Investment bank Jefferies maintained a hold rating on MARA Holdings (MARA) shares after bitcoin miner reported third quarter results broadly in line with Wall Street expectations.
The firm cited stable operations, promising developments in power integration and cautious moves into artificial intelligence while trimming its price target to $16 from $19.
Shares were 7% higher in early trading, around $17.80.
MARA had $252 million in revenue, compared to Jefferies’ and consensus estimates of $245 million and $251 million, respectively.
The company mined 2,144 bitcoin, up 4% from a year earlier but down 9% sequentially, and reported adjusted EBITDA of about $396 million, including a $234 million fair 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 the Tuesday report.
The analysts pointed to MARA’s letter of intent with MPLX to co-develop gas-fired generation and data center campuses in West Texas as a potential structural advantage. The 400 megawatt (MW) project, with the capacity to scale to 1.5 gigawatts (GW), would allow the miner to control its own electricity generation and switch energy between bitcoin mining, net sales and AI workloads.
Jefferies said the move could reduce costs and hedge energy market volatility, although the deal still requires final agreements and regulatory approval.
The firm also highlighted Marathon’s first AI inference deployment at its Granbury, Texas site, where ten racks have been installed to reuse the mining infrastructure for edge computing.
The bank’s analysts called the initiative “strategically important” as a proof of concept, noting that while small in scale, success could pave the way for higher margin revenues and position MARA at the intersection of bitcoin mining and practical AI computing.
Read more: MARA Holdings Outlines AI and Energy Shift with MPLX LOI; Q3 results impress
