(Bloomberg) -- Northern Data AG is getting closer to a deal to sell its crypto mining operations as the company looks to capitalize on November’s Bitcoin rally.
The Frankfurt-listed company resolved in October to sell its cryptomining business. Weeks later, digital assets caught fire in the aftermath of the US election of crypto-friendly Donald Trump. That’s left Bitcoin flirting with the $100,000 level and added to the allure of crypto-assets around the world.
The company has hired bankers, invited bidders to come forward and is now fielding proposals, according to Elliot Jordan, Northern Data’s chief financial officer.
“It’s ongoing is probably the best way to describe it — advanced in terms of offers coming in from a number of different parties,” Jordan said during a presentation at the Deutsches Eigenkapitalforum on Wednesday.
Northern Data, which counts stablecoin issuer Tether Holdings Ltd. as its main holder, is seeking to free up funds to expand its artificial-intelligence services business. It’s a shift many miners are exploring in the wake of an April Bitcoin software update that halved their main source of revenue.
Jordan said Northern Data was not putting a valuation on the business, but that reported estimates of $300 million to $500 million dated from before the Bitcoin rally.
“Obviously it’s a good time to be selling this position,” he told investors.
Tim Wunderlich, an analyst at Hauck Aufhaeuser Lampe Privatbank AG, wrote earlier this month that with peers now willing to pay as much as $100 million per exahash operations per second, that could result in divestment proceeds of approximately $800 million in a best-case scenario.
In May, the company announced its mining arm’s partnership with Penguin Infrastructure Holding for 28 megawatts of mining capacity to enable the business to increase its hash rate — the amount of total computing power supporting the network.
“We mine 7.9 exahash, which is which is just under 1% of the overall haul for Bitcoin mining,” according to Jordan.
--With assistance from David Pan.