Nel ASA Stock Surges 57% as AI Mania Overrides Analyst 'Sell' Stance

Nel ASA stock jumps 57% YTD on AI data center hydrogen hopes, but Q1 revenue fell 5%, orders plunged 73%, and analysts maintain 'Sell' consensus.

Nel ASA shares ended last week at €0.30, a 6% daily gain that pushed the year-to-date advance past 57%. The rally has been fuelled by an exuberant narrative: hydrogen as a solution for the insatiable power needs of artificial-intelligence data centres. But beneath the market excitement, the Norwegian electrolyser maker's own numbers tell a far more sobering story — and sell-side analysts are not buying the hype.

The immediate catalyst came from across the Atlantic. Plug Power reported quarterly revenue of approximately $163 million, a 22% beat that eased sector-wide concerns about near-term profitability. Investors took that as confirmation that clean hydrogen can find a home in the AI infrastructure boom, where hyperscale server farms are scrambling for green baseload capacity. Nel, alongside European peers ITM Power and Ceres Power, rode the positive sentiment wave higher.

Yet Nel's own first-quarter 2026 results, released just weeks ago, paint a starkly different picture. Revenue from customer contracts slipped 5% to 148 million Norwegian kroner. The EBITDA loss narrowed, but order intake collapsed — plunging 73% to just 85 million kroner. The order backlog shrank 24% to 1.113 billion kroner. While the alkaline segment posted improvements in both sales and margins, the larger PEM business saw revenues fall. A post-quarter PEM contract worth $7 million offered only a modest offset.

The broader hydrogen sector is attracting capital at scale. In Sweden, the green-steel project Stegra clinched €1.4 billion in new equity financing and a further $1.5 billion in debt — both agreements announced on the same day Nel popped. New projects are cropping up in Australia and India, and the Asia-Pacific hydrogen market alone is forecast to reach $109 billion by 2030. Against that backdrop, Nel management is preparing a new pressurised alkaline platform that they claim will set fresh industry benchmarks.

None of that has swayed the analyst community. The consensus from eleven covering firms is "Sell", with an average price target of 2.12 kroner — well below the current share price of roughly 3.40 kroner (based on the €0.30 close, assuming a rough conversion). Berenberg cut its target to 2.30 kroner in March and holds a "Hold" rating; RBC Capital Markets stuck with "Neutral" and a 3-kroner target in April. The stock now trades far above its 200-day moving average of €0.20, and a resistance zone between 3.45 and 3.66 kroner could cap further upside.

Structural headwinds remain heavy. Capital costs are elevated, energy losses in electrolysis are still significant, and Nel's annualised volatility runs close to 91% — making it one of the riskiest plays in the sector. The recent rally has been driven almost entirely by sentiment around AI-infrastructure demand. Whether concrete, multi-million-euro orders from data-centre operators materialise will determine whether the valuation can hold. Without them, the gap between market euphoria and fundamental reality may soon become impossible to ignore.