Marathon Digital ‘Cautiously Optimistic’ About Meeting Early-2023 Hashrate Guidance as Delays Continue

Marathon Digital (MARA), one of the largest publicly traded bitcoin miners, said on Wednesday that it is “cautiously optimistic” that it will achieve its early-2023 hashrate guidance of 23.3 exahash per second (EH/s) as delays in the deployment of miners continue.

About 4,200 Marathon miners were successfully installed in containers at one of Compute North’s new facilities in Texas, the company said in a statement. However, these mining rigs are now expected to come online in May, as opposed to its original schedule of April 17, as the company’s energy provider required additional consent from a third party. Currently, it does not expect this process to impact future deployments of miners, the firm said in the statement.

“While the power provider was working through this process, construction of Compute North’s facilities continued unimpaired and thousands of additional miners are currently being installed and prepared for energization,” said Marathon’s Chairman and CEO Fred Thiel in the statement. “Given the progress we have made at the start of this year breaking the mold on deploying behind the meter and the unique advantages we maintain from our asset light model, we are cautiously optimistic that we are still on pace to achieve 23.3 EH/s early next year,” he added.

This is a slight change from the previous statement regarding its plan to meet its guidance. On April 4, Marathon said it still believed it was "on track to reach 23.3 EH/s by early next year,” citing delay due to a longer-than-expected permitting process for the required power for its operations. Marathon currently has 36,830 active miners producing about 3.9 EH/s of mining power.

In April, Marathon mined 299 bitcoins (BTC), a near 31% dip from the previous month’s production. The main reasons for the lower production were weather and maintenance issues, which caused the power generating station in Hardin, Montana, to operate below normal levels. Previously, Marathon said it was moving its mining machines away from the Hardin site to a more sustainable power station.

The company continues to hold onto its mined bitcoin and currently has about 9,673 bitcoins, which has a fair market value of about $365.5 million. This is in contrast to its peer Riot Blockchain (RIOT) that sold around $10 million worth of bitcoins in April, after selling about $9.4 million in March.

Marathon will report its first quarter earnings on Wednesday post-market. Analysts will mainly focus on how the company is going to house the more than 70,000 new mining rigs and source capital for growth. The stock was down over 1% in early trading on Wednesday, while bitcoin rose about 3.5%.