Marathon Digital Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
July 29, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Q2 achieved record highs in revenue, adjusted EBITDA, net income of $808.2 M and May block production, with energized hash rate up 82% to 57.4 EH/s, plus completion of a behind-the-meter Texas data center and surpassing 50,000 BTC holdings.
  • Positive Sentiment: Issued $950 M of 0% convertible senior notes due 2032, significantly strengthening the balance sheet for opportunistic Bitcoin purchases, debt repurchases, M&A and general corporate needs.
  • Positive Sentiment: Announced strategic partnerships with Google-backed TAE Power Solutions and LG-backed Pato AI to develop grid-responsive load balancing for next-gen AI, and laid groundwork for regional HQs in Saudi Arabia and France with a global pipeline exceeding 3 GW.
  • Negative Sentiment: Management cautioned the Bitcoin market feels “frothy”, noting ample supply from long-term holders could exert downward pressure if buying demand subsides.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Transferred over 2,000 BTC to Two Prime’s SMA and currently has about one-third of its Bitcoin actively managed across lending, trading and structured strategies to generate additional yield while maintaining liquidity.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Marathon Digital Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the MARA Q2 twenty twenty five Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Robert Samuels, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Robert Samuels
VP - Investor Relations at MARA Holdings

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to Mara's second quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. Thank you for joining us today. With me on today's call are our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Fred Thiel and our Chief Financial Officer, Salman Khan. Today's call includes forward looking statements, including those about our growth plans, liquidity and financial performance.

Robert Samuels
VP - Investor Relations at MARA Holdings

These involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. We disclaim any obligation to update these statements except as required by law. For more details, see the Risk Factors section of our latest 10 ks and other SEC filings. We'll also reference non GAAP financial measures like adjusted EBITDA and return on capital employed, which we believe are important indicators of MARA's operating performance because they exclude certain items that we do not believe directly reflect our core operations. Please see our earnings release for reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures.

Robert Samuels
VP - Investor Relations at MARA Holdings

We hope you got the chance to read our shareholder letter and look forward to your feedback. We'll begin with some prepared remarks from Fred and Salmon. After their comments, we are going to be conducting an analyst interview with management. Today's session will be conducted by Chris Bredler, analyst at Rosenblatt Securities. And with that out of the way, I'm going to turn the call over to Fred to kick things off. Fred?

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. No matter how you look at it, q two was a record breaking quarter for Mara, setting new highs in revenues, adjusted EBITDA, net income, energized hash rate, lead efficiency, and blocks produced in a single month in May. Beyond performance, we continued to invest in the infrastructure that underpins our business from scaling low cost, flexible load data centers to exploring international opportunities in regions with abundant energy and growing demand for sovereign compute. This quarter, in support of our strategy to support the load balancing needs of AI HPC data centers, We announced strategic partnerships with TAE Power Solutions backed by Google and Pato AI backed by LG. Together, we're codeveloping grid responsive load balancing platforms that support the next generation of AI infrastructure, enabling us to monetize our energy and compute capabilities across broader markets.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

As part of our low cost energy strategy, we completed construction of a new behind the meter data center at our wind powered site in Hanford County, Texas. This gives us access to low cost power directly at the source, improving our margin structure and boosting energy efficiency. And subsequent to quarter end, our holdings surpassed 50,000 Bitcoin, a milestone that solidifies Mara as the second largest Bitcoin holder globally. More importantly, this is a treasury we built through disciplined infrastructure development, scaled operations, and focused execution. Now while some people may see us as a Bitcoin treasury company given the size of our Bitcoin holdings, we don't consider ourselves as one.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

We're innovators, builders, and operators. We're actively managing our Bitcoin holdings to create long term value for shareholders. Bitcoin remains our reserve asset, and we will continue to build on our holdings, whether through production or opportunistic purchases depending on market conditions. To that end, we made a minority investment in TwoPrime, a digital asset management firm specializing in risk optimized yield strategies, who've been managing a portion of our holdings. We will continue to make prudent decisions around allocation and risk exposure based on broader macro and market conditions.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

Regarding the current price of Bitcoin, our view is that things feel a little frothy at the moment. While there's persistent demand for Bitcoin, this is balanced by an ample supply owing to long term holders taking profits from Bitcoin held in some cases since the earliest years of Bitcoin's infancy. Supply is currently being absorbed relatively well. But if the buying demand were to subside, we could see downward pressure as sellers attempt to lock in gains at these high price points. With our recent convertible notes offering, we have significantly bolstered our balance sheet to have the flexibility to act across a range of strategic priorities, including opportunistic Bitcoin purchases, debt repurchase, m and a, and general corporate purposes.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

Whether Bitcoin goes up or Bitcoin goes down, we believe we are positioned to benefit. We're positioning MARA at the forefront of what's increasingly being recognized as digital energy or the use of technologies and data to make energy systems more efficient, reliable, and sustainable. This strategic focus enables us to capture value at the intersection of computing energy, a convergence that will define next generation infrastructure economics. We're exploring ways to design infrastructure for hybrid workloads like AI inference, which is a rapidly emerging which is rapidly emerging as the dominant workload in AI infrastructure. Another area that we believe will drive value is sovereign edge infrastructure and allowing enterprises and public sector customers to have jurisdictional and operational control over data, compute, and AI outputs.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

We see growing demand for compute infrastructure that is geographically sovereign, energy aligned, and secure by design. We believe the addressable market is accelerating, particularly in Europe and emerging markets where data sovereignty and energy efficiency are critical factors in purchasing decisions. Our intent is to extend Mara's vertically integrated compute platform into edge environments that meet the unique needs of latency sensitive, compliance driven, and workload diverse use cases. In this regard, we are working closely with government officials and major energy partners to extend our reach into global markets. As part of this effort sorry.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

As part of these efforts, we've been laying the groundwork for a regional headquarters in Saudi Arabia, and we have established an entity in France as a European headquarters. We believe this approach will provide us access to low cost energy by partnering with energy companies and infrastructure capital providers to lower our capital commitments. Through these efforts, we built a global growth pipeline exceeding three gigawatts, positioning us to scale efficiency efficiently across key markets. When you put it all together, as inference increasingly becomes the dominant cost center in AI, control over geography, latency, and energy cost becomes a strategic advantage. We'll continue to invest here to ensure Mara is well positioned to meet this demand.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

We're excited to host our first ever Investor Day this fall. This inaugural event will offer a deep dive into our long term road map with insights into how we are activating our digital energy strategies across mining, infrastructure, and AI. To join us, please reach out to our investor relations team. To wrap up, q two was a milestone quarter. We grew our treasury, expanded our infrastructure, and proved once again that Mara is far more than a Bitcoin mining company.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

We are the category leader in Bitcoin mining. But our value lies in the infrastructure that underpins it, infrastructure that we're now leveraging to shape the future of compute. Thank you for your continued support as we build what is next. Now I'll turn it over to Salman for additional insights on the quarter.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

Thank you, Fred. In q two, we delivered record financial performance driven by strong execution and an improving Bitcoin price environment. Over the past year, we've remained laser focused on aligning shareholder interests with Bitcoin ownership through disciplined operational execution. Between 2024 and 2025, our Bitcoin holdings surged by over a 170%, going from approximately 18,500 BTC to nearly 50,000 Bitcoin. During the same period, our Energized Hash rate expanded by 82%, increasing from 35 31.5 x Hash per second to 57.4.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

And the market value of our Bitcoin holdings increased by more than $4,200,000,000 or 362% year over year. Let me provide some financial highlights for the quarter. We broke some records. Revenues increased 64% to 238.5% excuse me. Revenues increased 64% to $238,500,000 from 145,100,000.0 in the 2024.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

This was the highest revenue quarter in the company history. The increase was primarily driven by a 50% increase in the average Bitcoin price, which contributed $77,000,000. We produced an average of 25.9 BTC each day during q two compared to 22.9 BTC each day in 2024, which resulted in 300 more BTC earned. Furthermore, we saw a 52 increase in the number of blocks won in the quarter compared to the second quarter of last year. May 2025 was the highest single month in our history.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

We reported net income of $808,200,000 or $1.84 per diluted share in the quarter compared to a net loss of 199,700,000.0 or $0.72 per diluted share in the second quarter of last year. We recorded a $1,200,000,000 gain on digital assets, including BTC receivable during the 2025. This reflects the impact of Bitcoin holdings on our balance sheet. Now let's turn to cost structure. Our purchased energy cost per Bitcoin for the quarter was $33,735 per coin, which we believe is among the lowest in the sector.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

And our daily cost per petahash per day improved 24% year over year. This improvement reflects our growing fleet of owned and operated sites, which now account for approximately 70% of our total hash rate. That transition continues to pay dividends both operationally and financially. Now let me talk about our Bitcoin holdings and asset management. Mara is the second largest corporate public holder of Bitcoin, and we seek to generate returns on our holdings as Bitcoin price appreciates.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

Our dedicated Bitcoin asset management team made up of seasoned professionals with decades of experience in hedge funds and crypto asset management actively pursues risk adjusted return opportunities to generate cash flows that support our operating expenses. We deploy Bitcoin across a diversified portfolio of investment strategies, including lending, trading, and other structured arrangements designed to unlock incremental value. Our approach combines the potential for long term Bitcoin appreciation with disciplined efforts to generate return while managing risk. To a lesser extent, we have also used Bitcoin as a collateral to borrow underlines of credit. Let me deep dive dive dive down a little bit.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

During the quarter, we entered into a separately managed account or SMA agreement with TwoPrime, which is an external full service registered adviser, and transferred 500 Bitcoin in 2025, followed by an additional 1,500 Bitcoin in 2025. As of 06/30/2025, a total of 2,004 Bitcoin were held and actively managed within that SMA. The 500 Bitcoin transferred in May 2025 generated an additional 4 Bitcoin or additional $400,000 in a short period of time. We manage the SMA to generate returns while limiting risk, and maintain and it maintains liquidity with short term notice followed following an initial one year lockup. In addition, our Bitcoin asset management team may, from time to time, engage in various Bitcoin denominated trades, such as options, futures, swaps, covered calls, and spot transactions to generate additional returns on our Bitcoin holdings.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

I want to highlight that subsequent to quarter end, we issued $950,000,000 of 0% convertible senior notes due 2032. With this upsized convertible notes offering, we have significantly bolstered our balance sheet. This additional liquidity gives us the flexibility to act strategically, whether by acquiring more Bitcoin, funding m and a, or repaying debt. Its purpose is not to fund day to day operations. We're under no pressure to deploy capital immediately.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

Instead, we're positioned to act in response to market conditions in order to maximize long term shareholder value. We are different from other BTC treasury companies, as Fred mentioned. As a core business is bit it it our core business is Bitcoin mining and large scale data center operations even as we hold the second largest Bitcoin worldwide amongst public companies. Looking ahead, that sets us apart what look looking ahead, what sets us apart is our thought leadership, worldwide operational scale, and capital and operational efficiency. As of 06/30/2025, we held over $5,000,000,000 in liquid assets, and with approximately 1,000,000,000 raised since, gives us flexibility to fund domestic growth and pursue international expansion.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

Unlike passive treasury companies, we treat our Bitcoin as a productive risk managed asset. Through a disciplined asset management strategy, our holdings strengthen the balance sheet and help fund operations, which we believe will enhance long term shareholder value. We don't just hold Bitcoin. We put it to work. Finally, we remain on track to reach our 75 exahash quo by end of the year with all miners secured and funded except for $150,000,000 that we expect to pay in the second half.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

We are laying the groundwork for 2026 and beyond. We're we're executing on a pipeline of energy infrastructure projects both in The US and internationally, and we expect these investments to expand our capabilities while costs continue to be low. With that, I'll turn over to Chris Brendler from Rosenblatt Securities to begin our management interview. Chris?

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Hey. Thanks, Ahmad, and and thanks so much for inviting me to do this. This is super exciting to be able to dig through the results with you guys. And, also, to, you know, sort get update on the strategy. A lot going on in Bitcoin and and crypto these days.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

So I guess I wanted to start with with the mining business, the core mining business. And, maybe for Fred, you know, just really, give me an update on, you know, sort of current thinking around mining versus HPC. We've seen a lot of competitors increasingly look to to move their power assets towards high performance compute and potentially could sort of see a slowing of of Bitcoin mining competition, but at the same time, you know, that the network cash rate is is reaching new highs again even though we're in the middle of a of a pretty hot summer. So, we'd love to hear your your sort of 10,000 foot view on on big the Bitcoin mining business as it stands today. I I think Could be.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

Thank you, Chris, for joining us today. I I think the as you look at the marketplace today, there's a shift occurring. You have companies who previously were kind of in the mid tier, of Bitcoin mining, who have been working on a transition to HPC trying to leverage, their energy assets. And you've been seeing really a couple of things happen. For one thing is not many of them have been able to secure contracts with hyperscalers, and some of them have, moved towards essentially trying to go out and, get customers, enterprise customers, directly, who will host, with the more leverage, their capacity.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

We personally think that that business, is a over time going to be very price, competitive and margins are gonna compress. Because in most cases, Bitcoin miners are really just providing power. And if they are building buildings and making the investments, which according to some analysts can be as high as, you know, millions and millions of dollars per megawatt, well over $10,000,000 a megawatt, it's gonna be hard for them, to acquire customers. Many enterprise customers wanna work with people who have hosted enterprise customers before and understand how to run those types of data centers, and most Bitcoin miners don't. So you still haven't seen really any large number of these companies, transition successfully, HPC outside of a a handful.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

At the same time, you're seeing new entrants come to this market. You know, you have Tether coming in. You have Bitmain, the single largest hardware vendor, effectively, taking control of a company called Tango, transferring hash rate to that company and becoming the number three, four, or five largest Bitcoin miner, indirect competition with their customers. Tethr themselves have stated a goal that they wanna be the largest Bitcoin miner in the world. So you're seeing a whole new entrant of people coming into this marketplace and some people leaving the market.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

We remain very focused, on being a Bitcoin miner, but we're also very focused on looking at where you have the convergence of inference AI and the needs of enterprises, especially around sovereign data. And we believe this is a unique area where we're positioned to be quite successful in the long term, and that's why we've been focusing our efforts in developing relationships with sovereigns, with governments, with energy companies in regions where we think there's going to be a huge amount of investment that we can take advantage of to help grow our business along those lines, while at the same time continue to grow our Bitcoin mining business. As we mentioned on the call, we have a pipeline of, three gigawatts plus of power, and we intend to continue to grow, at a very, you know, fast rate while also growing our business around sovereign data.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

That's that's that's very helpful. Guess, let's I'm gonna drill down a little bit on the sovereign topic. You you mentioned in your prepared remarks the potential for a headquarters in Saudi Arabia as well as France and, you know, sort of mentioning that or highlighting the fact that location was important when it comes to inference.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

Mhmm.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Does that suggest that you, you know, potentially will enter this business directly, or it it seems like more likely you would do it through partnerships is what I'm guessing.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

Exactly. The focus here is through partnerships, partnerships with energy companies. Some of people on this call may recall that four years ago at Mining Disrupt, I did a presentation that most people found a little startling, which was I basically said that Bitcoin miners will either have to become partners with energy companies or energy companies will take over their businesses. And I believe that, unless you as a Bitcoin miner own your own energy generation, you have to become a partner with the energy company, not a customer of the energy company. And so if you look at some of these regions, Europe, Gulf Region, for example, you have very top down driven energy companies who are typically government owned or government run or have a substantial percentage of ownership by government.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

And you have to partner with the government, partner with the companies. And in these regions, there is a big demand for sovereign data and AI because the enterprises in those regions do not wanna have their data in clouds that are either owned and operated by The US or the Chinese or, people outside of their regions. And so they want that data residing in their countries within their borders, in close proximity to their enterprises. And we believe that partnership of working with government and, sovereign controlled energy companies, and operating data centers within their borders to provide them with, sovereignty over data and AI, is a combination of factors that, could make us very successful.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Makes sense. Is this, would this be similar to the experience and and the success you've had UAE where it's a joint venture, or are you are you envisioning a a different type of partnership when you think about these kind of relationships?

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

That's great that you mentioned The UAE. So when we did that transaction, that was very focused on Bitcoin mining and remains one of the most successful Bitcoin mining data centers that we built from a perspective of uptime and operations. It's, you know, an amazing site and is clearly still one of the leading immersion Bitcoin mining data centers in the world. That taught us a lot about working with sovereigns, especially in that region. It taught us what the right type of partnerships are and how to structure those partnerships.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

And what you'll see going forward is something a little bit different, where you see the energy companies being, more involved in the deal, and also where you see us having a greater degree of control, over the terms and the relationships.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Great. Okay. I I and I do remember that presentation you gave four years ago that was was pretty pretty prescient for sure and definitely was surprising to think that energy companies would be directly working in Bitcoin mining space, but that seems a lot more likely today for sure. Speaking of Bitcoin mining, I wanted to ask a question. When it comes to acquiring power assets, and, you know, it seems like the Mara's own path has has slowed a little bit just in terms of of growth.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

You know, I feel like based on the conversations and your the pipeline you disclosed just now, there's a lot going on. And is that because you're you're trying to balance, you know, for your needs, with your investment? Or is it, increasing competition from hyperscalers that are are is is impacting the the the the queue for for power assets?

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

Well, we wouldn't have a pipeline of three gigawatts if we were competing with hyperscalers tooth and nail for power assets. We made a fairly concerted decision to focus on growing with the right types of assets versus just growing at any price. Growth at any price, can be dangerous. You know, in a market where Bitcoin price is running high, and where hash rate is remaining relatively stable, because of constraints of either capital, or compute or or capacity, you can afford to grow in network attached mode. And, you know, if you recall, we started as an asset light company.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

The reason we were successful in growing to be the largest Bitcoin miner in the world using an asset light strategy was there were enough constraints in the market that you could grow most rapidly by controlling compute because there was ample capacity, there was ample access to capital, the three c's that constrain our business. Today, it's different. Today, if you are looking at using redetached energy at an average price of anywhere from 4 and a half to 5¢ a kilowatt hour, you are forced to replace your machines every three years, which is a significant capital cost. And as you start looking at a halving in 2028 and another one after that in 2032, you really have to look at controlling your energy assets or being a partner with energy companies where they can contribute energy and you contribute compute. That's the only way companies will be successful in the long run-in this business.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

And so we've been very focused on executing the strategy of partnerships and controlling energy assets. And, yes, it takes a while to get that started, and we've spent a lot of time this year focused on getting that process started and initiated. And we've built the pipeline now. We've built the relationships, and we're in the phase where we start to begin to execute. And I think this will feed our growth over the next two to three years quite significantly.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Excellent. And and and, I don't wanna get, you know, sort of breaking, you know, sort of undisclosed ground here, but is it safe to assume that, maybe the majority of that three gigawatt pipeline is outside The United States?

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

You know, that would be undisclosed. So I think you can reference, you know, what we've said before that by 2028, about 50% of our revenue would come from international, and we're still focused on that.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Perfect. We'll have to stay tuned. I wanted to ask one more question on the on the Bitcoin mining business before moving on, which was actually, maybe two more, which was I don't I don't know where the industry stands from a hydro cooling perspective. It feels like it's it's relatively new technology for for large scale miners. You know, what are your from the s 23 from Bitmain or or similar models and and and pivoting to hydrocooling?

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

Yeah. I think, you know, early generations of hydrocooling had lots of challenges, leaky pipes, large consumption of water, you know, which is a no no in many places, and a lot of just glitches. I think, you know, Bitmain has most probably figured out how to do this more effectively now. I think the other difference is the form factor for the hydro has changed. They're now doing proper, you know, two u rack mount devices, which means you can start using similar infrastructure, for Bitcoin mining as AI, which, you know, as we've been talking all along, is what we view the future as being a mix of AI and Bitcoin mining in the same data centers.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

You know, we, in UAE, for example, chose, immersion technology because at the time, hydro, wasn't significantly developed in a way that was reliable, to operate in those regions. Today, I think you can go either way. You can continue to go immersion or hydro. I think what's going to be very interesting in the future, one of the things we've learned, with our two pick technology is there is this very interesting middle ground around cold plate technology, that potentially is the ideal transition, which is slightly different than liquid on chip, which is how the hydro works. So I think we have yet another evolution to go through in this market before the world moves to the need to go to full immersion on AI.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

The heat densities in the next couple of generations will start getting to a point where you're going to have to go to full immersion. But today, you can still make it with, you know, liquid on chip and eventually cold plate technology there.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Okay. Makes sense. I would like to talk about the the Bitcoin mining in the quarter for for a second. You know, one of the things that analysts have to realize is that these things could ebb and flow unless there is some randomness to Bitcoin mining operations, and sometimes you have good months and bad months. And this quarter in particular, the market share kind of bounced around quite a bit between April and May was was fantastic, and then it came back down in June.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Was there any, you know, sort of structural uptime or downtime or curtailment that have impacted those numbers significantly, or is it just total randomness?

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

I think, you know, you can look at the year and look at seasonality. We have a large amount of our production in Texas. As you get into June, you start getting into warmer months and curtailment starts happening. There are also things like certain maintenance cycles and other things that that can impact, you know, any given site from, from time to time. Definitely, May was an amazing month where, you know, we benefited from the randomness, very well.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

But, generally, we have found that, when we look at to what extent luck as it's called in our industry, impacts us, we have over quite a long period, had, you know, minor degree of quite positive luck. But that being said, you know, as you get into the summer months, you just have to expect a greater percentage of curtailment, if you're operating in states where, that's a requirement, which it is in Texas.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Sure. It makes sense. Okay. So that answer a big picture question. I love to get your current thoughts on, and you mentioned already in your prepared remarks was the Bitcoin treasury strategy companies and their success and, you know, through this frothiness that we're seeing to be in with companies can in in not only announce a Bitcoin treasury strategy, but other tokens and crypto assets are now beginning lots of investor attention.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

You know, I I think there's a there's a certainly a a narrative here that Marathon is different or Emera is different. So I'd to hear your current thoughts on, you know, the the Bitcoin treasuries and and how, we we should see that difference play out in the in in market values over time between Mara and and some of the competitors.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

I'm I'm not sure who to attribute this quote to, but somebody at a recent event that I was at basically said Bitcoin treasury companies are the new ICOs. If you go back to kinda 2017. As you said, you know, Bitcoin treasury companies, you can basically say you're going to put whatever coin it is into a bit into a treasury company, raise money for it, and get investors. You know, there's even one for BNB coin that was announced recently. So I I think there's a lot of money going at these things.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

I think a number of analysts and reporters have written about the fact that, you know, strategy has done an amazing job, of creating the space. You know, kudos to Michael and his team, for what they've done there. But any advantage in any market starts disappearing when you have lots of companies going after it. I think it was earlier this week, somebody published $82,000,000,000 has been raised for Bitcoin treasury companies that are going to hit the market or, sorry, crypto treasury companies, writ large across all the different coins. And, you know, they can't all be successful.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

And what happens to those companies that are holding coins when their MNAV goes to one or worst case, like what happened to Grayscale during a period, the MNAV goes negative? They likely will have to sell those coins. So my concern and my, I think the concern of many people regarding the frothiness in the market today is you have a lot of people buying Bitcoin with other people's money. And if Bitcoin, especially for the newer treasury companies, sees a decline, they may be challenged, and people may, sell them the stock to get their money out. Realize that, you know, Bitcoin treasury companies are not like an ETF.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

What people have to do to try and save their money is sell the stock in those companies. And I think, with as many companies doing this as there are, a certain percentage of them will likely fail. And so that will negatively impact the price of Bitcoin. You know, we've had wallets from 2011. I think this wallet that Galaxy recently traded, $9,000,000,000, for 80,000 coins, I think it was.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

You know, people are selling at the peak. When the whales that have been holding are selling, it tells you something. You know? Historically, whales always sell leading into the peak. They sell into the top in the market.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

And every Bitcoin I mean, 98 something percent of all Bitcoin are in profit today. And the people who are buying and, looking to build treasury companies, are buying at the absolute top of the market. And at some point, demand, will waver. And you have to remember that Bitcoin from an institutional perspective still is a risk asset. It typically, while follows m two on the asset side, liquidity, it also, correlates to inversely to the dollar.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

And to the equity markets, it's quite correlated at times. And so I think, if we see a deterioration in the economy, if we see deterioration in the equity markets, and, we start seeing an improvement in the dollar, you may have an environment where Bitcoin, could see a drop. And, you know, I'm not saying it's gonna drop 80%, but it could drop 20%, 30%. Great buying opportunity for many. But you've, again, got a lot of people who have been holding on for the right time to sell.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

And if you see any momentum to the downside, you may see a lot of selling which will just accelerate things. So I think you have to be prudent, and it's it's important. You know, the these treasury companies are, again, a bit like ICOs, and I think that too much of a good thing, ruins the returns for everybody. So, I would expect you'd start seeing the MNAV on these things to eventually just hit one. And at that point, you're better off holding spot.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Yeah. Makes sense. How do you how do you view the the the Merus stack differently? I mean, it's gotten very large now. It's, you know, over 50,000 coin, over over $5,000,000,000. And, you know, I think it's not really, you know, sort of tagged for growth purposes. I think you're it's been pretty clear this is a longer term investment. But do you foresee, you know, sort of building forever, or is there is there a point where you would think about potentially selling some of your Bitcoin, just given how large it's becoming relative to your market cap?

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

I think there's there's unlike some treasury companies, there's always a point at which, we would sell some Bitcoin. There may be a a point where, for example, the appreciation of Bitcoin and the volatility of Bitcoin decreases to the point where it operates more like gold, for example, at which case the cost of us for the company of holding Bitcoin can be such that our average weight of of capital to run the business by leveraging equity would become too prohibitive, and it would make sense for us to, like we did in 2023, sell Bitcoin from production to pay for operating expenses. That's always an option. You know, we are a Bitcoin company. We believe in Bitcoin for the long term.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

And as long as Bitcoin continues to perform, we have to do what's right for our shareholders, which is fiduciaries, is leverage Bitcoin while it continues to perform and if need be, sell Bitcoin.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Makes sense. And so you there was some good commentary, I think it was, more on on some on-site about actively managing the Bitcoin treasury and and yield strategies to prime. Maybe get us an update on on the thinking around two prime and and how large you know, how how much of your Bitcoin stack are you willing to to try to monetize? And does the active management include hedging strategies? And I know there was a, a collar strategy in the past.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Is that something that's on the table if you think that it's getting a little extended, or are you still more focused on yield than actual hedging?

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

I'll I'll throw that to Salman.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

Chris, when you think about our Bitcoin treasury, as you mentioned, 50,000 stack of coin sitting on our balance sheet, we we are looking at not just capital appreciation from a long term perspective as a treasury asset, but also we want to create a yield and earn cash flows from that Bitcoin that's sitting on our balance sheet while it continues to appreciate for a longer duration of time. So it's a two pronged approach, and it's a financial decision. As as Fred mentioned, we are a Bitcoin mining company, and we produce Bitcoin on a day to day basis unlike treasury companies who have to go and buy Bitcoin from the open market. We don't have to do that. As as we alluded to our we we can buy we can produce it cheaper than than going out and buying Bitcoin from the open market.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

Having said that, you know, we this is as a this industry is much newer than other industries. This is just the beginning. And and we have tested multiple investment strategies over the last two years by testing the market, testing different partners, and and placing Bitcoin with parties that we trust, and we have verified their credit credibility from a delivery standpoint. And as a result of that evolution, now we have about a little bit shy of one third of our Bitcoin that is activated, as we call it, in the active bit Bitcoin asset management strategy. With that, you know, it includes, I would say hedging is, when you say hedging, typically, people think hedge means that we're trying to protect from the price risk.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

That's not the objective. The objective is to create cash flows. So that could have covered calls, that could have multiple trading strategies where we either in house or through our investment and partnership at two prime, we go out and we squeeze value out of the Bitcoin. As as I've mentioned in the prepared remarks, you know, within a very short period of one and a half months from 500 Bitcoin, we were able to produce 4 Bitcoin. And look, it's it's it's infancy stage, newer industry, but we're testing these different strategies successfully.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

And the plan would be as we test the waters, we continue to expand from here step by step basis, while keeping in mind the fiduciary responsibility that we have with the stack on our balance sheet that our stockholders own, by being a a stockholder in this company.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Excellent. That's that's fantastic, Simon. Thank you. Fred, I wanna go back to sort of the the higher bigger picture stuff and think about diversification beyond Bitcoin mining. I think that was a push at one time to to try to diversify the top line and and be less reliant on on the ebbs and flows of the mining business.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Where do you stand today on on on diversifying the business? And is Bitcoin treasury yield strategies part of that diversification?

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

I mean, Bitcoin treasury yield is a way to generate yield off of an asset that we have. It's kind of like, you think of old money. You know, what what does old money do? They buy real estate, and then they live off the yield of their real estate. If we have enough Bitcoin, you can generate a yield off of it that it covers our a good portion of our operating expenses, then that takes pressure off of the other businesses so that we can continue to invest in diversifying revenue.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

So we are focused on investing significantly, in growing our business around sovereign data, and Inference AI. As we come to a point where we're launching things and, announcing things, it'll become quite clear. But for the moment, you know, I'll just leave it to say that we're very focused on building, the next leg of, Mara so that for the future, we can leverage these great assets that we have, continue to grow them, and gain synergies from them as we also add additional revenue streams that let us leverage some of the benefits of those assets going forward well beyond the period we're having reduced Bitcoin rewards to much lower levels.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

I'd imagine that would include, you know, sort of along with your international expansion goals as well as you as you sort of expand beyond the the core US mining movements.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

Yeah. Absolutely.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Okay. One last quick one for Hey.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

Hey, Chris.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

Chris, just just to just to add to that, Chris, the diversification of revenues, There are two ways of unlocking value. One is diversification of revenues, and the other way is to reduce cost. Just a quick reminder for our listeners today that Mara started with asset light strategy years ago, and we grew very quickly over the years. And last year, we pivoted towards asset heavy strategy where we exited the year with 70% owned and operated. The result of that was that we reduced our electricity cost per coin in our own mining operations to one of the lowest in the sector.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

Now we still have a portion of our business that is tied to asset light strategy from our historical contracts, and and there's opportunity to reduce costs over time as those contracts expire. And and as Fred has had alluded to last time, and we've talked about low cost strategy, the diversification doesn't stop there. We also went out and bought a wind farm that we just provided update on our prepared remarks a few moments ago. Those wind farms, just to just to pause on that or double click on it, in a traditional Bitcoin mining operation with grid connected, compare that to the wind farm intermittent power that just consumes power when the electricity is close to low cost electricity. Marginal cost is almost zero.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

At that point in time, your all in cash operating costs of a traditional Bitcoin miner versus a wind farm is about 75 to 85% lower than a traditional Bitcoin mining operations. So when we talk about diversification, it's not just diversification of revenues, but also the sources of power and the way we generate Bitcoin. And in future, it could be, yeah, depending on what is the best use of those electrons. So I I wanted to highlight that important fact that that diversification continues to happen at Mara, and our shareholders will get to see those benefits over a longer duration of time as we are the only large scale miner where we have opportunity to further reduce costs with these third party contracts expiring over years.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Yes. That's a a great point. The improvement in cost has been phenomenal and really helped improve the gross margins and for the leadership position from a profitability standpoint. The quick question I had, the follow-up of someone was from a CapEx perspective, how much of the the 75 extra has year end target has been already funded as of this quarter?

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

Yes. We as we mentioned earlier, almost all of it is funded except for a 150,000,000 in minor, capital. There will be additional, electron related, capital that may be added to it, to get to the 75 exahash, but we are our eyes are laser focused to the 75 exahash as we have publicly disclosed few weeks ago, and, and we're excited about that.

Chris Brendler
Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Great. Well, again, thank you so much for all the the time and the answers here. Pretty exciting stuff, and look forward to hearing the future announcements on your growth plans. Thanks so much. I'll turn it back over to Rob.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

Thank you.

Robert Samuels
VP - Investor Relations at MARA Holdings

Thanks, Chris. We're now gonna take just a few questions from our retail shareholders. And the first one I'm going to address to you, Salman, and it's one that we get quite asked quite often, is can you talk a little bit more about MARA's cost to mine per Bitcoin?

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

That's a very important question, and wanna address it point blank. It's it's it's when you think about our financials, you have to think about the evolution of the company. As I had alluded to earlier, we were asset light strategy company. We grew very quickly. But as a result of that, our costs were higher compared to some of the other peer group companies.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

We, as a strategic decision, last year, made made the decision to move towards asset heavy strategy or vertically integrated model where we own and operate our own sites. We paid cents to the dollar to acquire those sites compared to the market price and also the build multiple, less than 50% than the build multiple, and and now we're operating those sites. As a result of that, our electricity cost per coin is one of the lowest in the sector. And and, you know, the when you think about Bitcoin mining, and and Mara, Bitcoin mining is in our DNA, but we are also focused on other initiatives that Fred as Fred has alluded to. So we we also own and operate our mining pool.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

We have, our own firmware. We we also are investing in r and d. That is that is the future of the business and diversification of the revenues that Fred mentioned around AI. And those costs, it's it's not it's not fair to compare compare the total cost of the company on a coin basis because that cost is not attributable to the coin. So if I have to do the math and look at our asset light and asset heavy combination of cost of revenue, cash costs, and look at our Bitcoin produced quarter over quarter, it hovers around $50,000 per coin.

Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Chief Financial Officer at MARA Holdings

And that is still more than 50% cheaper than buying in the open market. Now with time, as I had said earlier, we expect these costs to further improve as our third party mining operations that are more expensive than owned and operated mining operations will expire over a period of time. And as we exit those those contracts and and continue to build on the low cost strategy with the wind farms and the NGON, which we plan to expand further, the oil and gas operations, where we consume natural gas that that was being emitted into the air, and we reduced the harmful gases by consuming that and and put those, like, electrons to use, that those costs are tens to the dollar compared to a traditional mining operations. And with a combination of those things, our focus or our expectation would be that over time, our costs are going to continue to be going down from here as we expand.

Robert Samuels
VP - Investor Relations at MARA Holdings

Great. And then the second question is for Fred. How will the signing of the Genius Act affect Mara's path to Bitcoin mining?

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

So what the Genius Act does is essentially opens the floodgates to stablecoins being integrated with the TradFi system. For example, today, we saw Circle, announce that Fiserv and FIS are going to integrate Circle into their payment system. And you're seeing the credit card companies developing stablecoins. You're seeing banks developing stablecoins. What happens when you have stablecoins is you now have liquidity that can flow twenty four seven, three sixty five.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

For people today wanting to buy Bitcoin, they have to move money from a bank account onto an exchange during banking hours, which means the predominant volume of Bitcoin that trades typically happens during banking hours, nine to five. With stablecoins, people can hold value in a digital currency that's the equivalent of a dollar, so it doesn't have the volatility of something like Bitcoin, for example. And they can move on a moment's notice, transfer to an exchange, and trade right away. What that does is likely creates a greater incentive for people to trade twenty four seven. Now there are many traders who take advantage of the lower volumes of trading that happens during nighttime cycles depending on the market you're in.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

Because there's lower volume, which means that if you have, if you're placing orders at different price points, you can potentially move the market a little easier. But with stablecoins, I think what's gonna happen is more liquidity will flow into Bitcoin. You've also seen things like Ray Dalio now say that you should have 15% of your assets in gold and Bitcoin. So I think with stablecoins, essentially, liquidity will flow. And when liquidity flows, people will move that liquidity into whatever asset they think is the best performing place to hold it.

Fred Thiel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings

So stablecoins will increase the ability for people, and especially institutions to potentially, allocate greater amounts of capital to things like Bitcoin. And so I think it only bodes well.

Robert Samuels
VP - Investor Relations at MARA Holdings

Terrific. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. If you have questions that were not answered during today's call, please feel free to contact our investor relations team at ir@mara.com. Thanks very much, and enjoy the rest of the day.

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.

Executives
Analysts
    • Robert Samuels
      VP - Investor Relations at MARA Holdings
    • Fred Thiel
      Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at MARA Holdings
    • Chris Brendler
      Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities
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