New York, June 25, 2026, 12:05 EDT
- MARA Holdings, Inc. NASDAQ:MARA dropped 3.0% to $13.585 as of 11:50 a.m. ET. Bitcoin slid 1.3%. Invesco QQQ Trust NASDAQ:QQQ was up 0.5%.
- Citizens’ Greg Miller kicked off coverage of MARA at Market Outperform, putting a $24 price target on the stock. Miller pointed to AI and high-performance computing driving new power demand.
- MARA in its latest 8-K said shareholders cleared 18 million more shares for the equity plan. That’s about 4.7% of the share count as of April 30.
MARA Holdings, Inc. NASDAQ:MARA shares slipped Thursday. The drop came despite a new bullish call tied to the bitcoin miner’s move into AI power infrastructure. A recent shareholder vote has stirred fresh concern about stock-based compensation and dilution.
The stock dropped 3.0% to $13.585 at 11:50 a.m. ET, after starting at $14.41 and hitting $14.71 earlier. Bitcoin slipped 1.3% to $59,438. QQQ, tracking the Nasdaq 100, rose 0.5%. So the selloff in MARA looked isolated to mining names, not a tech sector move.
Other miners slumped. Riot Platforms, Inc. NASDAQ:RIOT was down 2.6%. CleanSpark, Inc. NASDAQ:CLSK dropped 3.3%, Cipher Mining Inc. NASDAQ:CIFR lost 4.3% and IREN Ltd. NASDAQ:IREN fell 3.2% during late-morning trading.
Citizens’ note put an upside on the stock. Miller launched coverage of MARA with a Market Outperform and a $24 price target, saying that demand for “powered capacity” is rising as miners repurpose power from bitcoin mining to high-performance computing for big clients. That target was about 77% above where shares closed Thursday. TradingView
MARA’s 8-K filing said stockholders signed off on an 18 million share boost to the 2018 equity incentive plan. The new shares come to about 4.7% of the 381.27 million shares outstanding as of April 30. This share plan has seen less attention so far.
The plan held 5.26 million shares for future issuance as of March 31. With the new authorization, the pool jumps to around 23.3 million shares before any future grants or use, or about 6.1% of the share count on April 30. The share base could change, which matters as the AI-power story gets priced in.
The meeting had uneven results on different items. The equity-plan amendment picked up 83.7 million votes in favor and 26.4 million against, with broker non-votes at 102.8 million. Say-on-pay was approved with 65.0 million for and 45.0 million against, which works out to about 59% of yes-no votes in support.
Pay is hitting the books. Marathon Digital (MARA) logged $31.9 million in stock-based compensation in Q1, about 18% of its revenue. Nearly all of that—$29.2 million—was booked under general and administrative, making up around a third of G&A. The quarter ended with a $1.26 billion net loss, mostly from a $1.0 billion hit from fair-value swings in its bitcoin holdings and receivables.
Bitcoin price moves still set the mark-to-market figures. MARA’s 35,303 bitcoin holdings as of March 31 had a stated fair value of $2.41 billion at $68,222 each. At Thursday’s bitcoin price of $59,438, the same bitcoin count would be worth about $2.10 billion, down by around $310 million. The calculation doesn’t account for any change in MARA’s current bitcoin total.
MARA is working to shift its stock story away from bitcoin. The company in April said it would acquire Long Ridge Energy & Power for around $1.5 billion, debt included, picking up a gas plant in Ohio and more than 1,600 acres eyed for a data-center campus. CEO Fred Thiel told Reuters the location had “all the key components” for that plan. Reuters
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