Cango shares plunge 20% after bitcoin miner reports $81.6 million Q2 loss

Shares of bitcoin miner Cango dropped more than 21% on Tuesday after the company reported an $81.6 million second-quarter net loss as it continued to scale back its mining operations.

NYSE-listed Cango recorded $50.8 million in total revenue in the second quarter, down roughly 50% from the first quarter, with $47.4 million of that total coming from bitcoin mining. The company said this was mostly due to an effort to "right-size its mining operations" by phasing out older S19 mining rigs and transitioning some capacity to a hosted leasing model.

Cango's operating hashrate came in at 27.58 EH/s as of June 30, made up of 19.94 EH/s of self-mining capacity and 7.74 EH/s of leased capacity. Cango mined 656 bitcoin during the quarter and currently holds 1,065 BTC worth roughly $82.8 million.

The company said the smaller and leaner fleet helped reduce its average cash cost per bitcoin mined by approximately 5% from the first quarter to around $73,313. Cango has also started hedging its bitcoin exposure to give it a price volatility buffer.

Cango has been emphasizing profitability over mining scale as it also looks to diversify into AI infrastructure. CEO Paul Yu said the company is focused on "unit economics rather than scale" in its legacy bitcoin mining business.

As part of its move into AI, Cango has been converting its Georgia mining site to support GPU computing, with the site supporting up to 3 MW and related revenue expected to start rolling in in the third quarter.

Cango shares (CANG) were trading around $1.89 on Tuesday morning, down roughly 21% on the day.