Public miners shift capital spending toward owned substations

Capital-expenditure disclosures from listed mining companies show a steady shift in spending mix, with electrical infrastructure — substations, transformers and switchgear — taking a growing share of budgets relative to mining machines.

Executives describe the change as buying optionality. Owned interconnection capacity can be repurposed for other compute workloads if mining economics deteriorate, while machines cannot.

Lead times complicate the strategy. Large power transformers remain on multi-year delivery schedules, and several operators have pre-ordered equipment ahead of finalising site selection.

Lenders appear receptive. Two miners have raised debt secured against infrastructure rather than machine fleets, at spreads materially tighter than equipment financing.

The trade-off is near-term hashrate growth, which several companies have guided lower for the coming year.