Canaan - Q4 2022

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Canaan Inc.'s fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, we will have a question and answer session. Please note that this event is being recorded. Now I would like to hand the conference over to your speaker host today, Mr. Clark Soucy, Investor Relations Director of the company. Please go ahead, Clark.

Clark Soucy (Investor Relations Director)

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our earnings conference call. The company's financial and operating results were released by our Newswire services earlier today and are currently available online. Joining us today are our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Nangeng Zhang, and our CFO, Mr. James Jin Cheng. In addition, Mr. Xiaoming Lu, our SVP, Mr. Liang Wang, IR Senior Director, and Miss Xi Zhang, IR Manager, will also be available during the question and answer session. Mr. Zhang will start the call by providing an overview of the company and performance highlights for the quarter. Mr. Cheng will then provide details on the company's operating and financial results for the period before we open the call up for your questions. Before we continue, I would like to refer you to our safe harbor statement in our earnings press release. Today's call will include forward-looking statements.

These statements include, but are not limited to, our outlook for the company and statements that estimate or project future results of operations or the performance of the company. These statements speak only as of the date hereof, and the company assumes no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements that may be made in today's press release, call, or webcast, except as required by law. These statements do not guarantee future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Please refer to the press release and the risk factors and documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent annual report on Form 20-F, for information on risks, uncertainties and assumptions that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in such statements.

In addition, during today's call and webcast, we will discuss both GAAP financial measures and certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of the company's performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to, and not as a substitute for, or in isolation from, GAAP results. You can find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations with comparable GAAP results in our earnings press release, which is posted on the company's website. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Nangeng Zhang. Please go ahead.

Nangeng Zhang (Chairman and CEO)

Hello, everyone. This is N.J., CEO and Founder of Canaan. Our CFO, James, and I are delighted to share our quarterly results from the company's Singapore headquarters. The market environment in the fourth quarter of 2022 become even tougher and probably reached its darkest moment. The Fed raised interest rates by 75 bps in November and 60 bps in December to fight inflation. As such, the recent macro environment has been quite difficult for the Bitcoin mining industry. Also, in November 2022, the crypto exchange FTX and the crypto lender BlockFi both filed for bankruptcy. These unfortunate events further hurt creditors' and investors' confidence in the whole cryptocurrency industry.

Due to this series of adverse events, the Bitcoin price decreased to a 52-week low of $16,500 at the end of the year. At the same time, energy prices stayed high because of the regional conflicts. While Bitcoin total network hash rate has increased by more than 20% from the last quarter, as new mining farms began operations and new machines went online around the world, this has made mining more difficult with decreased mining rewards and has even resulted in select mining farms to stop operating. In North America, where mining has been relatively concentrated since 2021, many miners and hosts have high debt ratios and financing costs.

These borders have further impacted their cash flows, and some miners and hosts have gone bankrupt or had to reorganize their business. These problems have badly affected miners' operations, income, and demand from purchasing mining machines. We have mixed feelings about this industry downturn. During the fourth quarter of 2022, together with our management team, I visited investors, clients, and partners in North America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. I wanted to understand their business and financial positions, and start to weather this hard time with them. Faced with the current industry challenges and thanks to the execution of our flexible sales strategy as well as our mining business, which we have been expanding for some time now, we generated total revenues of RMB 392 million this quarter, exceeding our guidance of RMB 310 million.

Today, I want to take this opportunity to discuss three key topics. First, our continuous investment in R&D and the production capacity. Second, the ongoing development and the progress of our mining business. Finally, our understanding of, and thoughts on the downturn in the Bitcoin price and the general cryptocurrency industry. First, we made substantial investments in R&D and continued to secure future production capacity in the fourth quarter. Our CFO will share more details on this later. I would like to address that during an industry downturn, it is a tough decision to maintain these investments. This decision showcased our long-term confidence in global Bitcoin adoption. In late October of last year, we launched the new generation A13 mining machines after the tape-out on the advanced process node. The A13 achieves new highlights in computing power and energy efficiency.

After the release of our new generation mining machine, we have been strengthening our cooperation with foundry partners. This will help us to secure the limited surplus production capacity of wafers on the most advanced nodes. Accordingly, we are moving on to mass production and upgrading our products to the new generation with better computing power and energy efficiency. Second, our mining business is bearing fruit. Our mining operations installed computing power in Central Asia and North America increased slightly to 3.3 exahash per second in the fourth quarter from 3.2 exahash in Q3 of 2022. The power supply in Kazakhstan has been improving, but it is still unstable. Under these conditions, we generated mining revenue of RMB 72.2 million in the fourth quarter, up 16.3% sequentially despite the Bitcoin price decreasing during Q4.

At the 2022 year-end, we have 757 Bitcoins in total. Going into the first quarter of 2023, the Bitcoin price is showing a upward trend, we are making further strides in our mining business. As of the end of February, our total installed mining computing power reached 3.8 exahash per second. With additional hash rate continued being installed, we expect our installed hash rate to reach 5 exahash per second-5.5 exahash per second by the end of Q1 of 2023. Our nearly 10-year industry experience enable us to explore diverse ways to cooperate with our partners under varied business conditions. We are proud to have become international and Asia Bitcoin miner in our mining business. We expect to deploy more mining projects in multiple regions in the future.

Finally, as Bitmain went through four major Bitcoin bear markets, I want to share my view on the low point of this Bitcoin cycle. The fourth quarter of 2022, in my view, was the darkest time for Bitcoin and the entire cryptocurrency industry during the past two years. When Bitcoin price dropped down to a cycle bottom, some unexpected events also happened in the industry. This fraud seriously hurt the confidence of industry players and caught regulators' attention. I don't believe this should make us lose faith. We should see this as an opportunity for the industry to separate good companies from cheaters. This process will drive the industry to become more sustainable in the future.

There have been a lot of negative headlines recently, but I want to point out the positive. Looking back at the 14 years since the birth of Bitcoin, we can see that today is quite different from the past. Even if we only look over the last 2 years, there were great developments. Now, the number of Bitcoin miners and the total computing power of the network are at a much higher level compared to the low point of the 2020 crypto cycle. In addition, Bitcoin mining now happens all over the world. This situation formed a highly decentralized trading network. We can see that many miners are seeking and adopting low-cost, sustainable energy across the globe. These miners have monetized many power plants, stranded capacity, and helped many undeveloped regions develop their green power infrastructure.

Bitcoin has emerged as an outsider from traditional finance. It is now facing increasing regulatory focus in many places around the world. We should be aware that the trend will show the growing user base of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have formed a strong consensus and have a significant influence that cannot be ignored. Bitcoin has gone from a niche asset that a few people understood to having tens of millions of users. We could even say that it become mainstream. A new industry that has been around for only 14 years will obviously go through cycles of excitement and despair to achieve progressive evolutions. During the industry's development, we want illegal and unethical behaviors to be exposed. Industry players are learning, improving, and maturing. Companies, who complies with regulations and act responsibility will stand out.

This takes us back to our original aspiration to found the company 10 years ago. At the time, our goals was to create a compliant company that supports the landmark invention of Bitcoin system with secure computing technology. To meet this goal and along with the global decentralization of Bitcoin, we are continuing to globalize our company. By the end of 2022, we have already established an overseas supply chain that can quickly fulfill orders from international markets and expand our services capabilities with certain after-sales service stations worldwide. We also developed a headquarters with a multifunctional team in Singapore, insisting on producing best-of-class products. We have continuously integrated our technology and improved chip fabrication. By maximizing our product's computing power and energy efficiency, we aim to provide a superior experience of Bitcoin miners and work with them to build a stronger Bitcoin network.

Since the second half of 2021, we have started to explore the mining business and have further evolved our business model. With the growing experience of our team and the carryout of our mining operations, we installed mining hash rates has shown an emerging scale as of today. With that, we successfully expanded our business to the industry downstream, which helps us better understand our customers' need and understand Bitcoin itself. Overall, we remain bullish on the future of Bitcoin and the super computing technology behind it. Moving into the first quarter of 2023, with Bitcoin price showing some improvement, we believe the most difficult part of Bitcoin cycle is approaching the end. Now, we are looking forward to the market recovery. We have recently received many orders and purchase inquiries.

At the same time, we have also noticed that many miners are unable to place orders due to financial problems. Generally, computing power demand is gradually recovering, but recovery has just started. We expect our total revenue in the first quarter of 2023 to be approximately RMB 450 million or $65 million. We expect our total installed hash rate from mining to be 5-4.5 exahash per second by the end of the first quarter of 2023. With our new strategy of building our proprietary mining machine in conjunction with our mining operations, we already have two reinforced business segments focusing on Bitcoin. Going forward, we will continue to Iterate our products and provide great services to our mining clients as we support the growth of Bitcoin ecosystem.

Along with miners around the world, we will join in and contribute to Bitcoin's globalization. We will continue to adapt ourselves to researching and finding favorable mining sites. With agile operation and efficient execution, we endeavor to explore and size opportunities during the age of discovery of global Bitcoin mining. This concludes my prepared remarks. Thanks, everyone. I will now turn the call over to our CFO, James.

James Jin Cheng (CFO)

Thank you, Mr. Zhang. Good day, everyone. This is James. I'm with our CEO in our Singapore office. Broadly speaking, in the fourth quarter, as our CEO has already stated, the market situation was very tough for both Canaan and our customers, as well as the whole industry. At the same time, we also faced our own challenges in executing on our product upgrade from the A12 series to the A13 series. As a result, we must make upfront payments for new wafers while sales are impacted due to the low Bitcoin price. However, we did make some good progress in developing the scale of our mining operations in quarter four, and it contributed more revenue than ever. Despite all the difficulties, for total revenues, we achieved RMB 392 million, beating our previous guidance by more than RMB 80 million.

Regarding machine sales, in this challenging time, we endured the market conditions and continued to decisively execute on our strategy. Considering a very limited demand, we further lowered the selling price for our legacy A12 series models to spur our sales. As a result, we delivered 1.9 million terahash per second in the quarter, contributing to approximately RMB 318 million in mining machine sales, which is better than we expected. I would like to share a few points about our mining business. During the market downturn, we have been actively exploring and developing our mining business because these mining resource assets are undervalued in the current bear market. We believe it is the ideal time for us to invest and deploy valuable assets for the long run.

At the same time, it's also a method to allocate our machines in inventory to generate Bitcoin. With further improved power supply, our revenue from the mining business reached RMB 72 million, up 16.3% sequentially. The growth is impressive given the decreasing Bitcoin prices during the quarter. This marks the first time our mining revenue made a $10 million milestone in a single quarter. Please note revenue from mining is recorded according to the Bitcoin price when a Bitcoin is generated from mining. After paying a certain power fee using Bitcoin, we had 757 Bitcoins as of the end of 2022. This Bitcoin balance was up 41% quarter-over-quarter compared with 535 in the third quarter, reaching a new historical high.

By the end of 2022, we had installed a mining hash rate of 3.3 exahash per second collectively in Central Asia and North America. By the end of February, we had a total installed hash rate of 3.8 exahash per second. With these positive developments in our mining collaborations recently, the company's total online mining machines are expected to reach a hash rate of 5-5.5 exahash per second by the end of the first quarter of 2023. Please note that the installment progress may be subject to unexpected issues, and thus may influence the final installed hash rate by the end of the first quarter of 2023. The total energized hash rate is also subject to the local power supply. Let's talk more about the profit and loss.

We incurred a gross loss of RMB 230.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2022 due to the lower top-line revenue amongst an unfavorable market and higher costs. Specifically, for our mining machine sales, the gross loss of RMB 136.7 million for the quarter was mainly due to an inventory write-down of RMB 205.3 million. This write-down was a result of lower than cost average selling price for the previous generation machines, which suffered from the declining Bitcoin price. The inventory write-down decreased by 7% sequentially as we strived to sell out our inventory to the market during the fourth quarter. If the inventory write-down were excluded, we would have a gross profit for our mining machine sales of RMB 68.7 million.

The decreased ASP of selling machines also narrowed the profit compared to the third quarter of 2022. Regarding our mining business, we recorded a gross loss of RMB 77.0 million during the quarter. Our costs of energy and hosting amounted to RMB 74.2 million, which was mainly due to increased energy prices. In addition, we incurred depreciation costs of RMB 74.9 million in the fourth quarter from our growing number of deployed mining machines. Excluding depreciation, our mining profit or loss defined as mining revenues deducting costs for energy and hosting, was a loss of RMB 2.1 million for the fourth quarter. The loss was primarily due to the lower revenue per Bitcoin mined, resulting from the decreased Bitcoin prices during the fourth quarter. We recorded RMB 223.5 million for R&D expenses during the quarter.

This includes about RMB 96 million for an one-off expenditure for our new generation chips. The remaining RMB 127.5 million resulted from our ongoing research and development inputs, which grew steadily, sequentially and year-over-year. Most of our sales contracts were denominated in US dollars, we recorded a foreign exchange gain of RMB 26.6 million in the fourth quarter due to the depreciation of the RMB against the US dollar. The company continues to internationalize and drive global sales, we are considering adjusting our reporting currency, which may impact our foreign exchange gains going forward. A result of higher depreciation, inventory write-downs, and relatively higher expenses in R&D, we recorded a net loss of RMB 438.3 million.

As our growing mining scale will continue to record higher depreciation and considering the modest selling price in the near-term and the potential inventory write-downs as a result, we are not expecting substantial profits in the next one or two quarters. From a longer-term perspective, the depreciation will not last longer than the useful life of the machines. The selling price of the machines could be readjusted upward along with the market demand once the Bitcoin price increases. Despite these near-term headwinds, we are still optimistic about our capacity to generate substantial profits in the longer-term. Turning to our balance sheet. First, let's discuss our cash status. As our CEO stated, we invested a lot during quarter four of 2022 to secure our supply capacity as well as R&D and our mining business.

As of December 31st, 2022, our cash and cash equivalent decreased to RMB 7,007 million. The decrease in cash amounted to RMB 1,295 million, mainly including RMB 848 million for prepayment to secure wafer supply and production. RMB 205 million for payment of value-added tax and income tax expenses. Our operating expenditures used RMB 149 million in cash. We also paid upfront deposits of RMB 21 million to secure mining farm resources for expanding our mining business. Our investments in the supply front have prepared us with adequate production resources to manufacture our next generation mining machine and allocate increased computing power for mining. We made such strategic investments during this bear market, preparing us with adequate inventory for sales and capitalizing on the coming bull market.

When the Bitcoin price increases, we have confidence the aforementioned investments will bring us notable returns. Cash is used to deliver value to our shareholders. During the fourth quarter of 2022, we used approximately RMB 72 million, which is equivalent to $10.5 million, to repurchase 3.5 million ADSs under our current stock repurchase program approved in March 2022, with an average repurchase price of $3 per ADS. In late November, we filed a prospectus supplement on Form 424B5 to officially set up the ATM facility for future financing. We have not commenced using the ATM as of today, and we'll continue to consider appropriate financing opportunities to fuel our future business growth.

We continue to believe in the resilience of Bitcoin in this most challenging time, and have seen a silver lining as the Bitcoin price moderately improved since the beginning of 2023, which was consistent with our outlook. I'm pleased to report that in February, we obtained more than 200 orders from customers. Although the average contract amount is not particularly sizable, we can sense the customers are in a more positive mood compared to quarter four of 2022. In this recovery cycle, we will utilize our cash on the most critical aspects, such as the wafer supply, to seize market opportunities and deploy ahead of time so as to expand the scale when the market picks up. Now, I would like to briefly walk you through our financial results for the quarter.

Total revenues in the fourth quarter were RMB 391.9 million compared to RMB 2,184.6 million in the same period of 2021, and RMB 978.2 million in the third quarter of 2022. Gross loss was RMB 230.9 million. Total operating expenses in the fourth quarter of 2022 were RMB 393.5 million compared to RMB 273.7 million in the same period of 2021, and RMB 275 million in the third quarter of 2022. Loss from operations was RMB 624.4 million. Net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders was RMB 438.3 million.

Non-GAAP adjusted net loss was RMB 341.8 million. Basic and diluted net loss per ADS for the quarter were RMB 2.61. As of December 31st, 2022, the company had cash and cash equivalents of RMB 707.3 million. This concludes our prepared remarks. We are now open for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. As a courtesy to other investors and analysts who may wish to ask a question, please limit yourself to two questions at a time. If you have any follow-up questions after the Q&A session, the investor relations team will be available after the call. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your question to management in Chinese, please immediately repeat your question in English. To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Our first question comes from the line of Michael Donovan from H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead, Michael.

Michael Donovan (Equity Research Associate)

James. Kevin is on the road right now traveling, I'm filling in for him. First question, what is machine demand like with the depressed pricing, and how is Canaan balancing between developing self-mining versus selling machines?

Nangeng Zhang (Chairman and CEO)

Hello. Thank you. For this question, on the positive side, Bitcoin price has started to increase slightly since the beginning of this year. The overall demand of computing power has shown some recovery. We have received more purchasing queries and the small orders. For instance, in the past month, we received over 200 new orders with a total amount of about $35 million. Because the situation has just started to improve, the total amount isn't that large. So far, demand from Asia has recovered most quickly. We haven't seen much recovery from North America yet. On the negative side, inventory in the market has still not been completely rejected.

Because of this, the selling price of the machines didn't increase in line with the rise in the Bitcoin price and the number of mining machine orders delivered. Our selling price is still limited by the state of the industry. For quite a long time, we have been preparing for a low Bitcoin price and a lower demand. Our current strategy is to grow our mining skills by enhancing partnerships with mining farms and the reasonable power prices. This will allow us to utilize our mining machines inventories for mining rewards. I think by investing when Bitcoin price is low, we will see good returns when the price recovers. We expected Bitcoin price will not be continuously restricted in the next one, two years.

We will probably experience increase. We are willing to invest in RMB and lock in wafer production capacity in advance. This will ensure we have enough machines with higher performance for both sales and self-mining. Thank you.

Michael Donovan (Equity Research Associate)

Thank you, N.J. For my second question, it's specifically about Bitcoin price. You've been quite good at predicting the price of Bitcoin. From your perspective, how do you see Bitcoin price correlation with risk on assets? Do you see there being a decoupling from risk on asset prices?

Nangeng Zhang (Chairman and CEO)

I think, now the Bitcoin price is mostly linked with the high-risk assets. This is my opinion. So, I think when the risk assets goes up, the Bitcoin price will recover. This is my personal view. Thank you.

Michael Donovan (Equity Research Associate)

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jiaer Zhu from China Renaissance. Please ask your question, Jiaer.

Jiaer Zhu (Analyst)

Hi. Hi, N.J. My first question is about the pricing strategy and inventory digesting data. How much computing power do you plan to allocate for self-mining business?

James Jin Cheng (CFO)

Thank you. Maybe I take this one. I think it's about pricing strategy. We are seeing that the Bitcoin price has only slightly recovered, and the whole mining demand is gradually recovering. It looks like there is still a lot of inventories of the machines in the market. The current conditions are not very favorable for a rapid increase in sales prices. In the extreme case that the Bitcoin price falls again, we may have to lower the sales price again. From our perspective, I think we will closely monitor the market demand and, you know, implement flexible price strategies to quickly sell inventory and collect the cash back. We will also take the advantage of market opportunities when they arise.

In terms of the inventory, as of the end of February, we have sold most of the limited amount of A13 new models that were in stock. We are currently producing a new batch. We also shipped many older generation models in the fourth quarter of 2022, and recently in quarter one 2023. Currently, our overall inventory level is sufficient. In an environment of slow market recovery, I think we will actively explore mining projects and use more inventory for our mining business to generate Bitcoin rewards. We expect our installed computing power to be in the range of 5-5.5 exahash per second by the end of the first quarter of 2023.

We are also actively exploring market demand for mining machine sales and negotiating with large customers to seize sales opportunities as the Bitcoin price recovers. Overall speaking, we expect the Bitcoin price will not continuously be restricted in the coming one to two years. We'll probably experience an increase in the ongoing quarters, so leading to an increased demand for computing power and mining equipment. Therefore, we have already locked in wafer production capacity in preparation for the upcoming possible bull market. Thank you.

Jiaer Zhu (Analyst)

Thanks, James. My second question is that do you have any stock incentive plan and dividend distribution plan?

James Jin Cheng (CFO)

Thank you for the question. Before the company went public, we established a program to incentivize our employees with our stock. This program has been operating smoothly since going public, and is one of our key strategies to attract talented employees and research teams, especially research teams. We will keep discussing and planning together with our board of directors regarding the employee incentive plan. For dividends, currently, we do not have a plan to distribute dividends to shareholders. Instead, we aim to invest more in research and development as well as production deployment in order to create a long-term shareholder value. As the company continues to grow and accumulate assets, we will keep focusing on research and development operations in order to expand our business.

We will discuss the possibility of distributing dividends when the timing is more appropriate. Thank you.

Jiaer Zhu (Analyst)

Okay. Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Legg from The Benchmark Company. Please ask your question, Mike.

Mike Legg (Managing Director)

Thank you. Good morning.

James Jin Cheng (CFO)

Thank you.

Mike Legg (Managing Director)

You mentioned that you have, you know, 200 new orders, roughly $35 million on the books now. Can you talk with Bitcoin moving up to, you know, 22,000 currently, what you're seeing for the demand, how it's changed from, you know, the fourth quarter to current, and the related margin pressure on that? Then, you know, mention whether there are new entrants inquiring about the machines or if it's just the traditional players increasing, upgrading their fleets. Thanks.

James Jin Cheng (CFO)

I will take this one. I think regarding the sales part, we have collected a number of small orders recently, but the overall demand has just started to recover, and the total volume is not that significant yet. Some traditional miners are unable to place orders due to their financial constraints. The high industry inventory levels have also limited our sales volume and the prices. I think recently we are prioritizing some of our efforts on dispensing our inventory of older models and parts to quickly collect cash back. If the fluctuations in Bitcoin price lead to slower sales of older model in inventory, we may need to further adjust prices to make concessions. If under such conditions, our gross profit will probably be undermined.

Regarding our mining business, we expect our mining revenue in the first quarter to further grow, assuming we increase the number of mining machines installed and online quarter-over-quarter, while the Bitcoin price rebounds during the first quarter. However, as energy prices remain high, we expect the gross profit of our mining business to improve only slightly in the first quarter. Additionally, as we deploy more computing power, mining machine depreciation will also increase in line with the deployment progress. This will also have an impact on the gross profit. Thank you.

Mike Legg (Managing Director)

Thanks. Just one more question. Can you talk a little bit how the operating environment in China is right now, also discuss the build-out in Singapore and the U.S., please? Thanks.

Nangeng Zhang (Chairman and CEO)

Okay. Thank you. At the end of 2022, China adjusted its COVID control policies. Currently, it seems that the control measures in transportation and logistics have largely returned to the level before the pandemic. Our employees are now able to work more efficiently in areas such as operations, finance and R&D, through various forms of online and in-person collaboration. At the same time, we can go global business. We can in-person meeting with our overseas customers. The size of our teams in our headquarters in Singapore, including R&D operations and the finance, has been steadily increasing and is playing an increasingly important role in our overall operations.

We have also formed teams in North America for mining operations, sales, warehousing, logistics and after-sales maintenance, providing more support for local market development and after-sales services. Additionally, we have set up 13 after-sales services centers worldwide, enabling us to provide fast and convenient operational and maintenance service for our overseas customers. Thank you.

Mike Legg (Managing Director)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Shuang Sun from Guosheng Securities. Please ask your question, Shuang.

Shuang Sun (Analyst)

Yeah, yeah. My first question is that will you have additional inventory write-down in the next quarter?

James Jin Cheng (CFO)

Thank you for this question. In response to the continuous decrease in Bitcoin price in the fourth quarter, we lowered the selling price of some old models, which led to the expected cash inflow from selling these models below cost. As a result, we have recorded a provision for inventory write-down of over RMB 200 million, which is recognized as a cost for this quarter. In addition, the depreciation cost of mining machines has increased due to the increase in our equipment deployed for mining. These factors have led to a negative gross profit of this quarter. In 2023, the Bitcoin price has only moderately rebounded and recently declined. If we further adjust down the price for the higher hash rate A12 models, then we would incur additional inventory write-down in the first quarter of 2023.

However, if we are able to sell this inventory at a price higher than the cost, the provision for inventory write-down that we have recorded can be used to offset the sales cost, thereby increasing our gross profit margin. I think I have tried to answer your question, Shuang.

Shuang Sun (Analyst)

Okay. Okay. Thank you. The next question is, what's the recent development in the audit risk?

James Jin Cheng (CFO)

I think you are talking about the previous PCAOB issue. Regarding the.

Shuang Sun (Analyst)

Yes.

James Jin Cheng (CFO)

issue, yeah, faced by the Chinese stocks and the consequent risk of delisting, I think we have happily noticed that China and the U.S. are working towards a solution, and there has been positive progress recently. On December 15th, 2022, the PCAOB announced that it was able to fully inspect, investigate PCAOB-registered public accounting firms headquartered in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Given the solid progress so far, the market is more optimistic towards reaching a solution for the audit issue. From company perspective, we have been actively exploring possible solutions since the emergence of the delisting risk caused by auditing issues. Our goal is to protect the interests of stakeholders, especially our shareholders, maintain the status and compliance advantages as a listed company.

You know, to develop the longer-term of Canaan. In the process of our globalization, we have also extended our operations and the supply chain overseas. As a listed company, our majority of revenues are generated overseas. We will continue to maintain and strengthen our government's capabilities for compliance and legal operations in different countries and different regions and maintain active communications with the capital markets. I think that's my answer, Shuang.

Shuang Sun (Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Brendler from D.A. Davidson. Please ask your question, Chris.

Chris Brendler (Managing Director)

Hi. Thanks. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. My first question is, just given all the excitement around ChatGPT and AI, can you give us an update on your AI business? Thanks.

Nangeng Zhang (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you for your question. Our current lineup of our AI chips primarily focus on CV for like analyzing and processing images and like sounds. The machine vision and the machine hearing. I think it's different from the currently ChatGPT's large language models. But, you know, we are amazed and excited by the progress of technology. The remarkable advancements in AI technology have given us a hope in addressing some of the problems that have cropped in the industry, such a

We need some time to explore and research in these areas. I think in the short-term to mid-term, we will continue to work in the area of AI chips that we are familiar with, and we are, we have, and, you know, and continuously iterate and improve our products. These products are still valuable and can provide users with better experience. I think we have benefits because we have access to the high-end technology. We're hoping the long-term, we will evolve this kind of AI chips.

Chris Brendler (Managing Director)

Okay, great. Different question. Maybe this is more for James. Is, just help me think about the share buyback and then also the ATM. You know, is the ATM more for growth initiatives or the share buyback is more for near-term uses of excess cash? Just help me, help me balance those two. Thanks.

James Jin Cheng (CFO)

Yeah. I think, just now we have mentioned we did execute based on our share repurchase program in quarter four, and we have not commenced using our ATM facility yet. In late November, we filed this Form 424B5, and completed the setup of this ATM facility. I think this will enable us to quickly execute financing activities when the timing is appropriate in the future. We will consider our own performance and wait for the market conditions to improve. I think currently the valuation needs to recover to a certain extent. After fully considering the interest of our shareholders, I think we will flexibly and prudently carry out, you know, financing activities.

Due to the specific financial needs of our industry, it is necessary for us to have a long-term plan in the capital market. I think this will help us mitigate potential operational risks and seize fleeting business opportunities. Thank you.

Chris Brendler (Managing Director)

That's great. Thanks so much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Bond from Rosenblatt Securities. Please ask your question, Andrew.

Andrew Bond (Managing Director)

Thanks. Hey, could you guys discuss your growing focus and plans for business growth in the US and how that market's progressing?

Nangeng Zhang (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you. We highly value the North American market because it has a large concentration of miners. We have established a multifunctional team in the local area that handles warehousing, logistics, sales and after-sales services. We also set up several maintenance service centers or spare parts warehouses to provide more convenient after-sales support for our customers in North and even South America. I think even so the current inventory level in U.S., especially for used mining machines, remains high, the inventories remain high. We believe that buying our new machines is valuable for customers.

They can enjoy one year of free warranty services, and which are very valuable for miners and can provide them with a better mining experience. This is that used mining machines cannot compete with. Besides the natural environments and the resources in North American mining sites varies a lot. These sites are often located in different geographic areas such as deserts that cause or high latitude regions with extreme cold temperatures or extreme high temperatures. This environmental conditions is very challenging. We work with our customers to provide customized cooling and mining solutions based on the conditions of their mining site. At the same time, our mining business in North America keeps expanding.

As of now, we already have multiple projects under contract or already in operation. We expect our mining scale in North America to be over 40% of our total computing power installed by the end of the first quarter of 2023. Thank you.

Andrew Bond (Managing Director)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

All right. Thank you. There are no further questions. I'd like to turn the call back to the company for any closing remarks.

Clark Soucy (Investor Relations Director)

Hi, everyone. We really appreciate you all taking the time to join the call with us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to our team through the contact information on our website. We look forward to further discussion with you next time. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. That concludes the call today. Thank you for attending everyone. You may now disconnect.