MARA Holdings stock was surging despite a Q4 miss as the bitcoin miner announced an accelerated expansion into AI and high-performance compute.
Shares were +16% to $9.8 on Thursday during after-hours trading.
The Hallandale Beach, Florida-based bitcoin miner reported Q4 GAAP EPS of -$4.52, which misses Street consensus by $3.35, and revenue of $202.3M (-5.6% Y/Y) that misses by $49.04M.
Net loss came in at $1.7B, compared to a net income of $528.3M in the same period a year ago. The net loss includes a $1.5B loss on the fair value of digital assets.
Adjusted EBITDA was a negative $1.5B in Q4, compared to a positive $796.0M a year ago. The loss resulted from a decrease in the fair value of bitcoin holdings.
On the positive side, MARA announced an intentional transformation of its business from a pure-play bitcoin miner into an energy and digital infrastructure company.
The company entered into a strategic agreement with Starwood Capital Group and their dedicated data center development platform, Starwood Digital Ventures, for the conversion and expansion of select MARA sites into the next-generation digital infrastructure, capable of meeting the growing demand from enterprise, hyperscale, and AI customers.
MARA is set to contribute data center sites, while Starwood will lead design, development, tenant sourcing, construction, and facility operation, with the latter providing investment expertise to support enhanced project-level economics.
"MARA will have the option to invest up to 50% in joint venture projects, enabling us to retain ownership in assets generating operating cash flow while maintaining exposure to long-term value creation. The joint platform is expected to support more than 1 gigawatt ("GW") of IT capacity in the initial development phase, with a development roadmap that could extend capacity beyond 2.5 GW over time," said CEO Fred Thiel in the Q4 shareholder letter.
"We view 2026 as an inflection point. With infrastructure in place, upgrades underway, the Starwood partnership advancing select assets toward hyperscale tenancy, and Exaion expanding our enterprise AI capabilities, we are positioned to execute on our strategy," said the CEO.
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