Iris Energy ( NASDAQ: IREN ) advanced 1.6% in Friday afternoon trading after Cantor Fitzgerald upgraded shares of the eco-friendly bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) miner to Overweight from Neutral on expectations that further hash rate growth will be achieved. The intraday gains, albeit modest, come even as bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) continued its downward spiral, falling 3% to $26.32K at the time of writing. Analyst Josh Siegler pointed out in a note that IREN earlier this month mapped out a plan for an additional 1.0 exahash per second of near-term expansion, in a move that could boost the company's total hash rate to 6.5 EH/s. On April 20, the company said said its operating hash rate increased to 4.6 EH/s from 3.6 EH/s, as part of a previous announcement on achieving its near-term total hash rate target of 5.5 EH.s. "Given the company's current liquidity and future projected operating cash flow, we believe IREN can fund its near-term expansion goal without any additional capital raising," Siegler contended. The Overweight rating diverges from the Quant system rating of Hold and agrees with the average Wall Street analyst of Buy. More on Iris Energy Iris Energy lands Buy rating at B. Riley as bitcoin miner scales quickly Iris Energy: Winning The Race Against Time?
