Hive Blockchain (HIVE), a publicly traded cryptocurrency mining firm, benefited from the bull market in digital assets last quarter as bitcoin (BTC) prices rose, a report Tuesday showed.
- Mining income for Hive's fiscal third quarter, ended Dec. 31, reached $13.7 million, a 174% increase from the same period a year earlier when it had mining income of $5 million, per its reported financial statements.
- The price of bitcoin quadrupled in 2020, and ether rose fivefold.
- Earnings per share: $0.05 a share for the quarter, up from $0.01 a year earlier.
- Gross mining margin: Stable at 78% compared to a 77% margin from a year ago.
- CFO Darcy Daubaras, on Tuesday's earnings call, said the company is slowly ramping up its bitcoin mining operations with 165 BTC mined in Q3 and a recent purchase of 10,500 ASIC mining machines. But the lion's share of operations are dedicated to mining ethereum (ETH).
- "Our bread and butter is ethereum mining," Daubaras said on Tuesday's earnings call.
- Hive mined 21,506 ETH in Q3, a slight decrease from 23,174 mined over the same period a year ago. Daubaras attributed the drop to the increased difficulty of mining new data blocks on the Ethereum blockchain. The difficulty level has doubled over the past year.
- The Vancouver company has a current market value of $1.57 billion after passing the $1 billion mark in early January.
- Year to date, shares of Hive have more than doubled, currently trading at C$5.83.
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