A 36% monthly drubbing has left IREN’s stock in deeply oversold territory, but Friday’s bounce to €36.35 suggests bargain hunters are willing to wade in. The five-percent gain offered a rare reprieve after a brutal selloff that wiped out nearly half the company’s value from its 52-week high. Yet the underlying tension between blockbuster cloud deals and a toxic mix of insider compensation and heavy short-selling keeps the stock on a knife-edge.
The selloff was triggered in large part by a controversial board decision that handed co-CEOs equity worth roughly $700 million. The grant of over 18 million shares dilutes existing holders by around five percent, and locking periods prevent any quick unwinding. Short-seller Jim Chanos lambasted the package as representing 17 percent of the company’s estimated net profit over the coming years. Two other directors received smaller awards in July, adding to the investor outrage. The stock’s 152 percent year-to-date gain is now a distant memory, with the current price sitting 47 percent below the 52-week peak and well under the 200-day moving average of €41.91.
IREN has been racing to pivot from Bitcoin mining to AI cloud services, a strategic shift backed by two enormous contracts. A deal with Nvidia is worth $3.4 billion, and a separate agreement with Microsoft adds $9.7 billion to the revenue pipeline. The company has strengthened its leadership with hires from Oracle and Google to oversee data centre buildout. But the move into AI infrastructure brings new competitive pressure: Meta Platforms now plans to sell excess computing capacity, pitting it directly against specialised providers like IREN and CoreWeave.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying IREN?
The bears are not backing down. Short interest has swelled to 64 million shares, representing roughly 19 percent of the free float. The 14-day Relative Strength Index at 35.2 signals a heavily oversold condition, yet the stock remains firmly in a downtrend. Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani acknowledges that IREN generates less revenue per contracted megawatt than rivals such as CoreWeave and Nebius, but he maintains a buy rating with a $100 price target. Wall Street as a whole is more measured, with the consensus target hovering near $80 — still offering substantial upside from current levels.
Volatility, annualised at over 93 percent, makes for a highly unpredictable setup. If IREN can reclaim the 50-day moving average at €46.74, it would confirm Friday’s bounce as more than a dead cat rally. A failure at that level, however, could prompt a retest of the recent lows. With nearly a fifth of the float held by short sellers and a catalogue of fundamental risks — from dilutive pay to intensifying competition — the next move for IREN’s stock may hinge on whether the market decides to focus on the $13 billion in contracts or the governance storm that refuses to dissipate.
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