MARA Stock Jumps 13% After Bitcoin Miner Unveils $500 Million Buyback and Repays $750 Million in Debt

Shares of MARA Holdings Inc. rose more than 13% on Tuesday after the bitcoin miner turned digital infrastructure company announced a $500 million share buyback, paid off its bitcoin-backed loans and reported a third-quarter profit driven by gains on its bitcoin holdings.

The stock climbed 89 cents to $7.53 in morning trading on the Nasdaq, with more than 16 million shares traded. MARA has a market value of about $2.9 billion. The shares are still down about 55% over the past year as the company moves away from pure bitcoin mining.

MARA, based in Miami, reported third-quarter net income of $634.4 million, up from $123.1 million a year earlier. Earnings were $1.28 per share, far above analysts' expectations of a loss. Most of the profit came from an $885.3 million unrealized mark-to-market gain on its bitcoin.

The underlying business was weaker. Revenue fell 35% from a year earlier to $164.2 million, slightly below expectations, and down from $174.9 million in the second quarter.

Investors focused more on MARA's balance sheet. After the quarter ended, the company sold 13,597 bitcoin for about $1.1 billion. That was roughly 40% of the 34,012 bitcoin it held on Sept. 30. It used $750 million of the proceeds to fully repay its bitcoin-backed debt, which released all of the bitcoin that had been pledged as collateral.

MARA said it has now cut total debt by $1.4 billion, or 37%, since the start of the year, reducing its exposure to bitcoin price swings. Its board also authorized a buyback of up to $500 million of common stock, equal to nearly a fifth of the company's market value. The program does not require MARA to buy back any set amount.

"Bitcoin built the foundation. Power created the opportunity. Our strategy now is simple: maximize the value of every megawatt we control," MARA said in its third-quarter shareholder letter.

"When we think about MARA's future, the opportunity is bigger than monetizing the megawatt," Chief Executive Fred Thiel wrote. "It is about increasing the value we can capture from that megawatt as we move from power to infrastructure to compute, and ultimately to fully integrated cloud solutions."

"Our responsibility now is to execute with discipline and to show you the returns these assets can produce," Thiel added.

MARA, once one of the largest public bitcoin miners, is repositioning itself as an energy-backed digital infrastructure company. It wants to lease its power and land to artificial intelligence and high-performance computing customers, which are struggling to find sites with enough electricity.

The company said talks with prospective tenants are at an advanced stage and that it has hosted potential customers at nearly all of its sites. Executives said on the earnings call that they aim to sign two AI and high-performance computing leases by year-end, though signings could slip into 2027.

MARA also said it received approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for its purchase of Long Ridge Energy & Power, a natural gas plant in Hannibal, Ohio, and expects the deal to close in the coming weeks. The plant is authorized to sell 485 megawatts, expected to rise to 505 megawatts in the first half of 2027. About 70% of its output is under long-term contracts, and the site covers more than 1,600 acres next to MARA's existing data center operations.

The company currently has about 1.9 gigawatts of energized capacity at nearly 20 sites on four continents, and says it has a path to about 4.8 gigawatts.

In the letter, MARA acknowledged that investors have become more cautious about AI infrastructure, citing the pace of AI adoption, community opposition, higher financing costs and the way some projects are financed. It said these concerns have not reduced the need for power.

MARA said it plans to sell more bitcoin to fund AI projects and to cover convertible notes that holders can ask the company to repay early starting next year. That means each share will be backed by less bitcoin over time.

The stock has been volatile in recent weeks. It swung sharply with bitcoin prices and with the wider selloff in AI infrastructure names, and early last week it fell below $6 for the first time in its slide.