Bitcoin Miner CleanSpark Surges on Plan to Sell Legacy Energy Business

Shares of CleanSpark rose sharply on Thursday on news that the company plans to sell its legacy energy business in order to focus on its faster-growth bitcoin mining operations.

• The stock was recently up nearly 15%, far outpacing today’s gains for the rest of the crypto mining industry.
• CleanSpark CEO Zach Bradford announced the company's new strategy along with the release of its fiscal first-quarter earnings report late Wednesday.
• BTIG analyst Gregory Lewis says the plan has the “potential to flip the script and drive incremental growth.”
• The company has a current hashrate of 2.1 exahashes per second and another roughly 1.9 EH/s on order, Lewis wrote, with a hoped-for year-end hashrate of about 4.0 EH/s. He figures CleanSpark will need about $40 million in capital expenditures to hit that number.
• Speaking on its earnings call, CleanSpark management said that it prefers to raise the capital by issuing rig-backed debt and that the company is in active talks with lenders. Other options include monetizing some of the company's bitcoin (BTC) holdings, which doesn’t necessarily mean just sales, because it might include yield strategies, as well.
• BTIG’s Lewis maintained his buy rating and 12-month price target of $30 on CleanSpark's shares, which is triple the current levels.

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