Mining company HIVE posts profit as Ethereum price climbs

The Toronto-listed company HIVE Blockchain Technologies closed its second quarter of fiscal 2021 with a profit of $7.4 million, helped by lower costs and a rising Ethereum price, on which the miner has placed its main bet. This is stated in the company’s press release.

Last year HIVE posted a net loss from all activities of $1.8 million. Compared with the same period in 2020, the company’s revenue grew 8% to $13 million. Mining gross profit was $9.2 million versus a loss of more than $560,000. Negative cash flow of $4.6 million turned positive, reaching $10.6 million.

“We were able to reduce costs, which led to a record net cash flow versus any other quarter since Hive went public three years ago,” said Frank Holmes, interim executive chairman of the board of HIVE.

This year the mining company achieved a 50% reduction in electricity costs to 1.6 kWh at its facilities in Sweden. This remains among the lowest figures in the sector and in green energy more broadly.

HIVE is currently considering a site acquisition in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, Canada, with access to 50 MW of cheap clean electricity.

In the second quarter the company mined 32,800 Ethereum (ETH), 88,300 Ethereum Classic (ETC) and 89 BTC. The first figure was up 50% versus last year. In the preceding three months the company mined 25,000 ETH.

The ending of earlier Bitcoin cloud mining agreements led to a decline in its mining output. HIVE is not abandoning this line of business and plans to scale it up, using profits from Ethereum mining.

“The pandemic has led to delays in expanding the fleet and deploying Bitcoin miners, but the company is not abandoning plans to reach a hash rate of 1,000 PH/s in the future,” said Holmes.

Earlier in November, HIVE acquired and immediately installed 1,240 WhatsMiner M30S Bitcoin mining devices.

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