Canaccord Backs Iris Energy to Become Top Bitcoin Miner

Canaccord has predicted that Iris Energy (IREN) will emerge as one of the industry’s most efficient and largest Bitcoin (BTC) miners.

Canaccord, a prominent broker, has predicted that Iris Energy (IREN) will emerge as one of the industry’s most efficient and largest publicly listed Bitcoin (BTC) miners. The prediction is based on the research conducted by Canaccord’s team of analysts, who have expressed high expectations for Iris Energy’s high-performance computing (HPC) options. That is, as it prepares to deploy its pilot in Childress, Texas, during the latter half of 2024.

As per Canaccord, Iris Energy has unparalleled power in the mining industry. The following is an excerpt from the investigation report:

“The company is building 510 megawatts (MW) of data centres in 2024, secured 2,160 MW of power capacity, and has a 1 gigawatt (GW) plus development pipeline.”

The broker has increased its share-price target for Iris in light of the company’s mining capacity. That is an increase from the initial $12 to $15. However, it is intriguing that Canaccord has elected to preserve its buy rating.

Additionally, Canaccord anticipates that the Sydney-based organization will generate significant interest in addition to its mining operations. The team composed an article regarding Iris Energy:

“We think management will be opportunistic in expanding the use case for its data centres beyond bitcoin mining and is well-prepared from a power, cooling, and network perspective.”

Iris Energy Experiences Growth Amid Mining Stocks’ Surge

In the interim, observing that mining stocks have experienced substantial increases in recent months may be worthwhile. Since June, Core Scientific’s (CORZ) artificial intelligence (AI) has entered into an agreement with cloud computing firm CoreWeave, resulting in a significant increase in the value of numerous stocks.

The market interprets the transaction as offering alternative use cases for Bitcoin mining sites, as Wall Street giant JPMorgan (JPM) stated last week.

Fortunately, Iris Energy has not been excluded from this trend, as it was observed trading 1.6% higher at $11.06 per share on Nasdaq in early Wednesday trading. Although this is a substantial increase, Iris Energy shares are still a significant distance from their 14% decline earlier this month. At that time, a short seller expressed reservations regarding the Childress website, claiming it was unsuitable for hosting high-performance computation or artificial intelligence. The shares were valued at approximately $14 before that time.

It is important to note that Iris is predominantly an infrastructure company. Therefore, Canaccord has proposed methods by which it believes Iris can generate revenue from the infrastructure it is developing. According to the report, these include AI cloud, AI colocation, and Bitcoin mining.