Marathon Digital misses Q1 estimates on bad weather, utility failures

The Bitcoin miner’s top line came below expectations due to “unexpected equipment failures” and worse-than-predicted weather at multiple mining sites.

Bitcoin (BTC) miner Marathon Digital missed Wall Street analysts’ revenue estimates in its first quarter 2024 results, blaming bad weather and equipment failures.

Marathon’s Q1 revenues increased 223% year-on-year to $165.2 million in results shared on May 9 — but it still missed the $193.9 million estimate from investment analyst firm Zacks by 14.80%.

The firm mined 2,811 BTC over the quarter, currently worth $176.7 million, a 28% bump from a year ago but down 34% from the 4,242 BTC mined in Q4 2023.

On a May 9 earnings call, Marathon CEO Fred Thiel said its production was marred by “unexpected equipment failures, predominantly transformers that our third-party hosted sites, utility company transmission line maintenance and a higher than anticipated weather-related curtailments across multiple sites.”

In its earnings report, Marathon said the bad weather hit its Garden City site in central Texas and “other sites.” It acquired the Texas site on April 2.

He added it “mitigated a number of these issues” and was operating at “a record high” of 27 exahashes per second (EH/s)

Thiel clung to its expectation that it would ramp up to 50 EH/s by the end of the year which it bumped up in late April from its prior target of 35 to 37 EH/s.

The BTC miner’s first-quarter net income was up 184% year-on-year to $337.2 million, a $1.26 earnings per share that topped the $0.02 Zacks estimate.

However, its income was boosted by new Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) rules that Marathon adopted allowing it to record the $488.8 million quarterly paper gain it had on the 17,320 BTC it held as of March 31.

Related: Digital Currency Group first-quarter revenue jumps 51% despite GBTC outflows

Marathon Digital (MARA) shares closed 2.19% down on May 9 at $19.65 and fell an additional 1% in after-hours trading, according to Google Finance.

Its share price is down 14.30% year-to-date, it hit a 2024 high of $31 on Feb. 28.

Earlier this week on May 7, S&P Dow Jones Indices said Marathon would join its S&P SmallCap 600 index which tracks 600 United States companies with a market cap between $1 billion and $6.7 billion recording profits both in the most recent quarter and the last four quarters.