Buy, Sell, Or Hold IREN Stock At $16?

Core Viewpoint - IREN (NASDAQ:IREN) has experienced a significant stock increase of nearly 80% over the last month, currently trading at approximately $16, raising questions about its attractiveness as an investment [2][3] Group 1: Financial Performance - IREN's revenues have shown substantial growth, with an average annual growth rate of 270% over the past three years, and a revenue increase of 127.2% from $165 million to $375 million in the last 12 months [10][13] - The company's quarterly revenues rose by 168.4% to $145 million in the most recent quarter, compared to $54 million a year prior [13] - Despite the revenue growth, IREN's operating income over the last four quarters was -$19 million, indicating a poor operating margin of -5.0% [13] - The net income for the last four quarters was -$36 million, resulting in a net income margin of -9.5% [13] Group 2: Valuation and Market Comparison - IREN has a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 9.5, which is significantly higher than the S&P 500's ratio of 3.1, suggesting that IREN stock appears costly relative to the broader market [5] - The conclusion drawn from the analysis indicates that a valuation of 9 times trailing revenues is not excessively high given the company's growth trajectory [11] Group 3: Operational Milestones - Recent operational milestones include the successful conclusion of a $550 million 3.5% convertible senior notes offering, which has enhanced market confidence [7] - IREN achieved its mid-year goal of 50 EH/s in installed self-mining capacity, marking a key operational milestone [7] - The acquisition of 2,400 next-generation NVIDIA Blackwell B200 and B300 GPUs was disclosed to support the company's growing AI Cloud Services [7] Group 4: Resilience and Market Performance - IREN stock has performed significantly worse than the S&P 500 during the inflation downturn in 2022, raising concerns about its resilience during economic downturns [9] - The stock has dropped 95.7% from a peak of $24.80 on November 19, 2021, to $1.06 on December 28, 2022, and has not yet recovered to its pre-crisis high [14]