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Editorial Advisory Board

  • Professor Andrea M. Armani, University of Southern California
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  • Mohan Wang, Ph.D., University of Oxford
  • Professor Xuchen Wang, Harbin Engineering University
  • Professor Stefan Witte, Delft University of Technology

Applied Digital (APLD) Stock Trades Up, Here Is Why

APLD Cover Image

What Happened?

Shares of digital infrastructure provider Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) jumped 36% in the afternoon session after it posted fourth-quarter earnings that surpassed analyst estimates and announced a massive long-term leasing agreement with AI infrastructure company CoreWeave. The company reported an adjusted loss of $0.03 per share, which easily surpassed analyst estimates for a loss of around $0.15 per share. The key driver for the rally, however, was a transformative 15-year, 400-megawatt leasing deal with AI infrastructure firm CoreWeave. This massive agreement secured approximately $11 billion in future contracted revenue, signaling a stable and significant income stream for years to come. In response to the strong results and the landmark deal, Wall Street analysts reacted positively, with firms like Needham and HC Wainwright & Co. raising their price targets on the stock.

Is now the time to buy Applied Digital? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.

What Is The Market Telling Us

Applied Digital’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 104 moves greater than 5% over the last year. But moves this big are rare even for Applied Digital and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business.

The previous big move we wrote about was 16 days ago when the stock gained 5.4% on continued investor optimism surrounding its strategic pivot to building high-performance computing (HPC) data centers for the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. The company, which is transitioning its business model to focus on the surging demand for AI infrastructure, is benefiting from a positive outlook from investors and analysts. While no specific news was released today, the move reflects ongoing confidence in Applied Digital's strategy to build out large-scale data centers tailored for AI and HPC workloads.

Applied Digital is up 71.3% since the beginning of the year, and at $13.36 per share, it is trading close to its 52-week high of $13.86 from June 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Applied Digital’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $132,540.

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