Publicly traded bitcoin mining company Riot Blockchain reported earnings for the September period Monday, noting a significant increase in revenue and hash power from a year ago, with plans for continued expansion.
Reporting over $2.4 million in mining revenue, the Castle Rock, Colo.-based mining firm increased revenue by 42% from the same period in 2019. The company's mining revenue clearly benefited from a 15% increase in the price of bitcoin during the Q3 in addition to its increased hash power.
Riot filings show it mined 222 BTC in Q3 2020, up 41% from the same period last year, but slightly lower than the 227 BTC mined in Q2 2020. In 2019, Riot switched to mining bitcoin exclusively, CEO Jeff McGonegal told CoinDesk. Previously, the company also mined litecoin and bitcoin cash.
Riot reported a current mining capacity of 556 peta hash per second (PH/s), meeting its goal set in its Q2 earnings release, which represents a 450% increase from its Q3 2019 hash power of 101 PH/s.
Riot plans to continue aggressively expanding its mining operations, per its earnings report, through four purchase agreements with mining manufacturer Bitmain for a total of 16,600 S19-Pro machines. The firm expects incremental delivery and deployment of its new machines through the end of Q2 2021.
Concurrent with an increase in mined bitcoin and the leading cryptocurrency’s 114% year-to-date rally, Riot’s cryptocurrency corporate liquidity grew from $7.2 million in Q2 to $9 million in Q3. Its cash reserves ballooned from $9.1 million to $30.1 million over the same period.
Riot shareholders enjoyed the lowest quarterly loss per share since the company first fully deployed its cryptocurrency mining hardware in Q2 2018. The loss per share dropped to $0.04 in Q3, a 50% improvement from a loss per share of $0.08during the same period last year.
Riot shares were trading hands at $3.50 at Monday's close, up 32% from the start of Q4. They've risen more than 200% year to date.
Update (November 9, 4:27 UTC): This article has been updated to reflect 222 bitcoins mined in the Q3, not 224 as was previously reported.