Japanese IT giant GMO has just reported making an operating profit of 255 million yen (about $2.3 million) for its cryptocurrency business in the second quarter of this year.
The firm released its financial report following an earnings call on Thursday, which indicated that the company's crypto segment made a total of 2.6 billion yen, or $23 million, in net revenue.
The amount generated in the crypto segment was almost equally split between the mining and exchange businesses, which accounted for 47 and 53 percent of the net revenue, respectively.
That said, with operating costs mounting to $21 million in just three months, GMO recorded a relatively small margin of $2.3 million, or 10.95 percent. However, the figure looks more respectable when placed in the context of GMO's net loss of $6.6 million in the first quarter – mainly due to negative revenue suffered by its exchange business in the first two months of this year.
Although GMO didn't provide a breakdown of the operating costs for the crypto segment in Q2, it did indicate that a notable portion arises from the mining side of its business.
"Although the expansion and mining equipment progressed as planned and recorded sales of 1.2 billion yen, mining profitability declined due to deterioration of the macro environment such as stagnation of bitcoin price as well as the increase of hash rate," the report said.
Indeed, according to GMO's latest mining report, dated Aug. 3, the firm appears to have increased its mining capacity in the second quarter. For instance, the company mined 512 bitcoins in the first quarter – less than the 528 bitcoins GMO mined in June 2018 alone.
Notably, those figures come soon after the launch of GMO's own 7nm bitcoin miners, which were touted as having higher hashing power alongside lower electricity demands.
Before now, the only previous profitable quarter for GMO's fledgling crypto business was Q4 2017, a time when bitcoin prices soared to a record high of nearly $20,000.