Two new and glowing analyst takes on the future of Cipher Mining (CIFR +4.13%) were the news items that pushed the company's stock well higher on Wednesday. The Bitcoin miner's share price ballooned by more than 12% during the session, a far better performance than the S&P 500 index's 0.2% slump on the day.
Acquisition news fuels optimism
The pair of fresh takes came on the back of news that Cipher Mining had closed its latest facility acquisition. This was for a property in Barber Lake, Texas that will bolster its mining efforts. The company is ponying up $67.5 million in cash, plus $3 per MWh for a period of five years after the energization of the facility.
In the original press release trumpeting the purchase, Cipher Mining CEO Tyler Page said that its new property is "ideally suited for either hosting a large [high-performing computing] customer or mining Bitcoin."
In the wake of that news, two firms initiated coverage of the Bitcoin miner's stock. Macquarie's Paul Golding went a step further, as he has begun covering the crypto mining sector as a whole. Golding rates all miners now under coverage as outperform (read: buy) and has set a price target of $6 per share for Cipher Mining.
The other initiator was Northland, whose analyst Mike Grondahl has also tagged Cipher Mining as an outperform at the same $6 per share fair value assessment. Grondahl expressed admiration for the Barber Lake deal, writing that owning the facility "jump-starts its HPC efforts and brings its aggregate portfolio to over 2.5 Gigawatts across ten sites."
A third analyst weighs in
Finally, an analyst more bullish than those two newcomers reiterated his existing take on Cipher Mining. This was Compass Point's Joe Flynn, who still feels the company is a buy, with a heftier price target of $9 per share. In a new research note, Flynn said that Barber Lake "pulls forward Cipher Mining's potential for HPC by 2026, or earlier, from original expectations of roughly 2027-2028 timelines."
