The difficulty increase is killing our earnings but this was obviously to be expected. I also believe large mining operations help drive the price of bitcoin up, in the same manner that a company that mines oil expects to make a profit off of the oil they mine, in the future the price of bitcoin will continue increasing and this will be reflected in the pricing in the future.
Yes this was to be expected; in this world a delay of a few weeks can make a huge difference on your earnings. However, if we look at it from the fiat perspective we have already made a decent return.