Jefferies Sees Solid Quarter but Limited Upside for Bitcoin Miner MARA

Investment bank Jefferies maintained a hold rating on MARA Holdings (MARA) shares after the bitcoin BTC$103,923.79 miner reported third-quarter results largely in line with Wall Street expectations.

The firm cited steady operations, promising developments in power integration, and cautious steps into artificial intelligence, while trimming its price target to $16 from $19.

The shares were 7% higher in early trading, around $17.80.

MARA posted $252 million in revenue, compared with 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 roughly $6.85 billion in cash and bitcoin, giving it ample flexibility for expansion, wrote analysts Jonathan Petersen and Jan Aygul 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 capacity to scale to 1.5 gigawatts (GW), would allow the miner to control its own power generation and shift energy between bitcoin mining, grid sales, and AI workloads.

Jefferies said the move could cut costs and hedge against energy market volatility, though the deal still needs final agreements and regulatory clearance.

The firm also highlighted Marathon’s first AI inference deployment at its Granbury, Texas site, where ten racks have been installed to repurpose mining infrastructure for edge computing.

The bank’s analysts called the initiative “strategically important” as a proof of concept, noting that while the scale is small, success could pave the way for higher-margin revenue 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