A new report claims Bitcoin (BTC) mining firm Iris Energy’s investors are seeing a multimillion-dollar wipeout in the value of their holdings a year since the public listing.
According to an Australian Financial Review, shares of Iris Energy, which is listed on the NASDAQ, have fallen by 94.5% since the initial public offering in November of 2021.
According to the Australian Financial Review, the top investors that have suffered huge drawdowns in their investments in Iris Energy include Regal Asset Management, Platinum Asset Management, Thorney Opportunities, Grok Ventures, Wilson Asset Management and OC Funds Management.
Iris Energy listed 8.3 million shares at a price of $28 per unit on November 17th of 2021. The shares reached an all-time high of $28.25 on the same day before the descent started. Bitcoin had hit a record high of slightly above $69,000 seven days prior to Iris Energy’s listing.
The sharp fall in Iris Energy’s share price coincides with the Bitcoin mining firm revealing that its US creditors are demanding to be repaid $107.8 million on a loan taken out to purchase crypto mining machines.
The Australian Financial Review further quotes Iris Energy’s co-CEO Daniel Roberts saying that it’s Iris Energy’s wholly owned subsidiaries, which are structured as special purpose vehicles (SPVs), that owe New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) $107.8 million and that they will default on the loans.
“The companies [structured as SPVs] that owe them [NYDIG] the money, don’t have the ability to pay them back.
The value of those machines is now substantially below the value of the debt outstanding and the cash flow generated by those machines is insufficient to service their debt-financing obligations.
So, as a consequence, the group made the decision to not provide financial support and effectively the lender is now entitled to come and collect those machines for themselves.”
The report further cites Roberts saying that Iris Energy’s subsidiaries taking out loans rather than the parent firm is serving the business well for now.
“We’re dealt the cards we are and all we can do is pre-empt future issues, which we did around the [SPV] debt facilities by ringfencing them. We’re still super excited about the business and the industry.”
Iris Energy also owes crypto mining equipment manufacturer Bitmain $75 million in prepayments. The report says that Iris Energy indicated earlier this month that it had failed to make some recent payments to Bitmain and was not expecting to make upcoming payments under the same contract.
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