B. Riley may purchase up to $100M stake in Bitcoin miner Iris Energy

Published at: Sept. 23, 2022

Australia-based crypto mining firm Iris Energy has signed a deal with B. Riley giving the capital market company the option to purchase up to 25 million of its shares.

According to a Friday filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Iris Energy inked an agreement with B. Riley Principal Capital II related to the “potential offer and sale” of up to 25 million of the Bitcoin (BTC) mining firm’s ordinary shares, worth $100 million. The filing states B. Riley has a 24-month timeframe to complete the purchase starting “as soon as practicable” after the effective date of the registration statement.

Because Iris Energy qualifies as a “foreign private issuer” under U.S. securities laws, the firm said it intended to follow “most Nasdaq corporate governance listing standards” while also adhering to Australian law. The company already expected to issue 198,174 shares to B. Riley “as consideration for its irrevocable commitment” to purchase more shares.

According to Iris Energy’s filing, the company planned to use proceeds from the sale to fund growth initiatives including purchasing mining hardware and developing data centers:

“As of the date of this prospectus, we cannot specify with certainty all of the particular uses, and the respective amounts we may allocate to those uses, for any net proceeds we receive. Accordingly, we will have broad discretion in the way we use these proceeds.”

The crypto mining company’s shares were listed on Nasdaq in November 2021 following a $200-million funding round. B. Riley Securities, an affiliate of the capital market firm, also acted as a joint book-running manager with Cowen for Stronghold Digital Mining’s plan to list roughly 6 million shares on the Nasdaq in an initial public offering in October 2021.

Related: Maple Finance launches $300M lending pool for Bitcoin mining firms

Other mining firms based in North America seem to have experienced financial difficulties amid the market downturn. Core Scientific and Bitfarms sold some of their BTC holdings in July, and Compute North filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Thursday. However, crypto mining firm CleanSpark inked a $33-million deal to purchase Mawson's Bitcoin mining facility in September.

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