Applied Digital: From 1 to 5 Campuses, $36B in Contracts, and a Bullish AI Infrastructure Bet
APLD's fiscal Q4 delivers a step-change in scale, contracted revenue, and financing efficiency while expanding into power generation.
APLD · Earnings Call · 2026-07-27
A Defining Quarter
Applied Digital's fiscal fourth quarter was nothing short of transformative. CEO Wes Cummins opened the call with a clear statement: “This was a defining quarter for Applied Digital, capping a transformational year for the company.” — Wesley Cummins, CEO · 2026-07-27 The numbers back that up: the company signed leases for five campuses—three of them in the last four months—creating $36 billion in total contracted lease value, with $20 billion committed in the final quarter alone. That brings contracted critical IT load to 1.41 GW, a 125% increase from a year ago, underpinned by critical IT load agreements with investment-grade hyperscalers. The strategy of locking in high investment grade hyperscaler tenants is paying off: over 70% of contracted revenue now comes from that cohort. Beyond the paper, APLD is proving it can execute. The first 100 MW at Polaris Forge 1 was delivered on time and on budget, and another 75 MW came online recently. “We delivered 100 megawatts of Polaris Forge 1 on time and on budget.” — Wesley Cummins, CEO · 2026-07-27 CFO Saidal Mohmand noted that the current financials still reflect only the initial 100 MW, implying significant upside as the 1.5 GW under construction comes into service.Financial Position and Financing Efficiency
The fiscal Q4 results show the early economics of the platform. Total revenue reached $258.7 million, up 407% from the prior quarter. Total Revenue was driven by $203 million from HPC hosting, including tenant fit-out services. Adjusted EBITDA turned positive at $42.4 million, and NOI margin hit 91%. The company ended the quarter with $4.2 billion in cash and a substantially de-risked balance sheet. Financing costs have fallen sharply: the latest $1.59 billion notes priced at 7%, 225 basis points inside the first placement. This is a function of direct leases with investment-grade tenants and the Macquarie JV, which funds 75% of the equity. As Mohmand explained, “our current financials on the HPC data center side primarily reflect only the initial 100 megawatts that are online and contributing during the quarter.” — Mohammad Saidal Mohmand, CFO · 2026-07-27 The path to the $1 billion NOI target has moved up by three years, now expected within twelve months.Power and Compute Flywheel
The market continues to worry about AI demand froth, but APLD is doubling down on the physical constraints. Beyond the data centers, the company owns a 10% stake in Base Electron, which is developing 1.2 GW of natural gas generation in the Dakotas. Base Electron is designed to unlock expansion at existing campuses and hedge against grid scarcity. As Cummins said in prepared remarks,The same call saw the spin-off of ChronoScale, a dedicated GPU cloud now trading under CHRN. With a new CTO from Tesla and CPO from Supermicro, ChronoScale adds an independent growth vector while APLD retains 96% ownership. The demand environment remains robust, a point reinforced across APLD's recent calls. In April, Cummins noted, “we see multiple hyperscalers at every location with interest” — Wesley Cummins, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-04-08 and in January he said the contracting environment had improved: “the contracting environment has gotten more favorable over the past 6 months.” — Wesley Cummins, CEO · 2026-01-07 That momentum shows in the pipeline: an additional 1.7 GW is being marketed, and expansion options on existing campuses could add 250 MW more. The company expects those leases to command materially higher rates, a testament to the scarcity of deliverable power-capacity pairs.we remain in the early stages of what we believe could be one of the largest infrastructure investment cycles in the modern economic history.