Citizens has reiterated its Market Outperform rating on Riot Platforms and kept its price target at $25.00, a level that implies roughly 61% upside from the recent share price of $15.49. The reaffirmation follows public pressure from activist investor Starboard, which asserts the company is materially under-monetizing a key power portfolio.
At the center of Starboard’s critique are Riot’s Corsicana and Rockdale campuses in Texas, which together offer about 1.7 gigawatts of gross power capacity. That amount of available power is a substantive asset for a company with a market capitalization of $5.76 billion, according to the information provided.
Starboard emphasized that the Corsicana and Rockdale sites are well suited to host large-scale high-performance computing and AI data center deployments at a moment when grid-connected power can be constrained. The activist investor acknowledged improvements Riot has made over the past year - including enhanced governance, tighter cost controls and the introduction of an AI/HPC strategy - and cited these moves alongside Riot’s strong top-line momentum.
In the most recent 12-month period, Riot reported revenue growth of 103.6%. Despite that rapid revenue expansion and the corporate changes noted, Starboard argued that Riot’s execution has trailed peer companies and called for a renewed sense of urgency to fully monetize the power assets.
Citizens analyst Greg Miller left the Market Outperform rating unchanged after reviewing Starboard’s public letter. The $25.00 price target also remained in place for Riot Platforms, a company that operates in cryptocurrency mining and data center hosting.
Other broker responses to recent developments have been mixed but generally supportive of Riot’s pivot toward HPC. The company entered a 10-year, 25 megawatt lease with a major chipmaker, AMD, a transaction that prompted Keefe, Bruyette & Woods to lift its price target on Riot to $23 while maintaining an Outperform rating. Needham also raised its price target to $30, citing the same lease as a positive indicator.
At the same time, the broader cryptocurrency market experienced a pullback that weighed on Bitcoin mining equities. Riot Platforms was not immune to that sell-off and saw its shares decline along with peers during the downturn. Nevertheless, analysts highlighted Riot’s moves into AI and HPC as potential steps toward diversifying revenue streams and capturing future growth opportunities.
In sum, the current debate centers on translating Riot’s large-scale, grid-connected power capacity into higher-value long-term contracts for AI and HPC workloads. Activist pressure, recent lease activity and rising analyst targets underscore the opportunity, while execution speed and crypto market volatility present immediate challenges.