Benchmark has raised its price target on Hut 8 after the Bitcoin miner signed a second 15-year lease for AI data center capacity at its Beacon Point campus in Texas.
In a note published Wednesday, equity research analyst Mark Palmer reiterated his buy rating on Hut 8 and lifted the target price to $195 from $165. Based on the company’s share price of nearly $110 at the time, the revised target implied roughly 80% upside.
Second 15-year lease expands Beacon Point capacity
Hut 8 said Monday that it had signed a second 15-year lease covering 352 megawatts of IT capacity at its Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas. The lease is valued at $9.8 billion.
The agreement doubles the site’s tenant footprint to 704 MW of contracted capacity and fully commercializes the campus against its 1,000 MW of utility capacity.
Palmer said the transaction supports Hut 8’s power-first approach to building AI infrastructure.
He estimated that the new Beacon Point lease on its own could contribute about $655 million a year in net operating income once stabilized. If renewal options are exercised, the campus’s total contract value could reach as much as $50.2 billion.
Shares rose more than 10% after the announcement
Hut 8 shares climbed more than 10% on the news. The stock closed near $101 after rising above $106 during trading.
The company is listed in Toronto and on Nasdaq.
Bitcoin miners keep moving into AI and HPC
Hut 8 is part of a broader group of publicly traded Bitcoin miners pushing into AI and high-performance computing as mining margins come under pressure from a falling Bitcoin price and rising difficulty.
In December, the company struck a Google-backed deal with Anthropic and Fluidstack to build as much as 2.3 gigawatts of AI data center capacity in the United States.
Peers including Terawulf, IREN, and Cipher Mining have also signed multi-year HPC agreements with Google and Microsoft. Bitfarms said last year it would wind down its mining operations entirely and focus on high-performance computing instead.
Hut 8 has kept its mining segment running through its majority stake in American Bitcoin, a mining venture backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
Earnings date is set for Aug. 4
Hut 8 is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings on Aug. 4.
The story was first published by Bitcoin Magazine and written by Mathew Di Salvo.