What happened
Insurance-marketing company SOS Limited (SOS 3.42%) just reported full-year financial results for 2020 and revenue grew at a torrid pace. The company recently started mining Bitcoin (BTC +0.25%) and Ether tokens -- the tokens native to the Ethereum (ETH +2.32%) blockchain. But it didn't start mining until after 2020 was complete, meaning its impressive top-line gains came from its core business.
So what
According to the documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today, SOS Limited generated over $50 million in revenue in 2020, up an astounding 334% from the less than $12 million it generated in 2019. Of its total revenue, 84% came from a single insurance-marketing customer: Beijing Sense Time Information Technology Company. But this customer only accounted for 69% of SOS's revenue in 2019. Therefore, this customer went from spending roughly $8 million in 2019 to over $42 million in 2020, accounting for SOS's colossal top-line gains.
Image source: Getty Images.
Going forward, Bitcoin and Ethereum will start to be a more important part of SOS's revenue structure. For those who don't know how a cryptocurrency-mining business works, understand that revenue is only generated when cryptocurrencies are sold. It's not counted as revenue when tokens are acquired through mining.
It's unclear how many Bitcoins or Ether tokens are currently held by SOS. But for the first quarter, the company said it mined 42 Bitcoins and 916 Ethereum tokens. This amount mined per quarter could go up going forward because the company is currently increasing its mining operations. And if Bitcoin and Ether keep increasing in value, it could be a big deal.
Bitcoin, Ether, and SOS stock have all soared in 2021 compared to the S&P 500. SOS data by YCharts
Now what
Full-year profitability also increased for SOS in 2020. Its net income jumped from roughly $1.5 million to over $4.4 million. However, the company's earnings per share (EPS) plummeted. In 2019, it reported EPS of $0.0248. In 2020, this fell over 63% to EPS of just $0.009. So net income was up but EPS fell sharply. This happened because SOS management issued a lot of new shares last year, diluting shareholder value.
Clearly, SOS's business is growing, which is good. But the ongoing dilution is something to watch going forward.
