The largest LEAPS print in our six-month UOA dataset is also the largest position taken on a small-cap in the window — and the catalyst hit on the same day.
On December 18, 2025, with Applied Digital (APLD) trading at $23.90, an institution bought 65,000 contracts of the APLD 8-strike call expiring January 21, 2028 — paying $18.20 per contract for $119 million in premium. The strike is deep in the money. The expiration is over two years out. This is not a directional gamble; this is a long-duration equity proxy with downside cap on a multi-year hyperscaler thesis.
That same morning, Applied Digital announced it had closed a Macquarie Group development loan facility to pre-fund construction of additional Polaris Forge data-center campuses — completing the financing puzzle for hyperscaler build-out commitments first announced in October 2025 (a $5B, 15-year, 200MW lease).
By April 29, 2026, APLD has rallied 37% to $32.69 with an intraday peak of $42.27 (March 19). The 8-strike call has marked from $18.20 to $26.15 — peak $35.25 — and the $119M position is sitting on +$75 million unrealized.
First published: Daily Institutional Flow Digest, December 18, 2025 · APLD flow on 2025-12-18.
The print
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-12-18 |
| Symbol | APLD |
| Side | BUY |
| Type | CALL |
| Strike | 8 (deep ITM) |
| Expiration | 2028-01-21 |
| Volume | ~65,000 contracts |
| Premium | $119M |
| Entry option price | $18.20 |
| Spot price at trade | $23.90 |
| Position confidence | VERY_HIGH |
| Outcome | open (~$26.15 mark) |
| Unrealized P&L | +$75.5M |
A few structural notes:
- Why deep ITM, not OTM. A $8 strike with the stock at $24 has $16 of intrinsic at entry. The institution is paying $18.20 — only $2.20 of that is time premium. They want delta exposure (position behaves like the stock with downside hard-capped at the strike), not lottery-ticket convexity. This is how institutions get long without buying common.
- Why two-year DTE. Polaris Forge campuses don't generate revenue overnight. The construction → commissioning → ramp cycle for a 200MW data-center campus is multi-year. The LEAPS is sized to survive the build, not to time a specific quarter.
- Why $119M. APLD is a small-cap (sub-$10B mkt cap at entry). Sizing $119M of premium on a small-cap LEAPS is structurally unusual — it implies the institution believes the multi-year setup is dramatically mispriced.
What APLD has done since the print
| Date | APLD close | Move from 12/18 |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-12-18 (entry) | $23.90 | — |
| 2026-01-30 | $28.50 | +19% |
| 2026-02-27 | $36.15 | +51% |
| 2026-03-19 (peak) | $42.27 | +76.9% |
| 2026-04-15 | $35.20 | +47% |
| 2026-04-29 (today) | $32.69 | +37% |
APLD ran 77% to its March 19 peak as the AI-data-center narrative compounded — Meta and Microsoft's combined ~$330B of 2026 capex announcements (January 28) cemented the demand picture, and APLD's quarterly hyperscaler revenue disclosures backed up the lease backlog. The pullback since March is broader semis cooling, not anything specific to APLD.
What the option has done
| Date | 8C 2028-01-21 close | Move from entry |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-12-18 (entry) | $18.20 | — |
| 2026-01-30 | $22.30 | +23% |
| 2026-03-19 (peak) | $35.25 | +94% |
| 2026-04-29 (today) | $26.15 | +44% |
Because the call is deep ITM, its delta is high (~0.85 at entry, ~0.93 today) and the option tracks the underlying nearly 1-for-1. The peak return on the option (+94%) beat the peak on the stock (+77%) by exactly the time-premium leverage — modest but meaningful on a $119M position.
Why APLD is the highest-conviction multi-year AI-infra bet on the tape
The Macquarie facility close on December 18 wasn't the start of the story — it was the funding piece that de-risked a longer narrative:
- October 2025: Polaris Forge 2 hyperscaler lease — $5B over 15 years, 200MW IT load — locked in long-term recurring revenue that exceeds Applied Digital's full-year FY25 revenue.
- November 2025: management commentary on a pipeline of additional 100MW+ tranches in negotiation.
- December 18, 2025: Macquarie loan close → enables capex ramp without diluting equity.
- Q1 2026: AI-capex super-cycle (META $115B, MSFT $190B, GOOGL $175–185B, AMZN $200B) reaffirmed by hyperscaler earnings — drives downstream demand for power-and-cooling-ready capacity.
The institutional thesis: APLD is the cleanest small-cap proxy for hyperscaler campus demand, equity is mispricing the lease backlog, and a 2028 LEAPS is sized to capture the entire build-and-ramp cycle. They paid for delta + duration; the position is doing exactly what it should.
What this trade did NOT mean
The institution who bought the 2028 LEAPS did not have non-public information about hyperscaler customers or unannounced contracts. They had a thesis on long-duration AI data-center demand sized to a multi-year option. Most UOA LEAPS prints don't print like this — read the methodology piece for the honest aggregate stats.
What we're watching
The position is still open. Catalysts ahead:
- Q1 FY26 APLD earnings (May 2026) — first read on whether Polaris Forge 2 ramp is on schedule.
- Hyperscaler quarterly capex updates (each earnings season through 2026–27) — direct demand signal.
- Additional lease announcements — every new 100MW+ deal pulls the LEAPS thesis forward.
When the institution closes — partial or full — the print will show up on the tape, and we'll surface it.
See the live tape
Upgrade to AIme Premium → to read multi-year LEAPS positioning the morning it prints — usually a leading indicator that an institution sees structural mispricing.
Read more
Other flashback case studies — INTC · ARM · NVDA · AMD · AVGO.
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