Morgan Stanley initiates Applied Digital at equal weight with $36.50 price target

Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Byrd kicked off coverage of Applied Digital on July 23 with an Equal Weight rating and a $36.50 price target, a call rooted in the company’s lease portfolio value and the economics of its AI data center business. The stock has been trading in the $25 to $30 range, meaning even the relatively conservative initiation implies meaningful upside. The consensus among 16 analysts covering Applied Digital sits at a Moderate Buy with an average 12-month price target of roughly $70.56. Some estimates go as high as $90 to $106. So Byrd’s $36.50 figure is less of a bear case and more of a “let’s not get ahead of ourselves” case. From Bitcoin mines to AI factories Applied Digital, trading on NASDAQ under the ticker APLD, belongs to a growing cohort of companies that once ran Bitcoin mining operations and have since repurposed their infrastructure for hyperscale AI workloads. The industry has coined a term for these players: powered shell providers, or PSPs. Applied Digital has secured multi-billion-dollar, 15-year leases totaling tens of billions in contracted revenue, reportedly with a single unnamed US investment-grade hyperscaler. It has also announced a $5 bil...