IREN Limited (NASDAQ:IREN) shares are trading lower premarket on Thursday after the company reported weaker-than-expected fourth quarter fiscal 2026 results.
Earnings Snapshot
The company reported an adjusted loss per share of 74 cents, missing the analyst estimate of a loss of 49 cents. Revenue of $137.2 million missed the $142.32 million consensus estimate.
Revenue declined $7.6 million sequentially as IREN decommissioned mining hardware ahead of GPU installations.
The company reported a $684 million net loss, mainly reflecting $450.4 million of non-cash impairments, largely related to mining hardware decommissioning, and a $102.1 million decline in the fair value of mining hardware held for sale.
Strong Cloud Deal
The company signed multi-year cloud agreements with Cohere, Prometheus, Perplexity, Figure AI, Higgsfield AI and an undisclosed leading frontier AI lab. IREN delivered Horizon 1 to Microsoft, its first 50-MW deployment, with Horizons 2–4 expected in the December quarter.
IREN expects mining operations to be effectively decommissioned by the end of December 2026.
The company exited the fourth quarter with about $500 million of ARR, which rose to $1 billion after Microsoft accepted Horizon 1. This excludes 2027 revenue ramps such as the $700 million ARR tied to Nvidia Cloud contract deliveries.
It expects ARR to exceed $4 billion by the end of the December quarter following Horizons 2–4. The $4 billion contracted ARR represents less than 10% of IREN’s more than 5-GW portfolio of grid-secured connections.
The company secured $6.5 billion of GPU financing over three months, which, together with customer prepayments, covers more than 100% of related GPU CapEx. Of this, $2.8 billion required no investment-grade offtaker and carried single-digit interest-rate pricing.
Three-year contract pricing has climbed approximately 125% since November, while five-year pricing has increased about 70%. Recent three-year agreements are priced above $20 million per MW of IT load, with compute investments generating payback in roughly two years, while current customer discussions are around $25 million per MW.
IREN is targeting about 300 MW of IT load in 2026 and another 500 MW in 2027, taking gross platform capacity to approximately 1.2-1.25 GW.
Key Updates
Horizon 1 achieved Nvidia Exemplar Cloud status on GB300 NVL72, demonstrating IREN’s ability to integrate and operate the hardware, networking and software stack.
IREN has more than 5 GW of announced capacity supported by a multi-gigawatt development pipeline.
The company plans to convert Canal Flats entirely to liquid cooling for GB300s to maximize the value of existing power capacity. Its entire data center portfolio, including Horizons 1–4, remains 100% unencumbered, providing an opportunity for asset-backed financing.
GPU Financing Rapidly Surging
GPUs account for roughly two-thirds of fully loaded data center and GPU costs, meaning customer prepayments covering about 50% of GPU CapEx can effectively fund 100% of data center costs.
Management said GPU financing has rapidly evolved from private-credit products offering mid-teens returns to investment-grade financing at around 6%, with participation now spanning private and public markets as well as investment-grade and sub-investment-grade capital.
For Microsoft, IREN raised $3.6 billion of investment-grade GPU financing at a weighted average interest rate of about 6%, with customer prepayments covering roughly 96% of related GPU CapEx. It also secured $2.8 billion of equipment financing for non-investment-grade deployments, including $2.4 billion at a 9% fixed rate for Mackenzie, covering about 90% of its GPU CapEx.
IREN Price Action: Iren shares were down 5.90% at $38.14 during premarket trading on Friday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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