Iris Energy raises $413 million to expand its mining capacity

What’s new? Iris Energy (IREN), a leading Australian mining company with a capitalization of $2,35 billion, has raised $413,4 million by selling 39,8 million shares between May 15 and June 28. The company will use the raised funds to achieve its targets for this year: a hashrate of 30 EH/s and a data center capacity of 510 MW.

Press release

What else is known? According to Iris Energy’s latest report, bitcoin mining revenue totaled $53,4 million in Q1, an increase of 27% from last year’s Q4 results ($42 million). In addition, net profit amounted to $8,6 million, while in the previous reporting period, the company recorded a loss of $5,2 million.

Shares of IREN are traded on the US stock exchange Nasdaq, the value of one security at the time of writing amounted to $12,62, adding 11,78% over the day. Since the beginning of the year, Iris Energy shares have risen by 60,56%.

Overall, the company has $425,3 million in cash reserves that will be used to expand its business through 2025, including equipment purchases and agreements for additional capacity.

On April 20, the bitcoin network held its fourth halving, an event that occurs every four years and halves the reward to miners for mining blocks, slowing issuance and reaching the maximum BTC supply, programmatically capped at 21 million coins. This time around, the reward has been reduced to 3125 BTC.

US miners’ shares have outperformed bitcoin in terms of profitability since the beginning of June

The best result was demonstrated by securities of Core Scientific

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Because of this, industry companies are actively looking for ways to expand capacity or diversify revenue. For example, Core Scientific, a US miner with a capitalization of $1,75 billion, entered into a 12-year agreement with AI startup Core Wave, under which it will lease its computing capacity.

The US largest miner Marathon Digital with a capitalization of $6,37 billion is studying ways to sell excess heat for heating homes and already launched such a pilot project in Finland. Marathon also started mining the KAS coin in addition to BTC in September last year, the blockchain of which allows the simultaneous issuance of several blocks.

In July, the drop in bitcoin hashrate reached the level of December 2022. Analysts assume that BTC will not reach new highs until weak miners leave the market.