Bitcoin Miner Marathon’s Sales Beat Fails to Impress Wall Street

Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital (MARA) beat Wall Street’s fourth-quarter sales expectations, mainly due to a higher bitcoin (BTC) price during the period.

The miner reported fourth-quarter sales of $156.8 million, beating the average analyst estimate of $148.8 million, according to FactSet data. The company said the quarter’s net loss would’ve been $0.02 per share, excluding the effect of the new accounting rules. Analysts estimated earnings per share of $0.04.

Marathon said it sold 56% of the bitcoin it produced during the quarter to fund operating costs.

The company also reiterated its outlook to bring mining power to about 35 to 37 exahash per second (EH/s) in 2024 and 50 EH/s by the end of 2025. “With orders for 22 exahash of miners already placed and options to add an additional 23 exahash to these orders, we believe there may be opportunities to accelerate our growth targets,” the company said in the statement.

Separately, Marathon announced Wednesday that it will start a new Bitcoin layer-2 network called Anduro. The new network will allow for the creation of multiple sidechains to foster innovation within the Bitcoin ecosystem, the company said in the statement. The miner is already developing the first two sidechains, one that will serve the Ordinals community – essentially, NFTs on Bitcoin – while the other will be an Ethereum-compatible chain for asset tokenization.

The move comes after Marathon recently rolled out a new business that is also aimed at helping the Bitcoin ecosystem. It started “Slipstream,” which will make the confirmation of large or “non-standard” bitcoin transactions easier, cutting out the delay and complications users often face.

The shares of the miner fell more than 7% in the post-market trading, after outperforming its peers on Wednesday during the normal trading session. Bitcoin’s price whipsawed today, erasing some of the earlier gains, still 6% higher, at around $60,530. The broader CoinDesk 20 Index added 3.6%, by comparison.