Bloom Energy jumps 9% after Barclays upgrade, California power development deal

Bloom Energy BE popped 8.9% in Tuesday's trading after Barclays upgraded the stock and the company unveiled a potential large-scale power partnership with California Resources Corp. to evaluate the potential development of at least 1 GW of fuel cell power generation paired with carbon capture and storage in the state.

Barclays upgraded Bloom BE to Overweight from Equal Weight with a $289 price target, saying demand appears to be inflecting more sharply than previously expected, as customer deposits increased from $78M in year-end 2025 to $661M in Q3 2026, including a ~$300M sequential increase in Q3 alone.

Importantly, the change in the balance understates gross deposits received to the extent deposits associated with shipments were released into revenue during the quarter, according to Barclays analyst Christine Cho; assuming customers generally provide an upfront deposit of ~10% of contract value, the ~$300M net increase alone could imply at least ~$3B of underlying contract value for Bloom BE, Cho said.

"Taken together, the increase in customer deposits, accelerated manufacturing expansion, and significant new supplier commitments suggest to us that management has gained materially greater confidence in the forward demand pipeline than we had previously assumed," Cho wrote.