So here's a fun one: a company misses earnings estimates by a mile, and its stock goes up. That's the story with MARA Holdings Inc (MARA) on Thursday, where shares jumped more than 15% after hours. The reason? A classic pivot from one hot thing to another.

Let's start with the numbers, because they're not great. MARA, a Bitcoin miner, reported fourth-quarter revenue of $202.3 million. That missed analyst estimates of $257.46 million, according to market data. Even worse, it reported a loss of $4.52 per share, which is... well, it's a lot worse than the 30-cent loss analysts were expecting. The company did mine 2,011 Bitcoin (BTC) and bought another 1,670 for its treasury, sticking to its strategy. But the financials themselves were a miss.

Normally, that's a recipe for a stock to go down. But the market is looking ahead, and what it sees is a new plan. MARA announced it has entered into a strategic agreement with Starwood Capital Group. The goal? To convert and expand some of MARA's existing sites into digital infrastructure—basically, data centers.

Think about it: Bitcoin mining requires a lot of power and space. So does running data centers for AI, cloud computing, and enterprise workloads. MARA is sitting on a bunch of facilities that are already hooked up to the grid and ready to handle massive energy loads. This deal is about repurposing those assets for a different, and currently very buzzy, customer base.

The companies say they expect to deliver about one gigawatt of "near-term IT capacity" with a "pathway" to more than 2.5 gigawatts. That's a lot of server racks.

"MARA's power-rich sites give customers what they need most: predictable access to energy at scale," said Fred Thiel, the company's chairman and CEO. "Our partnership with Starwood will allow us to turn that power certainty into capacity certainty, so customers can run diverse workloads close to their data and users."

He also pointed out the financial angle: "This joint venture structure also gives us a more capital-efficient way to accelerate the buildout of digital infrastructure across our portfolio." In other words, they don't have to foot the entire bill themselves to get into this new business.

So, the narrative shift is clear. The stock isn't reacting to last quarter's Bitcoin mining results. It's reacting to the promise of becoming a player in the digital infrastructure and AI data center boom, leveraging assets it already owns. It's a bet on a new story.

MARA executives were scheduled to discuss all of this—the quarter and the new deal—on a conference call later Thursday evening. Meanwhile, the stock was up 15.50% in the after-hours session, trading at $9.76 at the time of publication. Sometimes, it's not about what you did last quarter, but what you tell everyone you're going to do next.