UPDATE: BTIG Starts Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) at Buy

(Updated - January 18, 2022 5:25 AM EST)

BTIG analyst Greg Lewis initiates coverage on Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) with a Buy rating and a price target of $50.00.

The analyst comments "MARA was an early mover in the Bitcoin (BTC) mining sector having started mining in 2017. The company currently has hash capacity of ~3.5 EH/s (~33k rigs), which points to ~1.9% of current global hash capacity, making it one of the largest publicly traded BTC miners by capacity. More importantly, in what we
expect to be a multi-year arms race amongst the global miners for capacity, MARA currently has ~19.8 EH/s of hash capacity on order with scheduled deliveries through YE22, which should continue to position MARA as a dominant global BTC miner. BTC mining has evolved rapidly over the last two years (undoubtedly the spike in the BTC price from ~$8k at the start of 2020 to ~$45k today) as the industry has become more institutionalized and more capital has flowed into the space as the profit margins for mining rigs have spiked to over 80%. This change in the market has driven a divergence acrossthe industry between vertically integrated BTC mining companies(think owning the infrastructure and mining rigs) versus an infrastructure-light strategy like MARA's that just owns mining rigs and relies on third-party providersto host their rigs(just like the first miners a decade ago). We believe there are pros and consto both, and actually tend to favor a vertically integrated strategy, but with MARA as an early mover (which has already contracted a lot of itsinfrastructure needs) and economies ofscale (MARA can be an anchor customer at a data center, not just a renter) we believe MARA is well positioned for the ongoing BTC mining up-cycle. We initiate coverage on MARA with a Buy rating and $50 PT."

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on Marathon Digital Holdings click here. For more ratings news on Marathon Digital Holdings click here.

Shares of Marathon Digital Holdings closed at $28.59 yesterday.

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