Core Scientific (NASDAQ:CORZ) & Marathon Digital (NASDAQ:MARA) Head to Head Analysis

Core Scientific (NASDAQ:CORZ) and Marathon Digital (NASDAQ:MARA) are both mid-cap finance companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, institutional ownership, dividends, risk, valuation, profitability and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Core Scientific and Marathon Digital, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Core Scientific	2	3	15	1	2.71
Marathon Digital	2	2	7	0	2.45

Core Scientific presently has a consensus target price of $28.14, suggesting a potential upside of 6.71%. Marathon Digital has a consensus target price of $18.38, suggesting a potential upside of 28.68%. Given Marathon Digital’s higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Marathon Digital is more favorable than Core Scientific.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Core Scientific and Marathon Digital”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Core Scientific	$354.74 million	23.63	-$288.62 million	($1.14)	-23.13
Marathon Digital	$867.82 million	6.27	-$1.31 billion	($5.72)	-2.50

Core Scientific has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Marathon Digital. Core Scientific is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Marathon Digital, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Core Scientific and Marathon Digital’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Core Scientific	-342.42%	N/A	-50.92%
Marathon Digital	-234.83%	-23.20%	-12.51%

Risk & Volatility

Core Scientific has a beta of 5.45, meaning that its stock price is 445% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Marathon Digital has a beta of 5.41, meaning that its stock price is 441% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

44.5% of Marathon Digital shares are held by institutional investors. 1.7% of Core Scientific shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.8% of Marathon Digital shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Core Scientific beats Marathon Digital on 9 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Core Scientific

Core Scientific, Inc. provides digital asset mining services in North America. It operates through two segments, Mining and Hosting. The company offers blockchain infrastructure, software solutions, and services; and operates data center mining facilities. It also mines digital assets for its own account; and provides hosting services for other large bitcoin miners, which include deployment, monitoring, trouble shooting, optimization, and maintenance of its customers' digital asset mining equipment. In addition, the company provides electrical power, repair, and other infrastructure services to operate, maintain, and earn digital assets; and sells mining equipment to customers. Core Scientific, Inc. was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Dover, Delaware.

About Marathon Digital

MARA Holdings, Inc. operates as a digital asset technology company that mines digital assets with a focus on the bitcoin ecosystem in United States. The company was formerly known as Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to MARA Holdings, Inc. in August 2024. MARA Holdings, Inc. was incorporated in 2010 and is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.