1 is above the 1.5:1 BUY gate. Specifically: High short interest: 21%; Below-average business quality; Negative price momentum.
Applied Digital designs, develops, and operates next-generation data center infrastructure for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI workloads through two segments: Data Center Hosting (crypto mining infrastructure at its Jamestown and Ellendale, North Dakota facilities,... Read more
Sell if holding. Engine safety override at $26.36: Quality below floor (2.1 < 4.0) triggers a hard block regardless of the otherwise-positive setup — overall score 4.8/10 and A.R:R 11.0:1 is above the 1.5:1 BUY gate. Specifically: High short interest: 21%; Below-average business quality; Negative price momentum. Chart setup: Death cross, below all MAs, RSI 34, MACD bearish. Score 4.8/10, moderate confidence.
Passes 7/9 gates (favorable risk/reward ratio, clean insider activity, no SEC red flags, news events none recent, earnings proximity 33d clear, semi cycle peak clear, materials cycle peak clear). Fails on weak momentum and death cross (50MA < 200MA). Suitability: speculative.
About Applied Digital Corporation
About Applied Digital Corporation
Applied Digital's Data Center Hosting segment — which generated all of the company's fiscal 2025 continuing-operations revenue — depends on a single crypto mining customer that accounted for 93% of that revenue, on a contract with two and a half years remaining. The company's 286 MW of hosting capacity sits at two North Dakota sites, Jamestown and Ellendale, and its nascent HPC Hosting segment has signed 250 MW of leases with a single customer at its Polaris Forge 1 campus, also in Ellendale.
Applied Digital's Data Center Hosting business rents energized space to crypto mining customers based on their power requirements, while its HPC Hosting business signs long-term leases — approximately 15 years — with tenants hosting GPU clusters and other high-performance computing infrastructure; two such HPC leases totaling 250 MW were signed in May 2025 for the first two Polaris Forge 1 buildings. The company funds its capital-intensive construction through a mix of debt facilities, including a February 2025 Credit and Guaranty Agreement with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, a Starion Bank loan tied to its Ellendale facility, and a Cornerstone Bank loan tied to its GPU-01 subsidiary. Applied Digital also has a Cloud Services Business, operated through Applied Digital Cloud Corporation across Colorado, Minnesota, and Utah, that the board has approved for sale and that the company now reports as discontinued operations.
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Applied Digital's build-out of Polaris Forge 1 depends on electrical infrastructure components and construction materials it says are, in some cases, sourced from a single supplier under contract, with only a limited number of vendors serving certain products and services company-wide. The 10-K flags that newly imposed U.S. tariffs on imports could raise the cost of the specialized electricity distribution equipment the project requires, and that the company cannot yet predict the magnitude of that impact. Because the HPC segment's first meaningful revenue depends on Polaris Forge 1 becoming operational on schedule, a supplier disruption or tariff-driven delay would directly push back the point at which that segment starts generating revenue, compounding the company's existing dependence on its single Data Center Hosting customer.
See also: Technology · Information Technology Services
From Applied Digital Corporation's most recent 10-K filing, extracted August 23, 2026.
Recent developments
updated 2026-09-05Recent Developments — Applied Digital Corporation
Latest news
- NEWS Billionaire Activist Investor Dan Loeb's Third Point Builds 4-Stock Bitcoin-To-AI Basket — benzinga Aug 28, 2026 neutral
- NEWS Bitcoin Jumps Above $77,000, Gold Hits 3-Month Highs: Stock Market Today — benzinga Aug 21, 2026 positive
- NEWS What's Going On With IREN Stock Wednesday? — benzinga Aug 19, 2026 neutral
- NEWS IREN Is Quietly Outpacing CoreWeave on One AI Metric that Matters — benzinga Aug 18, 2026 neutral
- NEWS Tiger Global Management Takes New Stake In Applied Digital Corp With 885,000 Shares — benzinga Aug 14, 2026 neutral
Generated 2026-09-05T22:02:19Z.
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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
Ranks in the bottom of its industry peers on the composite signal. Better names in the same sector exist.static
Price action weak — below key moving averages, no momentum carry. Needs a base before trend-continuation setups apply.static
Price Targets
Position Sizing
Risk Alerts
Earnings
Verdict History
Frequently Asked Questions
Sell if holding. Engine safety override at $26.36: Quality below floor (2.1 < 4.0) triggers a hard block regardless of the otherwise-positive setup — overall score 4.8/10 and A.R:R 11.0:1 is above the 1.5:1 BUY gate. Specifically: High short interest: 21%; Below-average business quality; Negative price momentum. Chart setup: Death cross, below all MAs, RSI 34, MACD bearish. Prior stop was $24.52. Score 4.8/10, moderate confidence.
Take-profit target: $64.58 (+144.9% upside). Prior stop was $24.52. Stop-loss: $24.52.
Quality below floor (2.1 < 4.0); Value-trap signals (2/5): Margin compression (op margin 0.4%), Material insider selling (7 sells, 0.15% of cap).
Applied Digital Corporation trades at a P/E of N/A (forward -105.5). TrendMatrix value score: 6.2/10. 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 next-generation data center infrastructure for high-performance...
Applied Digital designs, develops, and operates next-generation data center infrastructure for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI workloads through two segments: Data Center Hosting (crypto mining infrastructure at its Jamestown and Ellendale, North Dakota facilities, totaling approximately 286 MW) and HPC Hosting (its Polaris Forge campus, under construction). Data Center Hosting generated all of fiscal 2025 continuing-operations revenue, with one crypto mining customer accounting for 93% of it, while HPC Hosting has signed 250 MW of leases with a single customer ahead of its expected 20