TeraWulf Bitcoin production drops 21% in Q2, eyes AI expansion
Bitcoin miner TeraWulf reported a mixed second-quarter performance for 2024, with a 21% decline in Bitcoin production and a miss on earnings expectations. In its August 2 earnings report, the company revealed it mined 699 Bitcoin in the second quarter, marking a 21% year-over-year decrease.
The firm reported revenue of $35.6 million for the quarter, slightly exceeding the consensus estimate of $35.4 million. However, TeraWulf posted a quarterly loss of $0.03 per share, missing the anticipated loss of $0.02 per share.
The report also highlighted a significant 243% increase in the cost of mining Bitcoin year over year, with expenditures rising from $6,688 per Bitcoin in Q2 2023 to $22,954 per Bitcoin in Q2 2024. TeraWulf attributed this increase to a nearly doubling in network difficulty during the period and the impact of April’s Bitcoin Halving, which reduced the Bitcoin-denominated rewards for miners.
Despite these challenges, TeraWulf remains focused on expanding into high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) in the second half of the year. The company has begun construction on a new building at its Lake Mariner facility, which is expected to add 50 MW of infrastructure capacity when completed in the first quarter of 2025.
On July 9, TeraWulf announced plans to venture into HPC and AI at its Lake Mariner location, committing an initial 2 MW block and purchasing a 128-GPU cluster from NVIDIA. Additionally, on July 8, Chief Strategy Officer Kerri Langlais indicated that the company might consider a merger if it would help to enhance profit margins.
This comes in the wake of increased discussions around mergers and acquisitions in the Bitcoin mining sector, particularly after Riot Platforms’ failed $950 million hostile takeover attempt of rival Bitfarms in June.
