IREN Ltd (NASDAQ:IREN) stock is trading lower by approximately 9% Thursday afternoon as investors digest executive compensation concerns alongside overall market weakness.

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A sharp downturn across the technology sector has triggered widespread profit-taking in high-valuation artificial intelligence infrastructure names. The downward movement comes as the company maintains a price-to-earnings ratio of 78.30. The Nasdaq is down 1.53% while the S&P 500 has shed 0.46% and Technology is the weakest sector on the day with a 2.5% loss.

Executive Compensation Backlash

The latest pressure follows criticism from short-seller Jim Chanos after the board approved a grant of over 18 million restricted stock units (RSUs) to Co-CEOs William Roberts and Daniel Roberts.

Announced July 1, the $800 million award claims roughly 17% of estimated cumulative adjusted net income of $4.7 billion over the grant term spanning fiscal year 2027 to fiscal year 2030. Chanos noted that final tranches do not unlock until the company’s 2033 fiscal year.

Meta Cloud Business Threat

The broader neocloud sector faces intense valuation scrutiny following a July 1 Bloomberg report that Meta Platforms Inc. plans to build a cloud business to sell excess AI compute.

The internal initiative, called Meta Compute, includes plans to sell access to raw computing capacity, directly threatening independent providers and sparking fears of pricing power erosion.

Leadership Team Expansion

IREN Limited announced the appointment of Eric Hammersley as Chief Information Security Officer on Wednesday. The appointment follows the recent additions of Kambiz Aghili as Chief Product Officer and Michael Nudelman as Chief Development Officer.

Regarding the hiring, Co-Founder and Co-CEO Daniel Roberts stated, "Eric’s experience securing cloud platforms at scale will be invaluable."

Technical Analysis

The bigger technical story is trend damage: IREN is trading 24% below its 20-day SMA, 35% below its 50-day SMA, and about 30% below its 200-day SMA, which tells you rallies have been failing, and sellers have controlled the intermediate trend. Even with a golden cross in May (50-day SMA above the 200-day SMA), the price is now well below both, which often signals the longer-term uptrend is under stress.

IREN Price Action: Iren shares were down 7.01% at $35.59 at the time of publication on Thursday, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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