CleanSpark, Inc. (CLSK): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $13.49, CleanSpark, Inc. (CLSK) is priced for today's economics sustained for ~19.5 years. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating; individual model outputs and user-controlled scenarios are analytical inputs, not Boothcheck targets. Narrative composed 2026-08-07.

Generated: 2026-08-10 · Exported: 2026-08-12 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/CLSK

Headline

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

Solve inputs: computed at a 12.5% cost of capital; growth searched up to the 25% self-funding ceiling; each 1pp moves the implied horizon ~2.8 years.

Reconcile: at the x-ray's 9.3% required return this reads ~11.7 years; the models below use their own rates.

How unusual the bet is: elevated

Valuation X-Ray

Every valuation family lands below the price. The price therefore sits beyond what those standard frames encode.

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

Families that call it expensive: Asset, Relative

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 6.1%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=3)

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

Only one reportable economic unit is present in the current topology source. Consolidated operating lenses remain available, but there is no multi-unit decomposition.

No total common-equity value is stated. One or more material units lack a supported unit value. The displayed values are an indicative subtotal; consolidated debt and cash cannot be applied to a fraction of the company.

Solvency

Operating profit is negative or near zero and the company has no demonstrated through-cycle (mid-cycle) operating margin to normalize against, so years-to-repay cannot be computed honestly.

Operating profit is negative or near zero and there is no demonstrated through-cycle (mid-cycle) operating margin to normalize against, so interest coverage cannot be computed honestly.

Bullet Takeaways

• A twenty-year triple-net lease signed on July 14, 2026 at the Sandersville, Georgia campus, with an unnamed high-investment-grade global technology company, is expected to carry approximately $6.6 billion of contracted revenue across the initial term and up to $11.6 billion if both five-year extension options are exercised.
• The mining business paying the bills until then is shrinking, with quarterly revenues of $138.0 million for the June 2026 quarter against $198.6 million a year earlier, and the annual report explains why the treadmill never stops: "network hashrate will continue to increase, meaning a miner's respective percentage of the total daily rewards will decline unless it deploys additional hashrate at pace with the growth of global hashrate".
• Deliveries under that lease are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2027, and the same tenant has signed a letter of intent and exclusivity arrangement covering the company's entire Texas portfolio of 718 acres and up to 885 MW, so whether that second piece converts is the live question.

Bull Case

A triple-net lease is closer to a bond than to a business. The tenant pays taxes, insurance and maintenance; the landlord collects rent with annual escalators and worries mostly about whether the tenant is solvent. On July 14, 2026 CleanSpark signed one of those for twenty years at Sandersville, Georgia, covering 175 MW of critical IT load for a high-investment-grade global technology company, with roughly $6.6 billion of contracted revenue expected across the initial term, an average annual net operating income contribution of about $330 million, and a cumulative contribution margin the company describes as nearly 100%. That is a different species of income from mining rewards, which are repriced by a global market every ten minutes and shared with everyone who plugs in a machine.

The land under it was bought early and cheaply, which is the part of the story the current accounts cannot show. Sandersville began in 2022 as the acquisition of "a lease for approximately 16.35 acres of real property located in Sandersville, Washington County, Georgia (the "Mawson Property"), all personal property located on the Mawson Property, and 6,349 application-specific integrated circuit miners (the "ASICs") from subsidiaries of Mawson Infrastructure Group". Four years later that site anchors a multi-decade lease. The company now describes a portfolio of more than 1.8 GW of power, land and data centres across the United States, and interconnection capacity of that scale cannot be bought quickly at any price, because the queue is the constraint rather than the money.

Texas is the option nobody has paid for yet. The same tenant holds exclusivity across 718 acres and up to 885 MW, including roughly 300 MW at the Sealy campus and a Brazoria site where transmission-level infrastructure supports an initial 300 MW load with potential to expand to 600 MW. Sandersville is 175 MW. If the pattern repeats across even half of Texas, the contracted base multiplies without a new customer relationship having to be built from scratch.

Now the accounting point that changes how the trailing figures should be read. Under the current rules bitcoin is carried at fair value, and the remeasurement runs through the income statement. The quarters since have carried the mirror image. What moves the reported operating line here is mostly the bitcoin price, not the operating business, and a reader who treats either direction as a trend in the underlying enterprise is reading the wrong number.

That same volatility sits on the balance sheet as a funded reserve rather than a liability. At June 30, 2026 the company held $814.9 million of bitcoin against $202.6 million of cash, with working capital of $761 million, and it reported that the anticipated equity portion of the Sandersville project has been fully funded and all long-lead items ordered and pre-paid. Equity holders also saw something unusual for this cohort: shares outstanding fell from about 284.3 million at September 30, 2025 to about 255.7 million at December 31, 2025, a reduction of roughly a tenth.

Against the peer group, the operating economics are the least bad by a wide margin. MARA runs an operating margin of -201.0% on $867.8M of revenue. HUT runs -191.6% on $284.3M. CIFR runs -237.4% on $209.8M. CORZ runs -127.4% on $440.3M. RIOT runs -136.0% on $653.3M. CleanSpark's operating loss over the year to March 2026 was a fraction of its revenue rather than a multiple of it, and in a cohort where nobody earns anything, losing less per dollar of sales is the closest thing to a cost advantage on offer.

Bear Case

Whatever advantage a bitcoin miner holds, the protocol is designed to erode it. The annual report puts the mechanism plainly: "network hashrate will continue to increase, meaning a miner's respective percentage of the total daily rewards will decline unless it deploys additional hashrate at pace with the growth of global hashrate". That is a business where standing still means shrinking, and where every dollar of capital spent on new machines buys a share of a pie that other people are simultaneously spending to dilute. The June 2026 quarter shows what that looks like when the bitcoin price is not covering for it: revenues of $138.0 million, down 30.5% from $198.6 million a year earlier.

The reported profitability is a bitcoin price bet wearing an income statement. Investors who liked the 2025 figure and dislike the 2026 one are reacting to the same variable twice.

Concentration here is not a nuance, it is the whole revenue line. The quarterly filing states that "The Company has one mining pool operator (Foundry Digital) that represented 100 % of revenue for the six months ended March 31, 2026 and 2025." One counterparty, all of it. Alongside that sits the borrowing structure, where bitcoin is pledged: on certain events, including a failure to maintain sufficient collateral, "the Lender may liquidate the collateral to satisfy the outstanding loan balance or charge incremental interest at the federal funds rate upon the under-collateralized portion of the loan". The collateral and the revenue driver are the same asset, so a falling bitcoin price tightens both ends at once.

The bill for the pivot arrives long before the rent does. Landlord project costs at Sandersville are estimated at $10 to $12 million per MW of critical IT load, against 175 MW under the lease, and deliveries are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2027. Long-term borrowings, net of discount and issuance costs, stood at 1.8 billion dollars at June 30, 2026 against stockholders' equity of 0.8 billion. Operations consumed roughly 461.0 million dollars in fiscal 2025 and a further 409.3 million in the nine months to June 2026. The lease is real; the gap between now and its first rent cheque has to be funded out of a shrinking mining business, a pledged bitcoin stack, and whatever the capital markets will provide.

Historically the answer to that question has been shareholders. The cover page of the May 2022 quarterly report showed 41,290,065 shares outstanding. At March 31, 2026 there were 256,599,199, a compounding rate near 59.5% a year across the window. The recent reduction is genuine and welcome, but it reverses one year of a four-year pattern, and the pattern is what funded the land the bull case now celebrates. Anyone valuing the Sandersville lease per share should note how many shares the per got divided by along the way.

There is also a name missing from all of this. The tenant is described only as a high-investment-grade global technology company; the counterparty is confidential. That is normal commercial practice and it is not evidence of a problem. It does mean the single most load-bearing fact in the bull case, the credit standing behind twenty years of rent, is one the outside investor takes on management's characterisation rather than on their own reading.

Valuation

Trailing operating profit sits below the steady state this price assumes, so the market is valuing the company against its sales, at roughly 5.5 times revenue. Inverted, that implies the business eventually settles at an operating margin near 8.5% and grows revenue at its self-funding ceiling of 25% for something like 20 years to get there, computed on a 12.5% cost of capital. Each percentage point of growth moves that horizon by about 2.8 years, so read the number as a magnitude rather than a measurement.

The interesting wrinkle is where the stretch lives. The near-term pace the price assumes is inside what this company has recently delivered; what is unusual is how long it has to persist. Of comparable fast-growers with usable records, only about 14% held such a pace even a decade. Three of the four reference checks had data behind them and there is no read on the peer multiple range, so the label is directional and a thinner read is a weaker claim rather than a gentler one.

None of the valuation families reaches the price, and the two that produce usable numbers are both looking backwards at what exists rather than forwards at what is contracted. Against the asset family, essentially book value with and without a convergence adjustment, the price stands roughly 3.7 times above where that family lands, and book value per share is $3.84. Against the peer-multiple family the price stands about 3.1 times above its central estimate. The earnings-based approaches produce nothing at all, because a company running an operating loss cannot be capitalised on profits, and a cohort where every comparable also loses money supplies no multiple worth anchoring to. That combination is precisely what a company mid-transformation looks like through a trailing lens: the old business is measurable and shrinking, and the new one is a lease that has not started paying.

Two concrete things sit under the downside. The company held $814.9 million of bitcoin at June 30, 2026, with $202.6 million of cash and working capital of $761 million against total assets of $2.7 billion. Set against that, net borrowings were roughly 1.56 billion dollars at March 31, 2026, with liquid assets of 260.3 million on that date. The bitcoin holding is a real store of value and a volatile one; it is also pledged in part, which means it supports the balance sheet least reliably at the moment it would be most needed.

Which leaves the question the price is really asking, and it is a timing question before it is a valuation one. Rent at Sandersville is expected to begin flowing in the fourth quarter of 2027. The borrowings, the operating cash outflow and the mining revenue decline are all happening now. Everything the market is paying above roughly four dollars a share of book value is a claim on getting from one to the other without another 59.5% year of share issuance.

Catalysts

The July 14, 2026 announcement is the one that changed the company's description of itself. CleanSpark entered a twenty-year triple-net infrastructure lease, with two five-year extension options, directly with a high-investment-grade global technology company at its Sandersville, Georgia campus: 175 MW of critical IT load, approximately $6.6 billion of contracted revenue over the initial term and up to $11.6 billion with extensions, an expected average annual net operating income contribution near $330 million, and estimated landlord project costs of $10 to $12 million per MW. Deliveries are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2027.

The same announcement carried a second item with a longer fuse. The tenant executed a letter of intent and exclusivity arrangement covering the company's entire Texas portfolio: 718 acres and up to 885 MW of secured and planned capacity, including 271 acres with nearly 300 MW at the Sealy campus and 447 acres at Brazoria, where transmission-level infrastructure supports an initial 300 MW load with potential expansion to 600 MW. Nothing is contracted there yet. If it converts, the scale of the relationship changes by several multiples of Sandersville.

Fiscal third-quarter results followed on August 6, 2026 and were mostly a progress report on execution rather than on earnings. Quarterly revenues were $138.0 million, down 30.5% year over year. Management stated that the anticipated equity portion of the Sandersville project has been fully funded and that all long-lead items have been ordered and pre-paid to meet the ready-for-service date. The company is scheduled to appear at three investor conferences during the week of August 10, 2026, which is where any commentary on the Texas exclusivity is most likely to surface first.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Core business (reported)

• MARA (MARA Holdings Inc)
• FY2025 10-K: …purchased 860 bitcoin at an average price of $116,117 per bitcoin TRENDS AND UNCERTAINTIES IMPACTING OUR BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY Bitcoin Mining Operations In response to an increased demand for bitcoin, we anticipate additional mining operators entering the market and existing competitors scaling their operations,…
• FY2025 10-K: …of $80.9 million or approximately 82%. The increase was primarily driven by the expansion of our owned mining sites through acquisitions, higher overall energy consumption and the growth in our total hashrate to 66.4 EH/s. Our Cost per Petahash per day improved approximately 16%, from $35.6 to $29.8, compared to the…
• RIOT (Riot Platforms Inc)
• FY2025 10-K: …at the option of the lessee. We believe that these foundational investments reflect a proactive, strategic approach to maximizing our energy portfolio and accessing additional revenue opportunities, and position us for durable, long-term leadership and value creation in the data center sector. As used throughout this…
• FY2025 10-K: …the data center infrastructure sector. Competition in this segment centers on securing critical resources and capabilities, including access to strategically located land with proximity to transmission infrastructure, reliable and cost-effective power capacity, specialized engineering and technical talent, and…
• CIFR (Cipher Mining Inc)
• FY2025 10-K: …and operate our mining fleet. Additionally, mining bitcoin is a highly power-intensive process, requiring substantial and continuous electrical power to operate mining equipment. Historically, maintaining cost efficiency-particularly with respect to power-has been critical to remaining competitive for our bitcoin…
• FY2025 10-K: …in our operations over time. As we continue to pivot toward data center and HPC hosting services, we expect our revenue profile and operating results to become less dependent on bitcoin-specific factors, and more influenced by long-term leases with hyperscaler tenants, power procurement strategies, and broader data…
• WULF (TeraWulf Inc)
• FY2025 10-K: …miners owned by the Company. The earned bitcoin are routinely sold for U.S. dollars. The Company also previously earned revenue by providing bitcoin miner hosting services to third parties. In July 2025, the Company commenced its HPC leasing operations. HPC lease revenue is generated by leasing datacenter space and…
• FY2025 10-K: …to such scrutiny and reassuring our employees. In addition, the physical risks of climate change may impact the availability and cost of materials and natural resources, sources and supply of energy, demand for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and could increase our insurance and other operating costs, including,…
• CORZ (Core Scientific Inc)
• FY2025 10-K: …location, reputation and perceived skill with respect to performance. We believe that our experienced data center and engineering leadership team, our proven ability to rapidly deliver scalable, purpose-built data centers, combined with cutting-edge, energy-efficient technologies, will enable us to compete favorably…
• FY2025 10-K: …to mine bitcoin in a profitable manner which we may not be able to do if: • there is a reduction in the demand for bitcoin causing the price of bitcoin to fall reducing revenue from our self-mining operations; • high energy costs, supply chain disruptions or government regulation compliance costs increase mining…
• IREN (IREN Ltd)
• FY2025 10-K: …in which we operate (for example, through potential participation in demand response, ancillary services provision and load management in deregulated markets such as Texas). We have secured sites with access to land and power supply, which we believe positions us to take advantage of any growth in power demand for…
• FY2025 10-K: …through 16 Table of Contents research and development efforts to further optimize the operational environment and efficiencies, including targeting stable performance during high and low temperature periods, as well as the life of our hardware and our strategy to expand and diversify our revenue sources into new…
• BITF (Bitfarms Ltd)
• (no filing in the citation store)
• HUT (Hut 8 Corp)
• FY2025 10-K: …and operation of facilities designed to support next-generation, energy-intensive technology applications. This segment represents a downstream pathway through which certain Power assets within our platform are commercialized by developing and leasing data centers. We seek to monetize our Digital Infrastructure…
• FY2025 10-K: …generated primarily by American Bitcoin. Revenue is derived from Bitcoin mining rewards earned based on the computing power contributed to mining pools through the operation of owned mining infrastructure. ​ 2. Traditional Cloud. This segment reflects revenue generated by Hut 8 Canada. Revenue is generated through…

Methodology Note

• Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
• Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
• Economic-unit decomposition (SOTP): each disclosed business unit is assigned its native valuation basis before any multiple is applied. Operating units are valued on enterprise value; funded financial units are valued on their own common equity, because their borrowings fund earning assets rather than levering the parent. A company total is stated only once every material unit carries a supported value and the parent capital bridge reconciles.
• Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
• Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.