MARA and Block rally while CoreWeave tumbles on margin pressure

Earnings season is wrapping up with a mixed bag of results across crypto miners, AI infrastructure plays and fintech names, including MARA Holdings (MARA), TerraWulf (WULF), CoreWeave (CRWV) and Block (XYZ).

Bitcoin BTC$66,085.71 has remained relatively flat around $67,000 during Asia and European hours, with limited movement spilling over into other crypto related equities.

MARA Holdings jumped 16% to $9.80 after striking a deal with Starwood Capital to convert select bitcoin mining facilities into AI focused data centers. The partners expect to deliver about 1 gigawatt of capacity in the near term, with plans to scale beyond 2.5 gigawatts.

The pivot reflects a broader shift among miners looking to monetize power access as AI compute demand surges, following Bitfarms (BITF) and Cipher Digital (CIFR) amongst others.

TerraWulf is trading 3.5% lower at $17 after its Q4 print, with revenue down due to lower bitcoin production and transitional GAAP optics.

However, executives emphasized that the key story is the ramp in contracted high performance computing revenue. The company has expanded from one site a year ago to five today and expects about 2.9 gigawatts of gross capacity by year end, according to head of digital assets VanEck, Matthew Sigel.

CoreWeave shares are down 12% despite revenue of $1.57 billion, beating expectations of $1.53 billion. The company reported weaker than forecasted Q1 revenue guidance, in addition to an increase in capital expenditure, which raised concerns about profitability and cash burn. EPS came in at -$0.89 versus -$0.68 expected, a 31% miss.

Block is up 20% after announcing it will cut more than 40% of its workforce, reducing headcount to about 6,000. While management pointed to AI driven efficiencies, investors are also weighing longer term margin pressure from stablecoin based payment rails.

The company guided Q1 operating income to $600M versus $574M expected, forecast Q1 gross profit of $2.8B versus $2.72B consensus and raised full year gross profit, according to Sigel.