Bitdeer Technologies Group’s stock dropped by over 28% on February 25 after the Bitcoin miner reported lower-than-expected earnings and revenues for the fourth quarter of 2024. Bitdeer clocked Q4 revenues of $69 million, down nearly 40% from the same period last year. Meanwhile, it reported net losses of more than $530 million, far worse than Q4 2023’s $5-million loss, according to the company’s earnings release. As of early trading on February 25, Bitdeer’s stock dropped from more than $13.10 per share to around $9.30 per share.
Halving struggles
The earnings miss comes as miners continue to struggle to adapt after the Bitcoin network’s April 2024 halving event, which effectively cut Bitcoin (BTC) mining revenues in half. Bitdeer’s “lower performance compared to Q4 2023 was primarily driven by the impact of the April 2024 halving” as well as other factors, including “increased global network hash rate” and higher research and development costs, Harris Bassett, Bitdeer’s chief strategy officer, said during Bitdeer’s February 25 earnings call.
In January, Bitcoin’s hashrate — the total computing power securing the network — reached a new all-time high of over 1,000 exahashes per second (EH/s). Bitdeer has sought to offset declining mining revenues by selling its own energy-efficient Bitcoin mining hardware. However, sales are still ramping up and did not offset weakness in other business lines in Q4. “We made a deliberate decision to prioritize resources on the development of our own ASIC [mining hardware] technology,” Bassett said. “This limited our Hash rate growth but gives us massive advantages going forward that differentiate our business from the rest of the sector,” Bassett said, adding he expects the machines to “become available in volume in the coming months.” Bitdeer said the market for specialized hardware known as ASIC chips totals $4 billion–$5 billion. Miners’ non-core business lines, such as chipmaking and servicing artificial intelligence models, are taking center stage after the halving eroded Bitcoin mining revenues. Every four years, the number of BTC mined per block, a bundle of transaction data stored on the blockchain, is reduced by half. The April event reduced mining rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. Bitcoin miners Marathon Digital and Core Scientific both report earnings on February 26.