Benchmark lifts Hut 8 target to $165 on $16.8B AI leases

Benchmark Equity Research raised its price target for Hut 8 to $165 from $85, pointing to $16.8 billion in base-term contracted value across two AI data center leases at the Beacon Point and River Bend sites. Hut 8 shares recently traded near $97 and have fallen almost 30% over the past six weeks.

Benchmark highlighted the 1,000-megawatt Beacon Point campus in Texas as a key driver. The site was redeveloped for artificial intelligence workloads, and Phase 1 was redesigned to support 352 megawatts of IT capacity, up from an original 224 MW plan. The Phase 1 lease carries about $9.8 billion in base-term value and roughly $655 million in expected average annualized net operating income.

The River Bend site accounts for the remaining base-term value, reflecting a roughly $7 billion lease tied to Fluidstack with a Google backstop. Benchmark calculated the combined base-term lease value across both campuses at $16.8 billion and said that figure could grow to $42.8 billion if tenants exercise embedded five-year renewal options.

Benchmark used a sum-of-the-parts valuation that included the Beacon Point and River Bend contracts, Hut 8’s 60% stake in American Bitcoin Corp., and the company’s holdings of 10,667 bitcoin as of March 31. The firm also cited a development platform totaling 9,085 MW across projects at various stages: 1,680 MW under exclusivity, 550 MW under development, 830 MW under construction, and 710 MW under management.

Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer wrote that commercialization of Beacon Point ‘changes the math' for Hut 8 by increasing the project's value and shifting the company’s profile toward AI infrastructure leases. Palmer added that the pace of recent developments and the stock’s recent decline may mean investors have not fully registered the updated economics.

Benchmark warned that Hut 8’s second-quarter financials, due Aug. 4, are likely to appear irregular because of mark-to-market accounting on its digital asset holdings. In the first quarter, Hut 8 reported revenue of $71 million, more than triple the prior year, and posted a net loss of $253.1 million driven largely by $295.7 million in digital asset impairments and $50.9 million in stock-based compensation.

Hut 8 began as a bitcoin mining operator and has repurposed sites originally planned for ASIC computing to develop large-scale data centers and AI infrastructure. The company is balancing digital asset exposure with longer-term contracted revenue streams as it expands its development pipeline.