MARA Sells 13,597 Bitcoin to Clear $750 Million Debt and Authorizes $500M Buyback

MARA Holdings announced on Nov. 9 that its board authorized a common stock buyback program of up to $500 million after liquidating 13,597 $BTC to pay down credit obligations ¹. The bitcoin mining firm disclosed in its quarterly report that the post-quarter sales raised roughly $1.1 billion at an average price of $81,039 per coin, enabling it to fully extinguish $750 million in bitcoin-collateralized borrowing ¹. The loans repaid consisted of $600 million in new debt and $150 million used to refinance a Coinbase credit facility, leaving the company with approximately $350 million in remaining proceeds ¹. As detailed in an earlier MARA Holdings Form 8-K disclosure, the firm closed Sept. 30 with $958.5 million in total cash, including $12 million in restricted reserves ¹.

MARA reported third-quarter net income of $632.1 million, compared to $123.1 million in the third quarter of 2025, driven by an $885.3 million unrealized gain on its digital asset portfolio ¹. Despite the swing to quarterly profitability after three consecutive quarters of losses, the company recorded a net loss of $1.24 billion across the first nine months of 2026 ¹. Operational revenue contracted 35% year over year to $164.2 million from $252.4 million, dampened by a 37% drop in the average market value of mined tokens that removed $94.8 million from top-line revenue ¹. That decline was marginally mitigated by an increase in quarterly mining output, which rose to 2,247 BTC from 2,144 BTC a year earlier ¹. Prior to the debt discharge, MARA had already reduced total obligations by $1.4 billion between January and Sept. 30, including a transaction earlier this year where it liquidated 15,133 BTC to retire $1 billion in convertible notes ¹.

Pivoting Balance Sheets to Power and Compute

The miner indicated it plans to keep using its bitcoin holdings to accumulate cash reserves for artificial intelligence infrastructure, pending convertible note put options maturing next year, and future share repurchases ¹. The debt settlement follows the Nov. 4 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval of MARA's purchase of Long Ridge, a 485-megawatt natural gas power station in Ohio ¹. The transaction is projected to close in the coming weeks, while target completion dates for two high-performance computing data center leases could slip into 2027 depending on fluid market conditions ¹. At the time of writing, $BTC traded at $74,131.