MARA Shares Fall on $1.3B Q1 Loss, Revenue Miss

Shares in MARA Holdings fell after the bell on Monday as the Bitcoin miner’s first-quarter losses deepened from a year ago and its revenues missed analyst estimates.

MARA’s earnings released on Monday reported its revenues for the quarter ending March 31 dropped 18% year-on-year to to $174.6 million, missing Wall Street expectations of $192.7 million.

The company reported a loss of $1.3 billion for the quarter, widening from its $533.4 million loss from the year-ago quarter. Its earnings per share were a loss of $3.31, compared to estimates of a loss of $2.20.

Shares in MARA Holdings (MARA) fell 3.44% in after-hours trading on Monday to $12.93, erasing gains over the trading day, which ended at a gain of 3.48% to $13.39.

MARA Holdings erased gains after the bell on Monday after the company’s earnings missed expectations. Source: Google Finance

MARA stock has fallen 16% over the last 12 months, but has begun to mount a return this year as it has focused on pivoting to build artificial intelligence data centers.

The company reported its first-quarter losses were largely attributed to unrealized losses in its 38,689 Bitcoin treasury as the cryptocurrency fell 23% during the quarter. MARA said it sold more than 15,100 Bitcoin worth $1.1 billion in the final week of March.

MARA said that Bitcoin mining remains the company’s “operational foundation,” even as it continues expanding into AI and high-performance computing to pursue additional revenue streams. 

MARA is one of several US-based Bitcoin miners that have seen profits turn into losses as challenging mining conditions continue to weigh on the sector. 

Bitcoin is trading more than 35% below its all-time high of $126,080, significantly reducing miner revenues per block, while mining difficulty, a measure of how computationally difficult it is to mine a block, has risen nearly 30% over the past year. 

MARA has also lost ground to competitors, falling from the largest Bitcoin miner by market cap to seventh place as rivals have more aggressively expanded into AI.

Related: Saylor signals another Bitcoin buy after hinting at selling in Q1 earnings call 

MARA’s current AI strategy centers on its partnership with Starwood Capital, aimed at converting Bitcoin mining sites into AI and HPC data centers, and Long Ridge Energy & Power, a gas-fired power plant and data center that it acquired for $1.5 billion in late April.

“Our strategy centers on co-locating new infrastructure with existing Bitcoin mining operations,” MARA said. “This approach creates flexibility: we can generate revenue today through Bitcoin mining while preserving the option to redirect power toward AI and critical IT loads as those opportunities mature on the same sites.” 

MARA added that the Long Ridge Energy & Power acquisition could eventually support 600 megawatts of AI computing capacity and that around 90% of its non-hosted mining capacity could be redeployed for AI and IT compute.

The company said it does not have any future plans to purchase additional Bitcoin mining hardware.

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