Mara Holdings rallied early Thursday after the bitcoin miner late Wednesday posted a major earnings surprise. The price of bitcoin rebounded modestly Thursday.
Mara Holdings, formerly known as Marathon Digital, reported earnings of $1.24 per share, roughly doubling from 66 cents per share last year. Revenues jumped 37% to a record $214.4 million.
Analysts polled by FactSet expected a loss of 13 cents per share on about $188 million in revenue.
Mara in Q4 mined 2,492 bitcoin, down from 3,490 for the period last year. The company purchased 15,574 bitcoin and did not sell any coins during the quarter.
Despite the production dip, Mara increased its total blocks won by 25% to 703 blocks in Q4, from 562 blocks in Q4 2023.
The company's hash rate increased 115% via strategic acquisitions and expanded access to electrical power. The hash rate is a measure of computational mining power.
Mara's bitcoin holdings increased 197% to 44,983 bitcoin at year-end. Of that total, 10,374 bitcoin were lent to third parties or utilized as collateral for borrowings.
AI Opportunity
Mara said it is exploring artificial intelligence and ways that it can become a leader in the artificial intelligence space. The next AI wave, according to Mara, will revolve around inference and processing user requests. Jefferies forecasts that AI inference workloads will grow to 38% by 2027 from 12% in 2022, which Mara believes will drive the vast majority of AI-related revenue.
The bitcoin miner believes it has a role to play in that next wave, as inference requests require distributed, low-latency and energy-efficient infrastructure closer to end users. LLM training, which occurred during the first AI wave, is primarily concentrated among hyperscaled data centers.
Elsewhere, chipmaker Nvidia late Wednesday topped Q4 estimates, which was the first quarter to include sales for its next-generation AI processor, called Blackwell.
MARA Stock, Bitcoin Price
MARA stock jumped 5.5% Thursday. The stock is attempting to find a bottom after a three-month retreat left shares almost 60% below a November high. MARA stock on Tuesday fell to its lowest level since December 2023.
Meanwhile, bitcoin late Thursday traded around $84,000, up from its Wednesday low near $82,000 — bitcoin's lowest price since Nov. 10, CoinMarketCap data shows. Bitcoin has tumbled this week following Friday reports that crypto exchange Bybit suffered a $1.5 billion ethereum hack after a planned transfer was manipulated. CEO Ben Zhou noted on social media that Bybit is solvent even if the hacked tokens are not recovered, as all client assets are backed one-to-one.
The world's largest cryptocurrency has held below the $100,000 level through most of February. Bitcoin hit a record high above $109,000 on Jan. 20 as President Donald Trump's inauguration signaled a more crypto-friendly administration.
However, Trump's tariff plans and uncertainty for the next Federal Reserve rate cut have stalled momentum, despite digital asset executive orders and pro-crypto appointments.
You can follow Harrison Miller for more stock news and updates on X/Twitter @IBD_Harrison
