MARA Stock Drops 5% After Selling $1.5B in Bitcoin – Here’s Why

TLDR

• MARA stock dropped 5% on Tuesday to around $12.65 after reporting a Q1 net loss of $1.26 billion, more than double last year’s loss.
• The company sold 20,880 BTC worth ~$1.5 billion in Q1, using $1.1 billion to buy back convertible notes and reduce debt by ~30%.
• MARA is pivoting from Bitcoin mining to AI and high-performance computing, with up to 90% of non-hosted mining capacity potentially converted.
• The company agreed to acquire Long Ridge Energy, a 505-megawatt Ohio gas plant, in a ~$1.5 billion deal — its largest acquisition ever.
• MARA is cutting 15% of its workforce and stopping large-scale mining hardware purchases as part of its restructuring.

MARA Holdings (MARA) stock fell 5% on Tuesday, May 12, to around $12.65, after the Bitcoin miner reported a steep Q1 loss and revealed it had sold a large chunk of its BTC holdings.

Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc., MARA

The stock hit an intraday low of $11.74 following the earnings release before recovering slightly. It also slipped another 1.86% in after-hours trading.

Q1 revenue came in at $174.6 million, down 18% year over year. The net loss of $1.26 billion was more than double the $533 million loss posted in the same quarter last year. Bitcoin’s price fell roughly 22% during the quarter, which weighed heavily on results.

Despite Tuesday’s drop, MARA is still up about 32% over the past month.

The Bitcoin Sale

MARA sold 20,880 BTC at an average price of $70,137 per coin in Q1, generating around $1.5 billion in proceeds. The bulk of the sales — 15,133 BTC for about $1.1 billion — happened between March 4 and March 25.

The company used those proceeds to buy back its convertible notes, cutting its convertible debt from roughly $3.3 billion to $2.3 billion, a reduction of about 30%. The debt paydown resulted in a $71 million gain.

As a result of the sales, MARA dropped from the second to the fourth largest publicly traded Bitcoin holder. It still holds 35,303 BTC, worth around $2.84 billion.

Pivot to AI and Infrastructure

MARA is repositioning itself as what it now calls “a digital infrastructure company built to convert energy into high-value compute workloads.”

Management said up to 90% of its non-hosted mining capacity could be redirected toward AI and high-performance computing. The company also confirmed it has no plans to buy additional Bitcoin mining hardware at scale.

To anchor the AI buildout, MARA agreed to acquire Long Ridge Energy and Power — a 505-megawatt combined-cycle gas plant in Ohio sitting on more than 1,600 acres — for approximately $1.5 billion, including around $785 million in debt. It’s the company’s largest acquisition to date. MARA projects $144 million in annualized EBITDA from the asset.

During Q1, MARA also acquired a controlling interest in French AI and HPC data center operator Exaion for $174.5 million.

A joint venture with Starwood Capital, announced in Q4 2025, is also progressing. Starwood is leading design, tenant sourcing, and construction while MARA contributes power-rich sites.

MARA is also cutting 15% of its workforce, a move expected to save $12 million per year, and will stop aggressive mining hardware purchases going forward.

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