Key Takeaways
- Stifel cut its CoreWeave price target to $60 from $120 and kept its Hold rating, the morning after the company raised its 2026 revenue outlook.
- Third-quarter revenue rose 168% to $3.66 billion, but net interest expense of $846 million was about four times operating income.
- Stifel’s $60 target implies about 1.4x forward sales, well below the stock’s 3.5x average over the past year.
- The interest bill and the coming dilution already look priced in, so the cut is no reason to sell, though buying can wait until operating income gets closer to covering interest.
CoreWeave (CRWV) is up 26% today after it raised its 2026 revenue outlook. Stifel cut its price target in half anyway.
Analyst Ruben Roy kept his Hold rating on Nov. 11 and lowered his target to $60 from $120, just 2% below the stock’s $61.25. Even after today’s jump, shares sit 56% below their 52-week high.
Revenue soared, and so did the interest bill
Third-quarter revenue rose 168% from a year earlier to $3.66 billion, and backlog reached about $132.5 billion at Sept. 30. But net interest expense was $846 million, about four times the quarter’s $207 million of operating income, and the net loss grew to $709 million from $110 million. Fourth-quarter interest is guided even higher, at $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion, with full-year capital spending of $37 billion to $39 billion.
CoreWeave’s debt, leases aside, more than doubled in nine months to $46.9 billion. In the quarter it also sold about $4.2 billion of convertible notes and set up a program to sell up to 35 million new shares, about 6% of its share count. CEO Michael Intrator said in the release that growth “is supported by multiple sources of funding, including financing backed by customer contracts, operating cash flow, and approximately $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits expected in the next three months alone.” He also ruled out new unsecured debt on the call.
TIKR tracks 42 analysts on CoreWeave. How many say “Buy”?
See the full breakdown of Buy, Hold, and Sell ratings on CoreWeave, 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 CoreWeave’s Analyst Ratings
Is $60 too low?
Stifel had company this morning: Jefferies cut its target to $90 from $150, and Mizuho to $68 from $88. The Street’s average target has slipped over the past year, too, to $132 from $144:
Analysts still expect revenue to roughly double again, to $26.5 billion in 2027 from $12.9 billion this year:
But the loss per share they expect for 2027 has widened to $4.70, from $3.90 three months ago. And the market had already marked the stock down for it. Its forward price/sales fell to 1.2x before the report, its lowest of the past year, against a 3.5x average:
Stifel’s $60 works out to about 1.4x forward sales, close to where the stock trades after today’s jump.
I wouldn’t sell on this cut
The risk is plain: CoreWeave pays far more in interest than it earns from operations, and new shares are on the way. But Stifel has moved its target to where the stock already trades, and the stock hit its cheapest multiple of the year before the report. My read is that the interest bill and the dilution were in the price already. At about 1.4x sales with a $132.5 billion backlog, I’d hold, and wait to buy until operating income starts closing in on interest.
The fourth-quarter report, due early next year, will show whether that gap narrows. So will the price of CoreWeave’s next financing.
So what is CoreWeave stock actually worth?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
