By Avi Salzman
Bloom Energy is one of the best-performing stocks of 2025, jumping more than 350%. Its third quarter earnings release after the market closes on Tuesday could confirm or upend the bull thesis.
In the past year, Bloom has gone from a volatile stock tied to the clean energy industry to an AI darling. Its fuel cells are seen as a solution to AI's soaring demand for power, because they can be deployed off the grid and quickly ramp up electricity generation. The company has signed deals with Oracle, Brookfield Asset Management, and utility AEP.
Bullish investors say the company can take market share from natural gas turbines, a $100 billion annual market.
"We've got an acute electricity shortage," said Paul Wick, a portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle, which is Bloom's largest institutional shareholder. "Gas turbines are sold out through 2029. Nuclear is going to take forever to get built and turn into power. And here you have Bloom, which can turn around and deploy fuel cells in a modular manner in three months."
But Bloom's stock embeds enormous growth ahead, well beyond the company's current production capacity. It's trading at 110 times its expected 2026 earnings per share, a much higher multiple than proven AI darlings like Nvidia.
As of the latest publicly available data, 16% of its shares had been borrowed by short sellers, a significant portion that adds to the stock's potential volatility around big events like earnings.
In the third quarter, analysts expect Bloom to earn 10 cents a share, up from a 1-cent loss last year, on $428 million in revenue. Analysts will be looking for signs that Bloom has turned some of its early-stage deals into secure commitments to buy fuel cells.
Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com
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October 28, 2025 14:16 ET (18:16 GMT)
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