Riot Platforms and Hut 8 each confirmed bitcoin sales with their third-quarter results. Riot is spending the proceeds on AI data center construction, while Hut 8 is funding share buybacks.
Riot Platforms and Hut 8 reported third-quarter results on Wednesday, and both confirmed they have been selling bitcoin. Riot has sold 20,264 BTC this year for about $1.5 billion. Hut 8 has sold 3,102 BTC since July to fund $250 million in share repurchases.
The sales serve different ends: Riot is paying for data center construction, while Hut 8 is buying back its own stock. Riot ended September with 2,418 BTC, worth about $202 million at the quarter-end price of $83,554.
Riot turns its treasury into a construction budget
Riot sold 3,778 bitcoin in the first quarter, 4,300 in the second and 12,186 in the third. The proceeds funded data center work and the full repayment of a $200 million Coinbase credit facility.
The reason arrived with the results. Riot signed a 15-year triple-net lease with an unnamed AI lab for its Corsicana, Texas campus, covering 910 MW of critical IT capacity. The lease is worth about $28 billion over the initial term, or $1.8 billion in average annual rent.
With its AMD contract and an earlier Rockdale lease, Riot has leased 1,151 MW for about $38 billion. CEO Jason Les put expected net operating income above $2 billion a year at full deployment, according to the company release. CoinGape reported that Riot held $748.2 million in cash at the end of September.
Mining revenue falls as the average price drops
Mining continues in the background. Riot produced 1,637 BTC in the quarter at an average cost of $39,265 before depreciation, but mining revenue fell 28% to $116 million as the average price dropped to $70,855 from $114,361 a year earlier.
Total revenue was $181.4 million, flat year over year, with data center and engineering income filling the gap. Net income, however, dropped to $4.03 million from $104.5 million in the same quarter a year earlier.
Hut 8 sends bitcoin sales to shareholders
Hut 8 sold about 954 bitcoin for $74.8 million in the quarter and about 2,148 BTC for $175.4 million in October, retiring 3.3 million shares for a combined $250 million. On Nov. 2, the board raised the repurchase authorization to $1 billion.
The company says its data centers will not need that treasury. Hut 8 closed a $1.07 billion senior secured revolving credit facility, undrawn at quarter-end, and expects River Bend and Beacon Point to be financed at the project level without parent equity or recourse debt.
Hut 8's stock was down 17% on the day while Riot's was up around 13%.
Sources: Bitcoin Magazine, CoinGape
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