In its Bitcoin Mining report released today, Bernstein rates Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, IREN, and Core Scientific as “outperform,” and Marathon Digital as “market perform.”
An Outperform rating is a positive assessment by an analyst suggesting that the stock will outperform the market or sector. Conversely, a Market Perform rating is a neutral assessment indicating average expected performance.
The evaluation is based on five key metrics: production and hash rate, operational and energy efficiency, power, hash cost, and each company’s AI strategy.
According to Bernstein, the three largest Bitcoin producers are Marathon, Core Scientific, and CleanSpark, the latter two standing out in terms of realized hashrate. Riot, meanwhile, lags behind in terms of production and efficiency, but has made up for it in the past month with power credits and improved production efficiency.
In terms of operational and energy efficiency, Bernstein argues that CleanSpark and IREN are “at the sweet spot of energy efficiency and realized hashrate/uptime.” The analysts also see Marathon improving uptime efficiency by switching to its own mining model.
Bernstein noted that Riot and Core Scientific are leaders in terms of operational power capacity, but IREN may catch up in the future as it reportedly has “two huge sites under development” in Texas.
Core Scientific is also “best in class” in terms of hash costs, primarily due to low power costs and strong uptime. Riot and CleanSpark lag behind Core Scientific in this metric, while Marathon continues to work on improving its hash costs.
Finally, Core Scientific is “a clear leader in AI strategy,” according to Bernstein, and has allocated significant resources to its data centers. The analysts say IREN remains a “promising” story in AI/HPC, as the Texas giant is available for deals with AI hyperscalers and has appointed Morgan Stanley to explore AI deals for these sites.
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