CoreWeave stock might finally be finding a floor. The cloud-computing company is attracting bargain hunters after its latest tumble as Wall Street pushes back on concerns about its debt.
The shares were up 2.7% at $61.19 in premarket trading on Wednesday, set to add to a 7.9% gain the previous day. That still leaves the stock down by more than 30% over the past month but it's a start.
Other so-called neocloud stocks were rising as well. Nebius Group and IREN were both up more than 2% in the premarket, adding to a significant gain on Tuesday.
Concerns about debt-fueled data-center expansion seem to have eased slightly after artificial-intelligence start-up Anthropic filed for its initial public offering. As Barron's noted, Anthropic's net adjusted profit highlighted the potential for profitability across the wider AI sector.
Of course, CoreWeave's business is rather different from Anthropic's AI models. But Oppenheimer analyst Param Singh argued that CoreWeave could generate $9 billion in annual free cash flow to the firm -- that is cash available for equity shareholders and debtholders -- if it paused its growth plans and capital expenditure.
"This should be sufficient to pay off any associated debt obligations. Renewing older contracts (upon maturity) at higher rates and adding software capabilities can drive higher revenue/MW [revenue per megawatt]," Singh wrote.
CoreWeave ideally wouldn't want to pause its growth. The company's entire business model is built on a rapid cycle of debt raising, capital expenditures, and sales growth. But the point is that it has a safety net if required. In fact, even in the case of an end to its customer contracts, Singh estimates CoreWeave could at least pay off its debt obligations.
"In a worst-case liquidation scenario, we see a full recovery for unsecured debt (longer server utilization understates assets on the balance sheet)," Singh wrote.
CoreWeave has previously said its revenue backlog should more than support the payment for all of its debt obligations, without needing customers to renew their contracts or finding new tenants for the properties.
So much for the downside case, what about the upside? Well, Singh has a $150 target price on CoreWeave. That's based on an expectation the company is heading for 160% revenue growth in its current year, with even greater upside to come in 2027. And that's not an unusual view on Wall Street, with the average target price on CoreWeave sitting at $132.49, according to FactSet.
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