Cipher’s $31.6M Q3 Profit Hides a $71.9M Operating Loss
Cipher Digital’s $31.6M Q3 profit came from a $127.2M noncash Google warrant gain, not operations: revenue fell 63% and the operating loss widened to $71.9M.
Cipher Digital reported a $31.6 million third-quarter profit that exists almost entirely on paper, its November 2 SEC filing shows, while its operating loss widened to $71.9 million.
The headline number, 8 cents per share, rests on a $127.2 million noncash gain from revaluing warrants the miner issued to Google. The earnings release filed with the SEC records the gain, which reflects the rising paper value of the warrants and involves no cash. Google received the warrants as part of an arrangement in which it backstops certain lease payments owed to Cipher by the AI infrastructure company Fluidstack.
Count the warrants as the dilutive securities they are and the quarter inverts. On a fully diluted basis, Cipher’s business update filed with the SEC shows a loss of 22 cents per share.
The operations behind the headline deteriorated across the board. Revenue fell to $26.7 million in the quarter from $71.7 million a year earlier, and the operating loss widened to $71.9 million from $37.6 million. Adjusted EBITDA swung to negative $10 million from a positive $40.8 million. Bitcoin mining contributed $20.8 million, down 71%, as the company moved computing capacity away from mining toward leasing data centers to AI companies.
Part of that decline is a choice rather than a collapse. Cipher earned its first data center revenue in the quarter, collecting $5.9 million after the initial phase of its Black Pearl facility in Texas began operations in August. The company stopped mining bitcoin there in February to prepare the site for a new tenant, and its AI pivot made it one of 2025’s standout mining stocks.
The contracted pipeline is where the money is meant to end up. Cipher recently expanded the lease at its Barber Lake data center to 20 years, bringing contracted revenue at the site to roughly $9.1 billion. The mark-to-market warrant gain is a different instrument: an accounting revaluation that can reverse in later quarters, and the filing does not treat it as cash in hand.
