Plug Power’s ascent continues as the AI boom may finally be what makes its business profitable

2025-10-06 14:30:51 英文原文

Markets

Plug Power

(Will Waldron/Getty Images)

Plug Power investors have something more real to dream on this time.

Plug Power has the most interesting stock chart on the planet.

It has the most interesting stock chart on the planet because it’s enjoyed several runs as a meme stock, but the ability to dream on the hydrogen fuel cell company has always run into the pesky problem of reality: Plug has rarely been able to achieve positive unit economics in its long history as a publicly traded company, as its technology has not been sufficiently cost competitive relative to established power sources.

But a world craving more power to accommodate the influx of data centers might mean that for once, Plug investors don’t have to dream in the abstract.

On Friday, HC Wainwright analyst Amit Dayal spotlighted this dynamic in upping his price target to $7 from $3, the highest on Wall Street, which set off record call activity in the stock.

Amid rising energy demand, Plug’s offerings begin to look “increasingly price-competitive and case for adoption becomes stronger,” he wrote.

Shares are surging on Monday, continuing to build on what’s one of the best months of performance from Plug Power in its history. Volumes and call activity have likewise been going parabolic, and the options action is aggressively tilted toward the bullish side.

Peer Bloom Energy has cashed in on the AI boom in a concrete way, striking a deal to deliver power to some of Oracle’s data centers, which accelerated the surge in its stock.

Plug, for its part, was inching its way into the data center business before ChatGPT was even released by providing backup power to Microsoft.

More recently, Plug’s technology was utilized as part of a collaboration between data center company ECL and AI training and inference cloud company Lambda to deploy “the industry’s first hydrogen-powered, production-grade Nvidia GB300 NVL72 systems,” which came online in late September.

markets

Lucid sinks following weaker-than-expected Q3 vehicle deliveries and lowered analyst outlook

Lucid delivered 4,078 vehicles in its third quarter, the seventh straight quarterly delivery record for the luxury EV maker. But despite that year-over-year growth, the figure came in below Wall Street’s estimates by about 18% in a quarter where EV makers (including luxury competitors like Rivian) sold thousands of vehicles leading up to the expiration of the US federal EV tax credit.

Lucid shares fell more than 8% in Tuesday trading. Also likely making investors skittish was a freshly lowered Lucid rating by CFRA from “sell” to “strong sell.”

CFRA analyst Garrett Nelson wrote that the rating drop “reflects concerns regarding LCID’s cash burn rate, weak demand, pricing pressures, EV competition, and the fact it is nowhere near close to achieving the mass production rates needed to meaningfully drive down unit costs.” CFRA’s price target for Lucid is $10, 55% below the stock’s current price.

Nelson argues customer demand is a major issue for Lucid, which hasn’t updated its full-year production guidance of 18,000 to 20,000 vehicles since its earnings report in August. To achieve the low end of that range, Lucid will need to build more than 8,000 vehicles in its fourth quarter, which would reflect Q4 production growth of 137% year over year.

markets

Oracle tumbles after report that it’s lost nearly $100 million from renting out access to Nvidia’s Blackwell chips

You buy Nvidia’s flagship chips because they’re supposed to be best in class, empowering you to build better AI capabilities or make lots of money off other companies that want to harness the power of the AI boom.

Not quite, per this report from The Information, whose final paragraph begins with this line:

“In the three months that ended in August, Oracle lost nearly $100 million from rentals of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, which arrived this year.”

The report notes that some of this is a timing issue, a gap between getting data centers equipped for use and when customers start paying for services.

Oracle, which was roughly flat, quickly fell more than 5% as traders digested this report. Shares of Nvidia, which were up nearly 2% at their highs of the day, turned negative.

Citing internal documents, The Information says that Oracle’s “fast-growing cloud business has had razor-thin gross profit margins in the past year or so,” booking a gross profit of $125 million on rentals of servers that utilize Nvidia chips for the three months ending in August, for a gross margin of just under 14%.

The damage in markets is far from localized in those two stocks, however. In a reversal of how OpenAI’s deal with AMD buoyed the AI trade on Monday, this news is sparking a broad-based retreat.

Nvidia’s top AI chip rival, Broadcom, went from flat to down 2%, with memory chip specialist Micron and foundry giant TSMC also well in the red. Neocloud companies Nebius and CoreWeave, disk drive sellers Western Digital and Seagate Technology Holdings, and zero-revenue nuclear energy firm Okloare among the other stocks selling off on the news.

markets

AMD soars again after getting more than 20 price target hikes across Wall Street following its deal with OpenAI

Over the past 24 hours, Wall Street has been scrambling to revise its view on how high shares of Advanced Micro Devices can climb in the wake of its recently announced megadeal with OpenAI.

While the terms of the arrangement may raise some eyebrows, Wall Street is expecting that OpenAI’s big foray into AMD’s AI chips will serve as a validation point and magnet for other potential buyers.

“OpenAI is arguably the most disruptive of GenAI cloud computing customers, and its success is likely to act as a force multiplier for other cloud vendors and LLM providers to accelerate their capex, positive for multiple chip, memory, optical, networking, and foundry suppliers,” wrote Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya, who estimates the agreement could be worth over $100 billion over the next four to six years.

As of publishing, we’ve tallied up 22 cases where the sell side has hiked its price target on the chip designer since news of the deal broke:

  • Jefferies, to $300 from $170 (also upgraded the stock to “buy” and had raised its price target just last week!)

  • Melius, to $300 from $200

  • Barclays, to $300 from $200

  • Wells Fargo, to $275 from $185

  • Argus Research, to $275 from $200

  • Cantor Fitzgerald, to $275 from $200

  • Truist, to $273 from $213

  • Benchmark, to $270 from $210

  • New Street Research, to $265 from $230

  • Bank of America, to $250 from $200

  • Roth Capital, to $250 from $200

  • Morgan Stanley, to $246 from $168

  • Baird, to $240 from $175

  • President Capital Management, to $240 from $186

  • Evercore ISI, to $240 from $188

  • Stifel, to $240 from $190

  • Piper Sandler, to $240 from $190

  • Citi, to $215 from $180

  • Goldman Sachs, to $210 from $150

  • Morningstar, to $210 from $155

  • Bernstein, to $200 from $140

  • Deutsche Bank, to $200 from $150

Bloomberg has average price target data going back to September 2005. Over the past two decades and change, there have been only 12 instances where the two-day average price target rose more than the 16% upward revision since the OpenAI pact was announcement.

  • Jefferies, to $300 from $170 (also upgraded the stock to “buy” and had raised its price target just last week!)

  • Melius, to $300 from $200

  • Barclays, to $300 from $200

  • Wells Fargo, to $275 from $185

  • Argus Research, to $275 from $200

  • Cantor Fitzgerald, to $275 from $200

  • Truist, to $273 from $213

  • Benchmark, to $270 from $210

  • New Street Research, to $265 from $230

  • Bank of America, to $250 from $200

  • Roth Capital, to $250 from $200

  • Morgan Stanley, to $246 from $168

  • Baird, to $240 from $175

  • President Capital Management, to $240 from $186

  • Evercore ISI, to $240 from $188

  • Stifel, to $240 from $190

  • Piper Sandler, to $240 from $190

  • Citi, to $215 from $180

  • Goldman Sachs, to $210 from $150

  • Morningstar, to $210 from $155

  • Bernstein, to $200 from $140

  • Deutsche Bank, to $200 from $150

Bloomberg has average price target data going back to September 2005. Over the past two decades and change, there have been only 12 instances where the two-day average price target rose more than the 16% upward revision since the OpenAI pact was announcement.

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摘要

Plug Power's stock is experiencing a surge due to increased interest in hydrogen fuel cell technology for data centers, driven by growing energy demands and the AI boom. Analyst Amit Dayal from HC Wainwright raised Plug Power’s price target to $7 from $3, citing improved cost competitiveness. Lucid Group saw its shares fall over 8% after delivering fewer vehicles than expected in Q3 and facing a negative analyst outlook. Oracle's stock plummeted following reports of significant losses from renting out Nvidia’s Blackwell AI chips. AMD experienced numerous bullish upgrades on Wall Street as a result of its deal with OpenAI, setting new records for price target hikes.