What is the most dangerous line item on a company’s P&L?

Most capital-intensive businesses face volatility from inputs they don’t control. They focus on improving what is visible: revenue, margins, and KPIs. But these are results, not the drivers. The real sources of performance sit beneath the surface.

This is the idea MARA CFO Salman Khan made at NAFES 2026, and it extends beyond Bitcoin mining. Start by identifying the input that creates the most volatility in your model. Then ask two direct questions: Do you control it today? Are you renting it from someone else, or building ownership over time?

The Hidden Constraint Beneath Every KPI

Traditional financial management focuses on KPIs, but they only show the surface. The real drivers of performance are operational inputs like energy, infrastructure, and supply chains.

When these inputs are outsourced, businesses inherit volatility. Supplier disruptions, pricing fluctuations, and counterparty risk all flow directly into financial performance. This creates a “rental trap”, a dependency on third parties that limits control and reduces profits.

The most durable companies avoid this trap. They identify their core constraint and bring it in-house. Amazon built AWS instead of renting compute. Apple designed its own silicon. Netflix shifted from licensing content to producing it. Each company reduced volatility by owning a critical input.

The pattern is consistent: identify the constraint, chart a path to ownership,  and reduce volatility.

For MARA, that constraint was energy.

The Four Phases of Owning Your Constraint

A few years ago, MARA was largely asset-light. We owned mining hardware, but relied on third-party operators and rented sites. That model helped us scale, but it limited control over uptime and operations, keeping us exposed to our most volatile input: electricity costs.

MARA responded with a phased approach:

• Phase 1: Rent capacity to scale compute quickly.
• Phase 2: Own infrastructure to control operations and uptime. Within 12 months, MARA went from 100% rented to 70% owned and operated. That shift lowered cost-to-mine-per-coin and strengthened our cost competitiveness.
• Phase 3: Expand into energy ownership to reduce reliance on market pricing. Wind farms. Gas-to-power operations that capture flared natural gas in oil fields and convert it into electricity at the wellhead. Energy that would have been wasted or burned became the fuel for Bitcoin mining. MARA now controls nearly 2 gigawatts of capacity, with a path to 3.5 gigawatts.
• Phase 4: Build optionality across Bitcoin mining, grid sales, and AI/HPC. All three share one input: the electron. Control that, and you control which revenue stream captures the most value at any given moment. That flexibility also reduces concentrated risk. Instead of relying on a single variable, risk is distributed across more revenue paths.

A Framework for Capital-Intensive Businesses

Companies that perform consistently over time understand what drives volatility in their systems and take steps to reduce it at the source.

Three questions provide a starting point:

• What are the most critical inputs to your business?
• Which input creates the most volatility in your P&L?
• Do you rent it today, or are you building a path to ownership?

MARA's answer to all three has reshaped our company. Energy was the constraint. Now it's the platform.