MARA Holdings shares fell after the bell on Monday as the bitcoin miner’s first-quarter loss was even worse than a year ago and revenue fell short of analysts’ expectations.
MARA’s financial results released Monday showed revenue for the quarter that ended March 31 fell 18% from a year earlier to $174.6 million, below Wall Street expectations of $192.7 million.
The company reported a loss of $1.3 billion in the quarter, widening from a loss of $533.4 million in the year-ago period. Earnings per share were a loss of $3.31, compared to the expected loss of $2.20.
MARA Holdings (MARA) shares fell 3.44% to $12.93 in after-hours trading on Monday, erasing the trading day’s gains and rising 3.48% to $13.39.
MARA Holdings erased gains after the bell on Monday as the company’s profits fell short of expectations. sauce: Google Finance
MARA stock has fallen 16% in the past 12 months, but has started to rebound this year as the company focuses on building artificial intelligence data centers.
The company reported that its losses in the first quarter were primarily due to financial unrealized losses of 38,689 Bitcoin as the cryptocurrency depreciated by 23% during the quarter. MARA announced that it sold over 15,100 Bitcoins worth $1.1 billion in the last week of March.
MARA said Bitcoin mining remains its “foundation of operations” even as it continues to expand into AI and high-performance computing to pursue additional revenue streams.
MARA is one of several US-based Bitcoin miners whose profits have turned into losses as difficult mining conditions continue to weigh on the sector.
Bitcoin is trading more than 35% below its all-time high of $126,080, and miner revenue per block has fallen significantly, while mining difficulty, a measure of the computational difficulty of mining a block, has increased nearly 30% over the past year.
MARA has also lost ground to competitors, falling from the largest Bitcoin miner by market capitalization to seventh place as competitors move more aggressively into AI.
Related: Saylor signals further Bitcoin purchases after hinting at selling during Q1 earnings announcement
MARA’s current AI strategy focuses on partnerships with Starwood Capital, which aims to transform Bitcoin mining sites into AI and HPC data centers, and Long Ridge Energy & Power, a gas-fired power plant and data center it acquired in late April for $1.5 billion.
“Our strategy is focused on coexisting our new infrastructure with our existing Bitcoin mining operations,” MARA said. “This approach gives us flexibility; we can generate revenue through Bitcoin mining today while maintaining the option to redirect power to AI and critical IT loads as the opportunity matures on the same site.”
MARA added that the acquisition of Long Ridge Energy & Power could ultimately support 600 megawatts of AI computing capacity and could redeploy approximately 90% of non-hosted mining capacity to AI and IT computing.
The company said it has no plans to purchase additional Bitcoin mining hardware in the future.
