06:48 AM EST, 11/06/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Hut 8 Corp. ( HUT ) , a vertically integrated operator of large scale energy infrastructure and one of North America's largest Bitcoin miners, was at last look up near 13% in US premarket trade as it announced Wednesday an initial ASIC fleet upgrade with the purchase of 31,145 BITMAIN Antminer S21+ miners.

Under the purchase agreement, Hut 8 ( HUT ) will acquire the miners at a price of US$15.00 per terahash, with delivery expected in early Q1 2025.

According to Wednesday's statement, Hut 8 ( HUT ) plans to upgrade 111 MW of self-mining capacity across existing sites with a focus on optimizing fleet efficiency and self-mining economics. Upon energization, expected in Q1 2025, the new miners are expected to increase the company's current self-mining hashrate by near 3.7 EH/s to near 9.3 EH/s, an increase of about 66%, while driving its average fleet efficiency down from 31.7 to 19.9 J/TH, an improvement of close to 37%. Alongside the company's previously announced purchase option for near 15 EH/s of hosted U3S21EXPH ASIC miners at its Vega site, this upgrade creates a path to near 24 EH/s of self-mining hashrate with an average fleet efficiency of 15.7 J/TH as early as Q2 2025.

"After extensive modeling, we selected the BITMAIN Antminer S21+ for our initial fleet upgrade due to its strong return profile relative to higher-efficiency models that require larger capital outlays," said Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8 ( HUT ). "The S21+ offers a faster payback period than more efficient models across a wide band of future hashprice scenarios, enabling us to optimize investment returns and accelerate value creation.

"Deep, strategic partnerships across the value chain are central to our approach to building a next-generation energy infrastructure platform. This purchase builds on our previously announced near 15 EH/s partnership with BITMAIN to host the U3S21EXPH ASIC miner, and we look forward to further developing our relationship with BITMAIN and other partners as we focus on disciplined, creatively structured growth across Bitcoin mining and AI compute infrastructure."

Hut 8 ( HUT ) said as part of its long-term power-first strategy, the company "continues to scale its compute layer across energy-intensive technologies, including both Bitcoin mining and AI compute, with the aim of maximizing returns on its portfolio of power assets and digital infrastructure."