Citizens Upgrades Core Scientific, Sees 121% Upside

Citizens has upgraded Core Scientific to market outperform, assigning a price target of $30 that implies a significant 121% upside for its shares. The investment firm highlights Core Scientific's robust power pipeline as a foundation for securing new high-performance computing (HPC) lease agreements, which is crucial given persistent power constraints across the industry. This positions the company to capture accelerating demand for HPC infrastructure.

The analyst noted that Core Scientific is "undervalued" and has opportunities to secure more favorable contract terms. This outlook is supported by recent deals announced after the termination of its proposed merger with CoreWeave in October 2025. These agreements demonstrate value creation for data center capacity suppliers, with progressively better terms being disclosed.

Core Scientific's shares saw a roughly 3% gain in premarket trading on Thursday, despite a recent 19% plunge over the past three months. This decline was attributed to investors scaling back AI trade bets amid valuation concerns. Currently, 14 out of 19 analysts covering the stock recommend a buy or strong buy.