Key Takeaways
- Jefferies upgraded Riot Platforms to Buy on Nov. 10 and raised its price target to $28 from $13, 53% above today’s price.
- The firm’s case rests on Riot’s 15-year, $28 billion lease of its Corsicana campus to an AI lab, which Jefferies values at about $16 a share on its own.
- The $28 target implies 13.6x forward sales, more than twice the stock’s five-year average, and analysts expect a wider loss for 2026 than they did three months ago.
- Jefferies’ $28 looks reachable, but only if Riot finances its builds, starting with a $573 million bridge loan due Dec. 31.
Riot Platforms (RIOT) stock is 37% below its June high, and Jefferies’ case for a rebound rests on a 15-year land lease in Texas. On Tuesday, the firm upgraded Riot to Buy from Hold and raised its price target to $28 from $13, 53% above today’s price.
Cheap bitcoin and a big construction bill
Riot still makes most of its money mining bitcoin, and bitcoin has been much cheaper this year. Riot’s third-quarter mining revenue fell to $116.0 million from $160.8 million a year earlier, on an average bitcoin price of $70,855, against $114,361. Riot is also paying for a data center build that needs billions more, and CFO Jason Chung described the backdrop on Riot’s third-quarter call as “a tighter credit market, characterized by higher interest rate environment, credit-led spread widening since September.”
Jefferies is valuing a lease
Jefferies analyst Jonathan Petersen based the upgrade on the lease Riot announced on Nov. 4. An AI lab will rent all 910 megawatts of critical IT capacity at Riot’s Corsicana campus for 15 years, for about $28 billion, and pay nearly all operating costs. “The powered land lease lets RIOT monetize the site with less execution and financing risk,” Petersen said. He values Corsicana alone at about $16 a share.
TIKR tracks 22 analysts on Riot Platforms. How many say “Buy”?
See the full breakdown of Buy, Hold, and Sell ratings on Riot Platforms, along with Wall Street’s revenue and earnings estimates, all in one place. More than 500,000 investors use TIKR to research stocks like this one. See Riot Platforms’ Analyst Ratings
Does $28 add up?
Analysts’ average price target is $32, up from $27 a year ago:
Jefferies more than doubled its old target, and its $28 still sits below the Street’s average.
Analysts expect Riot’s revenue to more than double in 2028, to $1.76 billion, as the first Corsicana phases come online:
That 2028 estimate was $1.21 billion on Oct. 23, before the lease was signed. But analysts now expect a bigger loss: $1.70 a share for 2026, against $1.25 three months ago.
Riot trades at 8.8x forward sales, against a five-year average of 6.2x:
Jefferies’ $28 works out to 13.6x today’s forward sales, more than twice that average. But Riot earned that average as a bitcoin miner, and a year from now, its forward sales will include 2028’s jump.
Riot still has to raise the money
Riot expects to fund $6.1 billion to $7.0 billion of its Corsicana and Rockdale builds with project debt, and Keefe Bruyette downgraded the stock to Market Perform today over the financing. One tenant, Anthropic, also accounts for nearly all of Riot’s roughly $38 billion of contracted revenue.
Even so, I think Jefferies’ $28 is reachable, since it rests on rent a tenant has already signed for. The first test comes by Dec. 31, when Riot’s $573 million Morgan Stanley bridge loan comes due.
So what is Riot Platforms stock actually worth?
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Disclaimer:
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