Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: MARA) inked a deal with Bitmain to purchase a record number of Antminer S19 XP bitcoin miners. Through this purchase, MARA aims to become one of the largest known publicly-traded bitcoin miners in the world.
Marathon Digital Holdings is a patent-holding company and one of the largest enterprise Bitcoin self-mining companies in the U.S. Following the news, shares of the company gained over 11.7% on December 23 to close at $38.13.
Marathon’s Bitcoin Mining Fleet To Reach 23.3 EH/s by Early 2023
Furthermore, together with the purchase, Marathon plans to upgrade a portion of its mining fleet with the latest mining hardware to boost the overall efficiency of the fleet’s operations.
Consequently, Marathon’s mining operations are expected to consist of approximately 199,000 bitcoin miners. These miners are expected to produce approximately 23.3 exahashes per second (EH/s) by early 2023.
This implies a growth of over 600% from the current rate and a 75% increase from the company’s prior forecast of 13.3 EH/s by the middle of 2022.
The company predicts all the new miners to ship from Bitmain between July and December 2022.
Management Weighs In
Marathon’s CEO, Fred Thiel, commented, “Given the strength of our balance sheet and our asset-light model, which allows us to invest our capital into mining machines rather than infrastructure, we were uniquely positioned to place the largest single order of S19 XPs, in terms of total hash rate, BITMAIN has ever received,”
He further added, “With 23.3 EH/s of total capacity expected to be online in early 2023 and ample access to renewable power behind the meter with one of the largest renewable energy providers in North America, we believe we have established Marathon as one of the leading bitcoin miners in North America and potentially the largest known miner in the world.”
Analysts Recommendation
Overall, the stock has a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 3 unanimous Buys. The Marathon Digital Holdings stock forecast of $68.33 implies 79.20% upside potential from current levels.
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