Canaan (CAN) Swings to an $8 Million Profit on Bitcoin Gains as Rig Sales Collapse 96%

Canaan Inc. (NASDAQ: CAN) swung to $8.0 million of third-quarter net income on a $51.9 million fair-value gain in its bitcoin holdings and derivatives, the mining-rig maker said Tuesday, even as machine sales collapsed 96%.

The company filed the unaudited results Tuesday in a 6-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Total revenue fell to $14.5 million from $150.5 million a year earlier, including $4.8 million from product sales and $9.5 million from mining. Canaan sold 1.0 million terahashes per second of computing power and mined 133 bitcoin.

The profit did not come from the business. Canaan posted an $8.6 million gross loss and a $42.9 million operating loss. Chief financial officer Jin “James” Cheng said a recovery in bitcoin prices toward quarter-end generated the $51.9 million fair-value gain and called it “distinct from underlying operating performance.”

The $51.9 million is the sum of a $20.1 million gain on cryptocurrency and a $31.9 million gain on financial derivatives. Canaan also reported $22.4 million of non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA, a figure that still includes those gains. Strip them out and adjusted EBITDA would have been a loss of about $29.5 million.

Nangeng Zhang, Canaan’s chairman and chief executive officer, pointed to “continued weakness in bitcoin mining equipment demand and intense industry pricing competition.” Products revenue dropped from $13.6 million in the second quarter and from $118.6 million in the same period of 2025. The company blamed lower volumes and a lower average selling price.

Canaan took $8.2 million of inventory-related write-downs, down from $25.3 million in the second quarter. Mining operations posted a gross margin of about 30% before depreciation, with an all-in power cost of about $0.043 per kilowatt-hour and roughly 10 exahashes per second of installed capacity outside joint ventures.

The company held 1,875.5 bitcoin as of Sept. 30. Of that, 517.5 coins were owned outright, 1,258 were pledged for secured term loans and 100 sat in a fixed-term product. It booked $43.7 million of cryptocurrency assets and $114.2 million of cryptocurrency receivables.

The stack is down about 40 bitcoin from the 1,915.5 Canaan reported at the end of the second quarter, even after the company mined 133 in the period, implying it moved roughly 173 bitcoin off the treasury. Zhang said Canaan is “selectively monetizing cryptocurrency holdings to fund share repurchases.”

On Nov. 6, the board approved a new $100 million share repurchase authorization over 12 months and launched an initial $20 million program under that cap.

Canaan is trying to recast itself around power and compute infrastructure. Its 1-gigawatt project in Duval County, Texas, received a conditional “Studied Load – Firm” classification under ERCOT’s Batch Zero process, a grid-connection step Zhang said remains “subject to further studies and approvals.” A second 1-gigawatt project in Zapata County is in early-stage development.

To support those plans, Canaan set aside $50 million of restricted cash as collateral for a letter of credit tied to infrastructure contracts and made about $3.3 million of project prepayments. In October it bought a parcel of U.S. land for about $1.1 million. Cash ended Sept. 30 at $72.8 million, $50 million of it restricted, leaving $22.8 million unrestricted.

Canaan also plans a 1-for-25 reverse ADS split, effective on or about Dec. 4, changing each ADS from 15 Class A ordinary shares to 375. The move is meant to help the company regain compliance with Nasdaq’s minimum bid price requirement.

For the fourth quarter, Canaan expects revenue of $18 million to $22 million.

The shift toward power and compute puts Canaan in the same lane as other public bitcoin miners. MARA sold 13,597 bitcoin to fund AI infrastructure, and Hyperscale Data sold its last coins for a Michigan data center.

Whether a paper gain on 1,875 bitcoin and a pair of early-stage Texas power projects can carry Canaan until customers start buying machines again is the question the quarter leaves open.