Bitcoin Miner Marathon’s Shares Tumble After Revenue Unexpectedly Misses Wall Street’s Estimates

Shares of bitcoin miner Marathon Digital (MARA) fell as much as 8% in after-market trading on Thursday after the company’s second-quarter earnings missed Wall Street expectations. The shares have since recouped some of their losses.

Marathon reported revenue of $145.1 million, compared with estimates of $157.9 million, according to FactSet data. The company’s sales took a hit in the second quarter due to various operational challenges that hampered its ability to mine bitcoin and the recent halving that affected the mining industry, Marathon said in its earnings announcement.

“Our BTC production in Q2 2024 was impacted by unexpected equipment failures and transmission line maintenance at the Ellendale facility operated by Applied Digital, increasing global hash rate, and the halving event in April,” the company’s CEO Fred Thiel said in a statement.

However, Marathon said the issues were later fixed and the company reached an all-time high of 31.5 exahashes per second (EH/s) of mining power in the second quarter.

The miner also said that its second-quarter adjusted EBITDA turned into a loss of $85.1 million, from a gain of $35.8 million in the year-ago period, primarily due to negative fair value adjustments on its digital assets and lower BTC mining in the quarter.

Despite all the difficulties, the miner is expected to reach 50 EH/s hashrate by the end of the year and plans to grow it even further next year.

Marathon sold 51% of the bitcoin it mined in the second quarter to cover operating costs. However, it recently announced that it had purchased $100 million worth of bitcoin on the open market and re-embraced its strategy of holding all BTC on its balance sheet. The miner now holds over 20,000 BTC on its balance sheet.

“During the quarter, we aligned the business internally to better align with our growth opportunities, sharpen our strategic focus, strengthen accountability, and increase our speed and agility as we scale,” Thiel said.

Read more: Bitcoin Miner Marathon Buys $100 Million Worth of BTC, Will Once Again Adopt ‘Full HODL’ Strategy