Marathon Digital bungles crypto impairment sums, will reissue financials

Bitcoin (BTC) miner Marathon Digital will reissue a number of previous financial statements after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission pointed out some accounting errors the firm made.

According to a Feb. 27 SEC filing, Marathon will restate its unaudited Q1, Q2, and Q3 quarterly reports from both 2021 and 2022 in addition to its audited annual report from 2021.

Marathon noted that affected financial statements, related earnings releases and other financial communications during these periods “should not be relied upon.”

The issues highlighted by the SEC on Feb. 22 were Marathon’s method for calculating impairment on digital assets, as well as Marathon’s determination that it had acted as an agent while operating a Bitcoin mining pool rather than a principal.

A principal is an entity that has the legal authority for decisions, while an agent is an entity that can only act on behalf of a principal.

Marathon noted that by changing the determination of its role in operating the pool from an agent to a principal, revenues and cost of revenues will see minor increases but does not believe the change will impact its bottom line.

“The restatement of the Impacted Financial Statements is not expected to have any impact on total margin, operating income or net income in 2021 or in any of the interim periods in 2021 or 2022.”

As a result of the accounting issues, Marathon postponed its fourth-quarter 2022 earnings call, which was set to take place on Feb. 28, and will postpone the publication of its corresponding financial results.

Today, we announced that we are cancelling our webcast and conference call for Q4 & FY 2022, initially scheduled for today at 4:30 p.m. ET, and are postponing the publication of our corresponding financial results. For more, please see this press release: https://t.co/UAryIr56aC

— Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) (@MarathonDH) February 28, 2023

Marathon intends to file its results for 2022 by March 16. It has notified the SEC it would take up to 15 days to make the necessary corrections to the report, which was previously due by March 1.

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The miner announced on Feb. 2 that it had sold 1,500 BTC throughout January, marking the first time it had sold Bitcoin since Oct. 1, 2020, as it looks to build up a “war chest” of both cash and Bitcoin and ensure it can be flexible throughout 2023.

While 2022 proved to be a tough year for Bitcoin miners — leading to the capitulation of firms such as Core Scientific in December — an increasing BTC price and stable electricity prices have helped the industry rebound strongly so far in 2023, with production and hash rates generally up across the board.