MARA Jumps 11% on $500 Million Buyback as Miners Decouple From Bitcoin

MARA Holdings (NASDAQ:MARA) rose 11% to $7.34 in morning trading on November 10, one day after pairing its Q3 2026 results with a $500 million share repurchase authorization. The stock climbed while Bitcoin itself fell 2% to $73,335, and the divergence defines the story: bitcoin miners that convert power sites into AI data center contracts are now trading on company news rather than the coin.

Riot Platforms (NASDAQ:RIOT) gained 2% to $17.96 on the same day after Jefferies upgraded the stock. Core Scientific (NASDAQ:CORZ) edged up 1.4% to $12.90. All three moves came against a macro backdrop that pressures Bitcoin directly: a hotter-than-expected October Consumer Price Index report has futures markets leaning heavily toward a quarter-point Federal Reserve rate hike at the December 9 meeting.

What did MARA report?

MARA filed its Q3 2026 results with the SEC on November 9 and announced the buyback alongside them. The board authorized the repurchase program after quarter end, giving the company a discretionary tool for open market or privately negotiated purchases.

Earnings per share came in at $1.28 against a consensus of -$0.10. The beat had one dominant driver: an $885.3 million unrealized non-cash gain on MARA's Bitcoin holdings. Strip that gain out and the quarter looked far weaker.

Revenue made the weakness explicit. MARA booked $164.23 million in the quarter, missing the $176.13 million consensus and falling 34.9% year over year. A lower average Bitcoin price cut into mining sales through the period.

The balance sheet told a stronger story than the income statement. On the November 9 call, CFO Salman Khan said MARA had cut its debt by $1.4 billion since the beginning of the year. Post-quarter Bitcoin sales raised more than $1.1 billion and fully repaid the company's Bitcoin-backed loans.

What did management say about data centers?

CEO Fred Thiel stated the company still targets two data center lease deals before year end, while warning that timing could slip into next year. He also stressed discipline about speculative construction: "We are not in the build it and they will come business."

Thiel framed Bitcoin's role in the company's strategy explicitly on the call. "Bitcoin remains our operating foundation and a flexible way to monetize power while we develop higher value infrastructure opportunities," he said.

MARA still runs Bitcoin mining as its base business, holds a large Bitcoin treasury, and has acquired the Long Ridge natural gas plant to supply its own power. That hybrid posture separates it from peers moving faster toward AI infrastructure.

Not every analyst embraced the quarter. Rosenblatt analyst Chris Brendler cut his MARA price target to $11 from $15 in a November 10 note while keeping a Buy rating.

Why did Jefferies upgrade Riot?

Jefferies moved Riot to Buy from Hold in a November 10 note and lifted its price target to $28 from $13 — more than doubling it. The firm cited the economics of the Corsicana lease Riot disclosed on November 4 with a frontier AI lab.

The bank's reasoning was specific. "The powered land lease lets RIOT monetize the site with less execution and financing risk," Jefferies wrote.

JPMorgan reached the same number independently. Analyst Richard Choe raised his Riot target to $28 from $22 and kept an Overweight rating. JPMorgan noted the lease covers 910 megawatts of IT capacity, above the 756 megawatts the firm had expected.

The Corsicana site carries a concrete schedule. Its first 400 megawatts are scheduled for September 2027, which makes that delivery the site's next major milestone and a fixed test of Riot's lease-driven model.

Riot has shifted its business toward triple-net powered land leases, an arrangement where the tenant owns and operates the computing equipment and pays the operating costs. That structure transfers execution risk away from Riot and toward the AI tenant — the property that attracted both Jefferies and JPMorgan.

How does Core Scientific compare?

Core Scientific posted its Q3 results on November 5. Colocation revenue rose to $215.43 million — already above MARA's total quarterly revenue from all sources.

The company is moving furthest from mining. Core Scientific plans to finish its exit from Bitcoin mining by year-end and to start 2027 as a pure colocation provider, the most complete conversion among the three stocks.

Its 1.4% gain on November 10 trailed both MARA's 11% and Riot's 2%, but the market is rewarding the same underlying move: contracted AI data center revenue replacing volatile mining income.

Why are these stocks rising as Bitcoin falls?

The three companies sit at the intersection of two markets: cryptocurrency and the AI infrastructure build-out. On November 10, the second market dominated. Capital returns at MARA and lease economics at Riot outweighed a 2% drop in the coin those companies still mine or recently mined.

The broader context matters for the AI build-out itself. Investors are rewarding Bitcoin miners that turn power sites into AI data center contracts because those contracts convert speculative mining revenue into long-term, creditworthy income. The same dynamic extends across the supply chain — power, cooling, and networking suppliers tied to the AI boom.

CleanSpark (NASDAQ:CLSK) shows the timing risk on the other side of the trade. A 20-year lease at its Sandersville, Georgia campus will not deliver its first ready data hall until the fourth quarter of 2027. That is a longer wait for data center revenue than its peers face.

What comes next for the three stocks?

MARA faces two near-term tests. The first is whether it signs its two targeted data center leases before year end. The second is how actively management uses the $500 million buyback authorization.

The risks are equally concrete. A lease delay, a weaker coin, or convertible note puts that become exercisable next year could weigh on the stock. Traders may prefer to keep exposure smaller until the timing of MARA's lease deals settles.

A signed lease would give MARA the kind of contracted revenue now lifting Riot and Core Scientific. Until then, the company's story rests on its Bitcoin treasury, the Long Ridge power plant, and management's stated refusal to build capacity without a tenant.

For all three stocks, Bitcoin's reaction to rising Federal Reserve hike odds remains a swing factor into the December 9 meeting. But the November 10 session made the direction of travel clear: the market now prices these companies on megawatts under lease and buyback dollars authorized, not on the coin alone.