Iren Stock Plunges 20% in 5 Days — Here’s Why Freedom Capital Says Hold

Iren Limited’s IREN -0.55% ▼ shares fell 6% in Thursday’s pre-market trading and have tumbled about 20% over the past five days alone. Freedom Capital has made a **Hold **call on the Sydney-based company, noting that its transition from a crypto miner to an AI cloud infrastructure company could be lengthier than promised.

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The equity research firm initiated coverage of Iren’s shares with a $36 price target, implying about 6% upside. After an explosive rally in 2025, the Australian company’s shares have largely struggled this year as anxiety around Big Tech’s massive AI capital expenditure and timing of payoff has rippled through the neocloud sector.

A Lengthy Hardware Transition?

Iren has been shifting its infrastructure away from single-purpose, specialized ASIC machines to more general-purpose graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware that offers more efficiency for more AI workloads. However, that has come at a cost, contributing to wider-than-expected losses Iren reported for its second fiscal quarter that ended on December 31.

Although Freedom Capital sees IREN stock reaching $43 within the next two years — which marks a roughly 34% upside from the share price of about $32 posted early Thursday — the market research and investment banking company for now prefers other stocks in the same space.

Iren, CoreWeave Lag as Nebius Tops Analyst List

Some of Iren’s well-known rivals are New Jersey-based CoreWeave CRWV +1.25% ▲ and Amsterdam-based Nebius NBIS -1.74% ▼ .

Of the trio, only Nebius currently carries a Strong Buy consensus rating from analysts. The Dutch firm has recently secured a $27 billion AI build-out contract from Meta META +1.24% ▲ , a $2 billion investment from Nvidia NVDA +0.77% ▲ , and a mandate to build a $10 billion AI data center in Finland in one of Europe’s largest AI infrastructure projects.

Meanwhile, Freedom Capital’s rating comes as Iren recently expanded its GPU fleet and secured $3.6 billion in financing to help fulfill its $9.7 billion deal with tech giant Microsoft MSFT -0.22% ▼ .

Is IREN a Good Stock to Buy?

On Wall Street, IREN’s shares  remain a Moderate Buy based on analysts’ consensus rating. This breaks down into eight Buys, three Holds, and one Sell rating issued over the past three months.

However, the average IREN price target of $75.40 implies an impressive 121% upside.

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