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Following a 26% post-election plunge in its stock price, neocloud IREN said in its earnings report on Thursday that over $4 billion in annual recurring revenue projected to land in 2026 has been pushed out to at least January.
IREN said the move, which could extend payment to February, is due to “a customer-requested change and supplier timing.”
On the company’s earnings call, IREN co-CEO Daniel Roberts said Microsoft is the customer.
“They made a request to reconfigure and upgrade some of the network infrastructure and the purpose of that was really to enable the 200 megawatts of capacity to service these latest-generation frontier models,” Roberts said.
Shares of IREN rose in extended trading, but that comes after a 55% drop over the past month.
The company said revenue climbed 66% from the prior quarter to $228 million, beating the $221 million average analyst estimate, according to LSEG. AI Cloud revenue more than doubled to $200 million. IREN gets the rest of its revenue from bitcoin mining, which was its primary business before the company pivoted to AI.
IREN’s net loss narrowed to $263 million from $684 million the prior period. Year-ago figures weren’t included in the earnings release.
The company is being closely watched by investors as the AI trade shows signs of unwinding, particularly following the Democratic sweep in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Concerns are mounting that cash-burning companies reliant on debt are going to have a hard time meeting their obligations as interest rates rise and lenders back out of the market. The Nasdaq had its worst day on Thursday since April 2025.
“Capital markets have become more selective in the last few weeks, and the questions have undoubtedly moved from how big the contract is to whether it can be delivered, financed, and run at a profit,” Roberts said on the call.
CoreWeave, which is set to report earnings on Tuesday, has plunged 60% in the past month. Nebius, which reports next Thursday, is down 48% over that stretch.
IREN said revenue backlog increased 22% from the prior period to $20.3 billion, with “approximately two-thirds with investment-grade counterparties.” The $4 billion ARR target is fully contracted and funded, the company said.
“There is a disconnect between what we’re seeing in public market and what we’re seeing at the customer level,” Roberts told CNBC’s Seema Mody.
Still, Iren said it planed to shell out $15 billion in capital expenditures the rest of this fiscal year, including $9 billion in cash and committed financing, and $6 billion in “target” financing, which is “subject to market conditions.”
The neocloud said that prices for its compute continue to rise and that it expanded an existing contract with a leading frontier AI lab. It said it has contracts with Nvidia, Microsoft and 13 other customers.
Roberts said that some data center construction in the coming year would be backed by Nvidia and Microsoft, but about a third would be to companies that are willing to offer large prepayments for the capacity.
“We just had a customer agree to fund 90% of the GPU capex,” Roberts said, referring to graphics processing units.
IREN said that community opposition can be addressed by tapping local suppliers, using water efficiently and creating jobs.
“I think whether it’s Texas, whether it’s Australia, whether it’s Spain, everywhere, all we’re seeing is people wanting to ensure that data centers pay their own way and do the right thing, and it it feels completely reasonable,” Roberts said.
IREN said it deliberately hadn’t yet bought all of the GPUs it needs for next year to reduce risk.
—CNBC’s Isabel O’Brien contributed to this report.
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