What happened
No one was extracting a fortune from the earth with Hut 8 Mining (HUT) on Monday. The Bitcoin (BTC -2.57%) miner released its second-quarter results, and investors found them wanting, to the point where they traded the shares down by more than 6%. By contrast, the S&P 500 index did fairly well, increasing by 0.6% on the day.
So what
For the quarter, Hut 8 saw its revenue slide to 19.2 million Canadian dollars ($14.3 million), from CA$24.6 million ($18.3 million) in the same period of 2022. That mirrored a sharp 58% year-over-year decline in the amount of bitcoins mined by the company, falling to 399 in total.
Hut 8 attributed this to a rise in average Bitcoin network difficulty. The suspension of operations at one of the company's facilities and problems with the electrical systems in another were also factors.
On a brighter note, Hut 8 managed to substantially reduce its net loss. This was $12.4 million for the period, comparing quite favorably to the more than $65 million shortfall a year ago. On a per-share basis, the latest net loss was $0.06.
This was a mixed quarter for the cryptocurrency company. While the average analyst estimate for revenue was only $11.7 million, those prognosticators collectively believed Hut 8 would post a narrower net loss of $0.04 per share.
Now what
In the earnings release, Hut 8 spoke positively about the future of other aspects of its business. It pointed out that it has signed a "significant" five-year contract with a client for its high-performance computing services. The company did not, however, specify how much it would receive with this deal.
