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 โpotential offer and saleโ of up to 25 million of the Bitcoin (BTC) mining firmโs ordinary shares, worth $100 million. The filing states B. Riley has a 24-month timeframe to complete the purchase starting โas soon as practicableโ after the effective date of the registration statement.
Because Iris Energy qualifies as a โforeign private issuerโ under U.S. securities laws, the firm said it intended to follow โmost Nasdaq corporate governance listing standardsโ while also adhering to Australian law. The company already expected to issue 198,174 shares to B. Riley โas consideration for its irrevocable commitmentโ to purchase more shares.
According to Iris Energyโs filing, the company planned to use proceeds from the sale to fund growth initiatives including purchasing mining hardware and developing data centers:
โAs 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.โ
The crypto mining companyโs 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 Miningโs 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.
