HIVE CEO responds to Elon Musk's neocloud warning (4:14)
For most Bitcoin miners, a falling coin price feeds almost directly into falling revenue. HIVE Digital Technologies has spent the past year building a second business to cushion that blow, and its latest quarterly results show that effort starting to pull its weight.
The Nasdaq– and TSX-listed company reported revenue of $84.9 million for its fiscal second quarter, which ended Sept. 30.
That was up 7.3% from the previous quarter and down just 2.7% from a year earlier, according to results released Nov. 9.
“Revenue was broadly stable year over year despite a 27% decline in Bitcoin prices,” said Frank Holmes, HIVE’s co-founder and executive chairman.
Related: HIVE CEO says Elon Musk is right about neoclouds but wrong about HIVE
BUZZ HPC grows its AI cloud revenue by 70%
The quarter’s fastest growth came from BUZZ HPC. The HIVE subsidiary rents out Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips used to train and run AI models.
BUZZ HPC’s revenue reached $8.8 million, up 70.7% from a year earlier and 25.3% from the previous quarter.
That is still roughly a tenth of HIVE’s total. Contracts already signed suggest the share is set to grow.
HIVE puts the unit’s live annual recurring revenue (ARR) at about $40 million. ARR is a snapshot of what a business would earn over a full year at its current pace.
Contracted ARR, which also counts capacity not yet switched on, stands at about $185 million, the company said.
Two agreements drive most of that number. The first is a three-year sovereign AI contract worth about $225 million, supporting AI company Cohere.
The second is a five-year deal worth about $350 million with an investment-grade enterprise customer.
HIVE is aiming for about $200 million in GPU cloud ARR by the end of calendar 2026. Its longer-term goal is roughly $700 million in total high-performance computing ARR by the end of 2028.
The company notes that both targets depend on financing, construction and customer commitments.
The 2,304 Nvidia GB200 chips for the Cohere contract are paid for through the $129 million financing HIVE announced in October.
“We anticipate these GPUs will ship before calendar year-end,” said HIVE President and CEO Aydin Kilic.
More Bitcoin mined in an easier network
Bitcoin mining still brings in most of HIVE’s revenue. Digital currency revenue came to $76.0 million, up 5.5% from the previous quarter but down 7.4% from a year earlier.
HIVE received 1,070 Bitcoin in rewards during the quarter, up from 1,004 in the quarter before. Part of that came from an easier network.
Bitcoin’s difficulty measures how hard it is to mine a new coin, and it adjusts as more or less computing power competes for rewards. It averaged about 128 trillion, down from 135 trillion the quarter before.
More on Hive on TheStreet Roundtable:
Hive lines up $129 million to buy Nvidia AI chips
Frank Holmes: Bitcoin can hit $100,000 by year-end
HIVE joins Google, Microsoft, and Amazon in new Canada data center pledge
HIVE says it accounts for roughly 2% of all the computing power securing the Bitcoin network. It operates about 440 megawatts of power capacity, including a platform of about 300 megawatts in Paraguay.
The company expects to reach about 540 megawatts once another 100 megawatts at its Yguazú site in Paraguay is switched on in the fourth quarter of calendar 2026.
Operating profit climbs while write-downs weigh on the bottom line
HIVE’s core operations became more profitable during the quarter. Gross operating margin, which is revenue minus direct operating costs, rose to $30.2 million.
That is 35.6% of revenue, up from 30.6% the quarter before.
Adjusted EBITDA came to $24.8 million, an 85% jump from the previous quarter. Adjusted EBITDA is a common measure of operating profit that strips out interest, taxes, depreciation and certain non-cash costs.
On a standard accounting basis, HIVE posted a net loss of $78.7 million. Most of that loss came from charges that don’t involve cash leaving the business:
Depreciation of $54.9 million
A $31.2 million impairment, an accounting write-down of the value of equipment on the books. HIVE says it reflects tougher mining economics and lower market prices for ASICs, the specialized computers built only to mine Bitcoin
$8.6 million in share-based compensation
A $7.3 million loss on derivatives tied mainly to its convertible notes
HIVE ended September with $139.0 million in cash and $22.6 million in digital currencies.
During the quarter, the company raised about $43.2 million by selling roughly 13.7 million new shares through its at-the-market program.
That program lets a company sell shares gradually at prevailing market prices. The shares sold for an average of $3.15 each.
Chief Financial Officer Darcy Daubaras said the company’s financial priorities remain “disciplined capital allocation, liquidity management.”
Sweden and Ontario widen the pipeline
HIVE is also lining up more space for AI computing. It signed a letter of intent for long-term colocation at its 32-megawatt Big Boden facility in Sweden.
The company says the deal could bring in about $45 million in annual revenue.
The company has also set aside about 400 megawatts of utility power across Canada for AI-grade data centers, more than 320 megawatts of it in Ontario.
Kilic said the Ontario Premier’s office has committed to approving new data centers “sooner rather than later.”
Craig Tavares, president and chief operating officer of BUZZ HPC, argues that limits on U.S. permitting could make sites in Canada and Sweden more valuable.
“Canada has an opportunity to skate to where the puck is going,” he said.
The Big Boden deal still needs definitive agreements. Until those are signed, none of its potential revenue counts toward HIVE’s $185 million in contracted ARR.
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