Bloom Energy's Record Quarter Can't Shake the Shadow Over Its Fuel Cells

Bloom Energy posts record $1.065B quarter and new AI data center deal, yet shares slide 38% from highs amid short-seller allegations and class action.

A fuel-cell maker posts its first billion-dollar quarter, lands another AI-era data center contract, and still can't hold its gains. That contradiction is the whole story of Bloom Energy right now.

The numbers themselves are hard to argue with. On July 28, Bloom reported quarterly revenue of $1.065 billion — up 165.5 percent from the $401.2 million it brought in a year earlier — with product sales climbing 215.4 percent and gross margin expanding to 33.4 percent. The company's GAAP operating result swung from a year-ago loss to a profit of $182.2 million. Management responded by lifting full-year guidance to $3.9–4.2 billion in revenue and $2.55–2.85 in earnings per share.

Yet the stock closed Friday at €189.60, down 4.63 percent on the day and 38.54 percent below its June 25 52-week high. Even a post-earnings pop of roughly 7–8 percent in after-hours U.S. trading reversed the next day, with shares settling at $163.75. The market, in other words, is pricing in something beyond the quarterly scorecard.

That something is a legal and reputational overhang that has been building for weeks. In early July, Hunterbrook Capital published a report alleging Bloom had hidden its reliance on Chinese suppliers for scandium, a rare earth metal used in its solid-oxide fuel cells. The stock dropped 5.7 percent on the news; Bloom dismissed the claims as false and misleading in a regulatory filing. A follow-up report from Hunterbrook Media on July 30 went further, drawing on 15 years of public generation data from the U.S. and South Korea to argue that Bloom's systems routinely underperform advertised efficiency, output, and longevity figures — with many units degrading well before the promised five-year replacement interval. Bloom again pushed back, calling the allegations "false and misleading" and pointing to audited financials and a diversified, multi-country supply chain.

The legal fallout has been swift. A shareholder class action filed in late July in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California accuses Bloom of underestimating its China supply-chain risks and scandium dependence. The class period runs from February 27, 2025 to July 8, 2026, and several firms — Kaplan Fox, Bronstein Gewirtz & Grossman, Robbins LLP, and Rosen Law Firm — are urging affected investors to step forward before the lead-plaintiff deadline of September 28, 2026.

Against that backdrop, the business itself keeps expanding. Bloom announced an expansion of its partnership with MiTAC Computing Technology, adding an island-grid system for the company's AI server manufacturing campus in Fremont, California, alongside an existing installation in San Jose. Evercore ISI's Nicholas Amicucci reaffirmed a Buy rating and $350 price target on the news. More notably, Bloom disclosed for the first time that it now serves nearly two dozen customers in the AI infrastructure space — a list that extends well beyond the previously known names of Oracle, Nebius, Brookfield, AEP, and Equinix. That broadening customer base suggests the company is moving past its reputation as a story dependent on a handful of marquee deals.

Wall Street's reaction to the quarter has been anything but uniform. Mizuho's Maheep Mandloi upgraded the stock from Neutral to Outperform with a $242 target, citing faster-than-expected operational execution, expanding margins, and improved operating leverage — and arguing the recent pullback created an attractive entry point. JPMorgan's Mark Strouse trimmed his target to $314 while keeping an Overweight rating. On the other side, four houses cut their targets in the same week: Wells Fargo from $217 to $176, Truist from $250 to $218, Jefferies from $246 to $188, and BMO Capital from $279 to $227. Roth Capital also trimmed its figure, and Evercore ISI delivered a notable data point on July 31 when its analyst argued Bloom's reach in the AI infrastructure business is deeper than investors realize — and the stock still fell that day.

The stock's 30-day decline of 14.79 percent and its annualized volatility of 130.95 percent tell their own story. Over 12 months, shares are still up 500.19 percent, and they've gained 152.63 percent since the start of the year. The 200-day average sits 19.75 percent below the current price, suggesting the longer-term trend remains intact even as the stock trades well off its peak.

What's unfolding at Bloom is the tension now familiar to many companies riding the AI power-demand wave: explosive growth invites intense scrutiny. Short sellers, plaintiffs' firms, and analysts are all probing for weaknesses in the supply chain and product quality, and the burden of proof grows heavier with every record quarter. The company's rebuttals have been consistent and categorical, but the market's reaction suggests investors are reserving judgment. With a class action pending, short-seller reports circulating, and analyst targets ranging from cautious to aggressively bullish, the volatility that has defined Bloom's recent trading looks less like an anomaly and more like the new baseline.