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Investment bank Jefferies maintained a hold rating on MARA Holdings (MARA) shares after bitcoin miner said the results of the third quarter largely in line with the expectations of Wall Street.
The firm cited stable operations, promising developments in energy integration, and cautious steps in artificial intelligence, while cutting its target price to $16 from $19.
Shares were 7% higher in early trading, around $17.80.
MARA posted $252 million in revenue, compared to Jefferies and consensus estimates of $245 million and $251 million, respectively.
The company mined 2,144 bitcoins, up 4% from a year earlier but up 9% sequentially, and reported adjusted EBITDA of about $396 million, including a $234 million value gain on digital assets.
The company ended the quarter with about $6.85 billion in cash and bitcoin, giving it ample flexibility for expansion, analysts Jonathan Petersen and Jan Aygul wrote in Tuesday’s report.
Analysts pointed to MARA’s letter of intent with MPLX to co-develop gas-fired generation campuses and data centers in West Texas as a potential structural advantage. The 400-megawatt (MW) project, with the capacity to scale to 1.5 gigawatts (GW), will allow the miner to control his own energy generation and to transform the energy between bitcoin mining, grid sales, and AI workloads.
Jefferies said the move could reduce costs and hedge energy market volatility, although the deal still needs final agreements and regulatory approval.
The firm also highlighted Marathon’s first AI inference deployment at its Granbury, Texas site, where ten racks were installed to power the mining infrastructure for edge computing.
The bank’s analysts call the initiative “strategically important” as a proof of concept, noting that, while the scale is small, success could pave the way for higher margin income and MARA’s position at the intersection of bitcoin mining and practical AI computing.
Read more: MARA Holdings Outlines AI and Energy Shift with MPLX LOI; Q3 Impress results
