Investing

Time to Buy Plug Power Before It Triples, Says Wall Street

Joel South

Published: March 4, 2025 10:07 am

2025 has not been kind to investors in hydrogen fuel cell company Plug Power (Nasdaq: PLUG).

From a high north of $3, shares of the hydrogen pioneer have been cut roughly in half, falling as low as $1.61 through Friday’s close, and no one is more surprised by this than HC Wainwright analyst Amit Dayal.

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As recently as January 16, Dayal was still singing Plug’s praises, hailing the company’s receipt of a $1.66 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (which was conditionally approved in May 2024, but only made official this year). As Dayal explained, “the loan can be applied toward financing the build-out and deployment of up to six green hydrogen production facilities.”

Dayal also highlighted a January 3 decision by the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service, finalizing rules for Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Section 45V credits for producing clean hydrogen, which are expected to award Plug credits for green hydrogen production (i.e. hydrogen produced using renewable energy to power the electrolysis) and pink hydrogen production (i.e. hydrogen produced using nuclear energy to power the electrolysis) as well.

Plug’s also secured a purchase agreement for 3 gigawatts worth of electrolyzer from Allied Green Ammonia in Australia, says Dayal, and is working on a final investment decision sometime in Q2 2025, to begin producing proton exchange membrane electrolyzers for its partner in 2027.

With so much good news on its side, Dayal predicted, and so far as we know still predicts, that Plug Power stock would hit $5 a share by the end of this year, more than triple its current share price.

What will Plug Power tell us tomorrow?

That’s obviously not how things have been working out for Plug investors so far. But could this change tomorrow?

Plug Power plan to report its Q4 and full-year 2024 earnings tomorrow, before the market opens for trading, and HC Wainwright isn’t the only Wall Street analyst that’s optimistic about the results. According to Yahoo! Finance data, the consensus of the more than one dozen analysts who follow Plug stock, is that the company will report 18% revenue growth for the quarter ($262.6 million) and a big improvement in profitability, with losses falling from $0.64 per share, to just $0.23, a 64% improvement.

For the full year, the forecast is for a 21% decline in sales, however, and only a 31% improvement in earnings, as full-year losses fall to $1.24 per share.

Is Plug Power stock a buy before earnings?

So obviously (and assuming the analysts are right), tomorrow’s news is going to look a lot better for the quarter than for the year, as Plug aims to end 2024 on a high note. The question though, is whether simply losing less money than it was losing a year ago will be enough good news to propel Plug stock higher?

And I’m not sure it will be.

Let’s assume the best case scenario. Assume all the analysts are right, and Plug will nail the numbers that have been laid out for it tomorrow. That would still mean Plug stock lost a lot of money in 2024, just as it’s lost money in every single year of its existence, stretching back to well before the turn of the millennium, and just like analysts forecast that Plug Power will keep on losing money for at least the next four years, before finally turning a profit in… 2029.

No matter how many optimistic analysts Plug has in its corner, history strongly suggests that this is a company with no chance of earning a profit, perhaps ever. T

That doesn’t necessarily mean Plug Power will go bankrupt, mind you. Investors have proven infinitely patient in awaiting Plug’s profits-than-never-quite-arrive, and continue to buy the company’s stock, whenever it creates new shares to sell, to fund its ever-increasing losses. But does it mean Plug’s stock is going to suddenly triple in 2025?

I wouldn’t bet on it, no.