JPMorgan Boosts Ratings for Bitcoin Miners Cipher, CleanSpark, and MARA

What You Need to Know:

JPMorgan has upgraded Cipher Mining and CleanSpark to overweight from neutral and raised MARA to neutral from underweight.
The bank has also downgraded IREN to neutral from overweight.
A new evaluation framework has been introduced that assesses the companies based on their mining operations, land, and power resources.

Detailed Overview

Wall Street titan JPMorgan has become increasingly optimistic about several bitcoin mining stocks, following favorable third-quarter financial outcomes, alongside recent upticks in the price of bitcoin and improvements in the network's hashrate. The bank recently reported:

Upgrades for Cipher Mining (CIFR) and CleanSpark (CLSK), shifting from neutral to overweight.
They have set a new price target of $8 for Cipher and increased the target for CleanSpark to $17 from $10.50.

MARA Holdings (MARA) was raised to neutral from underweight, with its price goal updated to $23 from $12.

Additionally, IREN has seen a downgrade to neutral from overweight, now with a price target increase to $15 from $9.50. The price target for RIOT is now $16, up from $9.50, while maintaining an overweight rating for the company.

The bank explained that the new sum-of-the-parts (SOTP) valuation strategy takes into account mining operations, land, energy assets, and the amount of bitcoin held by these firms.

Following the announcements, stock prices showed positive responses; Cipher increased by over 4%, CleanSpark gained approximately 3.5%, MARA rose more than 2%, and RIOT and IREN improved by nearly 2% and 0.4%, respectively.