What happened
Shares of blockchain infrastructure company Core Scientific (CORZ 10.39%) jumped on Friday. The stock’s gain was fueled by a combination of an upbeat day in the overall market and an earnings report that included better-than-expected first-quarter revenue.
The stock rose as much as 21.6% at its best point on Friday. But as of 2:30 p.m. ET, shares were up 11.4%.
So what
Core Scientific’s first-quarter revenue skyrocketed 255% year over year to $192.5 million, beating analysts’ average estimate for revenue of $188.4 million. These results, said Core Scientific CEO Mike Levitt, were achieved by “continuing to focus on execution.”
He explained: “In the quarter we expanded our total hashrate to 16.2 exahash, self-mined 3,202 bitcoins and maintained our leadership position in the North American blockchain data center and digital asset mining category.” Exahash refers to the number of cryptographic hashes processed per second for blockchain mining.
Importantly, Core’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) rose 600% year over year to $93 million.
Now what
The leader in high-performance blockchain data centers and software solutions also said it now expects 2022 growth to be between 30 and 32 exahash, “fully supported by our existing capital structure.” Even more, Levitt said that the blockchain specialist has the operational flexibility to expand beyond this plan if market conditions improve.
