Core Scientific turns lower after Q4 results disappoint

• Core Scientific reported fourth-quarter revenue of $79.8 million, missing Wall Street expectations, and widening its loss to $0.42 per share.
• The company is shifting its focus toward hosting and colocation for high-performance computing and AI, expanding its power capacity by about 730 megawatts, including a major push into Texas.
• Riot Platforms posted a sharp jump in fourth-quarter revenue to $647.4 million, far above forecasts, though its shares and Core Scientific’s traded little changed in after-hours trading.

Core Scientific (CORZ), a bitcoin mining and digital infrastructure company, reported fourth-quarter revenue of $79.8 million for the period ended Dec. 31, compared with $94.93 million a year earlier. Consensus forecasts were for revenue of $122.08 million, according to LSEG data.

The company posted a loss of $0.42 per share, versus expectations for a loss of $0.08 per share.

The weaker results come as bitcoin miners continue to adjust to the April 2024 halving, which cut block rewards in half and squeezed margins across the industry. A higher network hash rate and rising energy and infrastructure costs have pressured profitability, particularly for operators still scaling new capacity.

Core has been repositioning itself beyond pure self-mining and toward hosting and colocation services for high-performance computing clients, including AI workloads. CEO Adam Sullivan said the company is leaning into that strategy.

“We’re now past the halfway point on our existing builds and scaling our colocation platform into a 1.5 gigawatt pipeline of leasable capacity,” Core Scientific CEO Adam Sullivan, said in a statement. “With a multi-geography footprint and proven execution, we’re accelerating RFS timelines across multiple sites to position the company for durable growth.”

As part of this plan, the company announced that it is expanding into Texas, adding about 430 mega watts of gross power capacity. It also increased capacity across other regions by about 300 mega watts.

CORZ shares were lower by 4.5% in after hours trading.

Meanwhile, Riot Platforms (RIOT), a bitcoin mining and data center development company, reported fourth-quarter revenue of $647.4 million, up from $376.7 million a year earlier. Analysts had expected revenue of $157.4 million, including $136 million from bitcoin mining and $21.3 million from engineering.

RIOT shares were flat after hours.

• NEAR’s token jumped as much as 17%, extending a roughly 40% weekly rally, after the network launched “Confidential Intents,” a private execution layer for trades.
• The new feature routes transactions through a private shard linked to NEAR’s mainnet, letting users toggle into confidential accounts to reduce front-running, sandwich attacks and other forms of MEV.
• Market reaction suggests investors expect the privacy-focused, compliance-aware system to attract institutional trading flow to NEAR, even though current base-layer fee revenue remains modest relative to its $1.8 billion market value.

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