CleanSpark - Q3 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Abby, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to CleanSpark's Fiscal Third Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press the star key followed by the one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one a second time. Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the floor over to Isaac Holyoak, Chief Communications Officer. You may begin.

Isaac Holyoak (Chief Communications Officer)

Thanks, Abby, and thank you for joining us today for our fiscal third quarter financial results call, covering the period April 1, 2023, through June 30, 2023. Our press release was issued about 30 minutes ago and is available on our website at www.cleanspark.com/investors. Today's call is also being webcast, and a replay and transcript will be available on our website. I'm here with Zach Bradford, our Chief Executive Officer, and Gary Vecchiarelli, our Chief Financial Officer. Keep in mind that some of the statements we make today are forward-looking and based on our best view of the world and our businesses as we see them today. As described in our SEC filings and on our website, those elements may change as the world changes. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures concerning our performance during today's call.

You can find the reconciliation of GAAP financial measures in our press release, which is available on our website. With that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Zach.

Zach Bradford (CEO)

Thank you, Isaac. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for our third quarter earnings call. Since last speaking with you, we have strengthened our position as one of the largest, most efficient, publicly traded Bitcoin mining operators in the world. The dedication of our teams has resulted in an extraordinary rapid growth. We now outperform almost every single one of our competitors in monthly production, even compared to competitors that, on paper, may seem bigger than us. As a CEO and founder, I hope you'll excuse a little cheerleading, but I don't think it is at all an exaggeration to say that we are the best bet in the space. We have a proven track record of doing what we say we'll do, and to that point, we have hit or exceeded every milestone we've set for ourselves.

This company and the people who work here are best-in-class in every way. Now, before I get into the details on the quarter, I want to take a moment and announce that we have fully funded our growth to 16 exahash. This includes machines, materials, and everything else, nuts to bolts, that goes into building a world-class Bitcoin mining facility and bridging the gap to 16 exahash per second. This creates certainty for our shareholders around our future and puts any questions to bed about our path to 16 exahash per second. We are building transformational infrastructure with almost 90,000 machines deployed and another 60,000 on hand or pending delivery, for a total fleet of approximately 150,000 state-of-the-art miners, all fully funded.

We are operating over nine exahash per second. Over the next half of the year, we expect to add an additional seven exahashes per second after energizing the expansion of our data center in Sandersville, Georgia. That expansion, I again would like to state, is fully funded. I know this has been an important question for many of you. There is no longer any uncertainty about when we will have the funds in hand to pay for the expansion and the miners. That day is today. Our track record speaks for itself. So far, this fiscal year, which for us started on October 1, 2022, we have mined over 5,600 bitcoins through July. That speaks not only to our scale, which is substantial, but also to our skill as operators. We run the most efficient facilities at scale in the industry.

We have among the highest hash rate realization rates of any publicly traded company. This is a key metric for our shareholders to understand, because it doesn't matter if a company has 200,000 machines, if those machines aren't plugged in and hashing. We maintain industry-leading uptime at scale. Not only are we becoming ever more efficient as operators, but our efficiency at the machine level is also becoming unmatched by our competitors. We use technology to maximize our fleet's efficiency. Fleet efficiency matters because it means we can mine more Bitcoin with less power. This is a win for our margins and a win for the Bitcoin mining network. It allows for us to pack more hash rate into our existing infrastructure. As machines become more powerful and more efficient, we are poised to take advantage of some of these synergies in rather sophisticated ways.

As of our latest report at the end of July, we reported that our fleet-wide efficiency is approximately 29 joules per terahash. This is good, but not good enough for us. Once all the XPs that are on hand or ordered are plugged in and hashing, we expect to see our efficiency improve significantly, coming in at approximately 25 joules per terahash. We believe this rating will make us one of the most, if not the most, efficient Bitcoin miners at scale on the network, producing more Bitcoin, expanding our margins, and driving more revenue to our bottom line. We've maintained hash rate gains to deliver impressive revenue over the nine-month period reported today. Gary will provide more details about the quarter, but through June 30th, we've generated over $115 million in revenue.

Our balance sheet has been strong and is growing stronger, and as of this call, today, our unaudited cash balance is over $90 million. We have minimal long-term outstanding debt, and we hold approximately 1,200 Bitcoin. With our CapEx now funded through 16 exahash per second, we have increased flexibility to continue to grow our Bitcoin treasury. We are pragmatic about how we manage our Bitcoin balance, with the goal of creating the best outcome for our shareholders. We believe we can do this best by being strategic and not ideological, and by being responsive to market dynamics. Right now, that means moving some of our liquidity into Bitcoin. We see substantial momentum building across the Bitcoin ecosystem, and we intend to gradually grow our Bitcoin balance. Doing so underscores our commitment to Bitcoin and our critical role in building Bitcoin infrastructure.

Bitcoin is a remarkable advancement in human history. As we are fond of saying, it is just getting started. Over the last few months, we have seen a string of high-profile institutional investors make serious moves in the Bitcoin ecosystem, including multiple spot ETFs waiting for approval. Now, while many of these have languished for months and even years, there are signs of potentially favorable movement on the horizon. For example, BlackRock's application for a spot ETF, the largest asset manager in the world, is one such opportunity. BlackRock has successfully filed hundreds of ETFs and has only ever once not been approved. Their track record suggests that they believe there is a path to successfully launch an ETF. Now, although there can be no guarantee this will occur, if it does, we would expect to see substantial inflows of funds into Bitcoin.

We believe this could make the coming months very interesting for our industry. We also see some of the regulatory scrutiny abating as Bitcoin further solidifies its position as different from other so-called cryptocurrencies. We agree with regulators that Bitcoin is a commodity and should be treated as such in all respects. We expect the next 12 to 18 months to be transformational for Bitcoin, not only with ETFs on the horizon, but also with the coming halving and the price action we expect to see as Bitcoin continues its program trajectory of scarcity. We are very well-positioned to take advantage of this momentum, having just completed a 50-megawatt expansion of our data center in Washington, Georgia. Tucked on the outskirts of this beautiful rural community, that facility now hosts almost 26,000 machines for a total hash rate of about 2.8 exahashes per second.

That expansion alone has already produced 114 Bitcoins, or about $3.3 million in revenue at an assumed value of $29,000 per Bitcoin, since the 1st machine in the expansion was turned on just a few weeks ago. The entire site is now producing nearly seven Bitcoin a day. We work closely with community leaders to negotiate a win-win power purchase agreement that allows the city to thrive while maintaining low power costs for our operations. Our teams and partners in Washington, led by Dalston Branch, the site manager, Scott Garrison, our Vice President of Business Development, and Taylor Monnig, our Vice President of Mining, have worked through rain and shine, heat and cold to expand this remarkable facility. We also acquired 2 smaller sites in Dalton, Georgia, last quarter, adding 20 megawatts to our portfolio.

Located in Northwest Georgia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Dalton is a thriving community with its own electrical utility. Our move into Dalton has allowed us to deepen our regional expertise while diversifying our utility providers. Georgia is rich in affordable energy, Dalton is uniquely positioned as one of the owners of Vogtle 3. We are eyeing several expansion opportunities in the surrounding area. With the Washington expansion now fully online and Dalton running at full capacity, we have hit all-time high hash rate of over nine exahashes per second, we are well on our way to achieving our target of 16 exahashes per second. Before discussing what the next half of the year looks like, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on how momentous this achievement is.

It took us nearly two and a half years to get to where we are today, and in the last year alone, we've grown over 200%. We are now set to nearly double our hash rate in a matter of a few months with the expansion of the Sandersville site. Our Sandersville expansion is shaping up to be a truly impressive data center. Currently, Sandersville runs at about 80 megawatts. The expansion is expected to add another 150 megawatts, giving our data center there a total operating capacity of 230 megawatts. We believe the expansion will make it the largest Bitcoin mining campus in the South. Once complete, the expansion will consist of 10 buildings, each capable of holding thousands of machines. To give you a sense of the scale here, the two largest buildings are the length of three football fields each.

The site is gently tiered, allowing for a carefully controlled flow of air to maximize ambient cooling efficiencies. This approach ensures machines operate at peak capacity, even during the rare times a year when the region experiences extremely high heat. As of this call, the land has been graded. Excavation for the underground wiring starts next week, and breaker panels and other building materials are arriving on site daily. Pouring of the concrete pads and building construction is expected to start soon. The expansion is sited directly next to a new substation. The Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, or MEAG, is building the substation. MEAG provides most of our power needs in the region, and we are very proud to continue to work with them and their partner cities. MEAG expects the substation to be finished by the end of the year.

We are dependent on them for the construction of the substation and the related infrastructure. The delivery of the machines and the construction of the data centers to house them are within our control, and we expect to finish our work inside the next few months. After the substation is complete, we will energize the expansion over the following weeks until we hit 16 exahashes per second and become one of the largest proprietary miners in North America. Of course, 16 exahash per second isn't the end of the road for us. We are opportunistic. Dalton is one example of potential opportunities. We've identified several avenues that would allow us to deepen our commitments to the community and expand our fleet there.

We are also eyeing several new greenfield or new build opportunities or acquisitions that we believe could provide maximum optionality for us to choose to build as fast or as slow as makes sense over the next several years, through and after the next halving, as we prepare to corner more and more of the Bitcoin network's North American hash rate. We also continue to explore opportunities that could monetize renewable projects that are expected to wait years in the queue before they are ever connected to the grid. The future is bright for Bitcoin and for CleanSpark, and we are exceptionally well positioned to make the most of the opportunities we see on the horizon. Now, none of this is possible without the dedication of my management team and our teams in Georgia and Nevada that believe in this work.

We talk a lot internally about grit and what it takes to be the best. I can say without hesitation that our teams have grit. They are the best operators in the entire industry. I'm so proud to work with them. I'm going to turn it over to Gary now.

Gary Vecchiarelli (CFO)

Thank you, Zach. As Zach mentioned, we have a proven track record as the last two and a half years of execution speaks for itself. I am very humbled to be part of this management team and proud of the efforts of our operations team, who have made us a top-tier miner. Let's dive into the numbers for the third quarter now. For the third quarter of 2023, we recognized $45.5 million of revenue, which was an increase of approximately $14.5 million, or a 47% increase. This increase was due to our growth in hash rate and thus greater Bitcoin mined during the most recent quarter. When compared to the preceding second quarter, our revenues increased approximately $3 million or 7%. While our hash rate remained relatively steady in the most recent quarter, the revenues increased due to Bitcoin price remaining elevated.

This increase in revenues led to increases in gross profit for both the prior-year and preceding-quarter comparisons. I want to point your attention to the preceding-quarter comparison, where our gross profit increased $4.4 million to $24.8 million. We also saw our gross margins increase 7%, from 48%-55%. The increase in gross profit between the quarters is greater than the increase in revenues due to declines in our third quarter power costs. I want to call that out now, as I will discuss this in greater detail here in a few slides. Looking at our GAAP net loss, we decreased our net loss in both comparable periods to $14.2 million. The largest contributor to our net loss is our Depreciation Amortization, which is a little less than $22 million for the third quarter.

As you are aware, our business model requires significant capital investment, and our efforts in acquiring the newest and most efficient ASIC miners on the market, combined with our M&A efforts, have led to increases in our depreciation expense. However, we remain focused on finding the best deals on infrastructure and machines, often timing or even setting the market lows. Our ability to hunt for good deals helps keep future depreciation expenses low as possible, though we do expect this number to grow with future purchases. Let's take a moment to discuss our Adjusted EBITDA, which is a metric management uses to evaluate the profitability of its operations. For the third quarter, our Adjusted EBITDA was $13.3 million, which is an increase of $8.2 million or 160% over the same quarter last year.

When compared to the immediate preceding second quarter, our Adjusted EBITDA increased over $500,000 or approximately 5%. We did see a slight dip in our Adjusted EBITDA margins between the two quarters, from 30%-29%, which reflected several new items in the third quarter. The second quarter's number included a realized gain on sale of Bitcoin of approximately $1.4 million, whereas the third quarter had a slight loss of $143,000. I want to point out that we started the third quarter with Bitcoin priced at approximately $28,000, and Bitcoin stayed in a trading range of $20,000-$31,000 for most of the third quarter. This was a stark contrast to the second quarter, where Bitcoin price started the quarter at under $17,000.

The Bitcoin sold earlier in the year had a lower carrying value on the balance sheet than our third quarter production. This resulted in larger variance between the periods and a realized gain loss. Additionally, we saw greater Bitcoin impairment expense of approximately $500,000. I'd like to take a moment to discuss our power costs in greater detail. You have may noticed that starting last quarter, we included a table of our power costs and break-even analysis in the MD&A portion of our 10-Q. Here, I want to highlight our power costs and the breakdown of what is included in those power costs. We have noted that the industry does not have a standard when discussing or disclosing power costs, which should include all costs incurred on the monthly utility bill in addition to the actual cost of electricity.

CleanSpark has consistently provided its all-in power costs, which includes not just the wholesale cost of electricity, but transmission and distribution charges, profit margins to the cities we operate in, taxes, and other miscellaneous fees. For the third quarter, our all-in cost of power for proprietary mining sites was $0.041 per kilowatt-hour. As you will see in the chart here, our true wholesale electrical cost was $0.024 per kilowatt-hour. There are approximately $0.017 per kilowatt-hour of other fees, which comprise over 40% of our all-in number. These fees include charges which vary based on power purchase agreements we have negotiated with the three utilities we operate within the state of Georgia.

Additionally, you will see our power cost decreased $0.005 from $0.046 per kilowatt-hour, which is approximately 11% from the second quarter. This is directly attributable to our active power management strategy, frankly, shows the value in monitoring and managing market rate power. The second quarter saw lower temperatures, especially in January, which resulted in higher cost per kilowatt-hour. The weather was relatively moderate in the third quarter, with spring bringing lower power rates. You can find our all-in cost per kilowatt-hour broken down between our proprietary sites and co-locations in our MD&A section of the most recent filed 10-Q. Before I close out, I want to discuss our liquidity position.

As of June 30th, we had approximately $22 million of cash on hand and a total of 529 Bitcoin, valued at approximately $14 million. Our total assets were over $650 million, and we had less than $18 million of debt, which represents a relatively clean and flexible balance sheet. As Zach stated earlier in the call, we currently have enough capital on hand to fully fund the capital investments to get to our 16 exahash goal. That includes machines, building materials, and other infrastructure. As of today, we have over $90 million and almost 1,200 Bitcoins, which represents approximately $125 million of liquidity and more than enough to reach our targets. Now that we have certainty, we look forward to continuing to execute on our strategy over the next couple of months.

With respect to the recent increases in our Bitcoin balance, I want to state that from my perspective, I really like the flexibility of our balance sheet and operational performance. We now have all the pieces in place, from people to capital, to extend our strong track record of growth and operational excellence. With that, I will turn the call back over to Isaac.

Isaac Holyoak (Chief Communications Officer)

Thanks, Gary. Abby, this concludes our prepared remarks. We would now like to open the line for questions from analysts.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this point, we will begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you can press star and then the number one. To withdraw your question, press star one a second time, and if you are using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please pick up your handset prior to pressing the numbers to ensure the best sound quality. Once again, that is star one to ask a question. We will take our first question from Mike Colonnese with H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open.

Mike Colonnese (Managing Director, Equity Research)

Hi, good afternoon, guys, and thank you for taking my questions. First one for me, great to see the power costs come down in the quarter. If you could just speak to what you've seen in the market since the quarter and the trajectory going forward, especially in light of some of the recent heat waves we've seen across the U.S., and now that Vogtle 3 is online in the state.

Zach Bradford (CEO)

Hey, Mike. Thanks. This is Zach. I'll field that one first. You know, power prices have continued to remain very advantageous. You know, this is a great thing about Georgia, is we're not in Texas, and we're not contending with the power prices in the way that they are. We're not seeing the heat in the same way. Yes, it's hot. Yes, we have to manage around that, but our curtailment has been incredibly limited. You know, I don't have the exact number, but we are able to maintain, you know, still upper 90% uptimes, even after the quarter end. Really, what you should expect to see, you know, in our next update is continued extremely high realization. July has been great. We do expect probably the last-

... two weeks of August are usually the hottest of the year, in Georgia. What we're seeing on the power prices, though, is, you know, they, they've been able to maintain fairly flat. Will we see a slight increase in August? Yes, I think so, but we are seeing the wholesale power rates to continue to maintain in the $0.02 range, just like we did last quarter, where we had, you know, $0.02-$0.024 on average. All in all, we're feeling really good. We're able to keep our machines online more than I think most of our peers, and Georgia is, again, proving to be one of the best bets. To your last question, let me address Vogtle 3.

you know, really, its impact is, it's probably a little too early to tell, but it's part of the reason that we, we made the bet. If you understand the power costs are really just supply and demand, what Vogtle 3 is providing is additional supply, base load, 24/7, 365. That should lead to increased abundance, which again, on a supply and demand curve, should lead to lower cost. Simple economics.

Mike Colonnese (Managing Director, Equity Research)

Great. Thanks for taking my question, Zach.

Zach Bradford (CEO)

Hey, thank you.

Operator (participant)

We will take our next question from Josh Siegler with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.

Josh Siegler (Senior Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question today. Congrats on getting the 16 exahash fully funded. I think that's quite, quite an achievement, so congratulations on that. It actually ties into my first question, which is, you know, with the 16 exahash fully funded now, what do you view as the major risk to actually achieving that 16 year-end target? How do you plan on best managing for things such as transportation of rigs and actually installing the rigs to make sure you can still hit the 16 exahash by year-end? Thanks.

Zach Bradford (CEO)

Hey, Josh, thanks for joining the call. Appreciate the thoughtful question on this. You know, what we focus on is what we can control, and we've been planning on this for, for many months. Let me address the rigs first, and the miners, I should say. The miners are going to arrive, months in advance, is our intention. We expect, you know, the-- if you look at that 45,000 unit order, which will be the majority of what goes into that site, it's an August and September batch, which means they should be shipped late September, or sorry, late August, early September. At that point, it's just a matter of how quickly the planes can get on the ground.

I really would expect that we should have all 45,000 of those machines stateside, realistically, by the end of October. On an outside case, it should be, you know, the first week or two in November. From there, it comes to infrastructure. Our infrastructure is well on track to be ready ahead of time. The minute that we have shelves available, you know, optimally, we're storing miners for a very short period of time, and then we're putting them right onto shelves and ready to go. Everything we control between the rigs and the infrastructure, all the lead-long lead time items have already been ordered under contract. We have all the contractors secured, all of that's taken care of. The, the risk to us are the things we don't control.

That can, of course, be, you know, utility timing or anything that relates to their side. As of right now, we feel good about the trajectory of, that things are going. Now, of course, we can help in some ways, you know, along the process, and we're gonna continue to do so to make sure that we get there as, as quickly as possible. But, you know, when the power is there, it still does take time to turn the machines on. If you've paid attention to what happened with our recent 50-megawatt expansion, you know, it, it took us about 10 days to get, 10-12 days, to get all those machines turned on hashing. That just comes down to the fact that we're working with a whole lot of power.

You know, it's, it's not like flipping a light switch when it comes to 50 or 150 megawatts of power. For us, to, to kinda sum that up, it's, it's we're gonna try and have everything we control ready early, and that way, we have plenty of buffer room on our side of the equation.

Josh Siegler (Senior Analyst)

I got it, Zach. That was a very helpful color. Thank you. Then, you know, I was curious if we could take a look forward, right? Once the 16 exahash target is achieved, it should set the company up to establish a larger HODL balance over time. If we're thinking about growth beyond the 16 exahash, would you view this larger HODL balance as a potential funding source for growth?

Zach Bradford (CEO)

Yeah, absolutely. We, we view it also as an ROI source, because, you know, it's an asset on the balance sheet that has the ability to grow in value and, you know, going back to the market events that we're seeing, ETFs, for example, halving is another one. You know, Bitcoin is built with scarcity in mind that should push the value up on a long-term basis. We also believe that the other market effects, such as ETFs, but also the continued adoption rates of Bitcoin, you know, everything is trending in the right direction to show that that will increase in value. Now, as that goes up in value, we can, of course, use that to fund growth from operations like we have for the last 18 months. We've always seen it as one of the levers to pull, to grow.

Again, from a market condition point of view, we got it right when we started selling our Bitcoin, even though it was unpopular, you know, almost 18 months, almost one years ago, when Bitcoin hit, you know, $69,000. Although, although unpopular, we chose to sell it because the market indicated it was time to sell. We believe the market is indicating it's time to hold on to more than other times, and we'll, we'll measure it day by day, week by week. Absolutely, we still see it as a way to fund growth. You know, again, on a long-term basis, we also hope that debt markets come back into play, which there are really not good opportunities there. You know, the more non-dilutive capital, whether it's operating or debt, the, the better.

On a long-term basis, we think that having a really strong balance sheet sets us up to do that, and we'll look to those levers in a higher degree for future growth.

Josh Siegler (Senior Analyst)

Great. Thanks, Zach. Very helpful again. I'll hop back, hop back in the queue. Thanks.

Zach Bradford (CEO)

Thank you, Josh.

Operator (participant)

We will take our next question from Tyler DiMatteo from BTIG. Your line is open.

Tyler DiMatteo (Analyst)

Yeah, thank you, everyone. Really appreciate the time here. Zach, I, I was wondering if you could provide a little more color on Dalton specifically. Really, what would that expansion look like? You know, realizing that Georgia is the real stronghold footprint of the company, but, you know, any color on timing there, you know, how you would think about going about it, realizing that with Vogtle 3 online, obviously, nuclear in Georgia is becoming, you know, even more important. Just any other color on that site specifically?

Zach Bradford (CEO)

You know, I-- at this time, I'm not able to provide a lot of additional information. You know, we, we don't want to give away all the, all the secrets of everything we're working on right now. There's just opportunity. There's opportunity all over Georgia from an abundance of power point of view. To reiterate, Georgia, again, is continuing to prove out, just like we made the bet 2.5 years ago it would, that power prices would be low and continue to stay low. You know, that is one of many opportunities for expansion. When we have more information in hand, we will look forward to sharing it with everybody.

Tyler DiMatteo (Analyst)

Okay, great. And then my, my follow-up here, I wanted to circle back on the, the fleet efficiency, you know, at, at the 29 joules per terahash going to, to 25. I mean, I guess, how do you think about, you know, moving beyond, or beyond the 25, potentially, and really, the, the rig replacement cycle and just growth in general? I'm just curious how you're thinking about efficiency and anything you can do to kind of improve that? I know, you know, obviously immersion is a big topic in the market today, but, but, just any other color there on kind of how you're thinking about efficiency and what that could shake up to be?

Zach Bradford (CEO)

Yeah. So, you know, that- that's obviously gonna be an optimization strategy that is gonna be required by all miners in the future. What, what we're actively in the process for, and if anybody has added up the exahash of total miners that we have, they're gonna see it's over 16. We're actively in the process of doing some upgrades that will lead to, I'm gonna call it a, you know, a midterm fleet efficiency improvement between now and the end of the year, and we think that that's gonna get us halfway to 25. you know, once we get everything installed and, and online, really, there won't be... We don't expect at halving, that there will be anything in our fleet that will have an efficiency over, you know, 30.5 watts per terahash.

All the machines will have been upgraded and, you know, shifted from there. What, what does that mean for the machines that we pull out of cycle? There's obviously a couple things to do with them. We can keep them and, you know, look to deploy them in maybe more remote situations where, you know, power is extremely cheap, but, you know, maybe where there's uncertainty of timing. This can be anything from flare gas to, you know, small sites in Africa, or we can just sell them and turn them into capital and keep buying and building more efficient facilities. We, we see that as a point of optionality. We are gonna have a, a stack of lower efficiency-- of lower efficient miners.

What the bull market has always proven, when you look back at how many S19s were suddenly flying off shelves for prices for what you can actually nearly buy an S17 or an S19 for today, that's another opportunity, is you, you know, stack the least- the less efficient machines in a warehouse, and the next bull run, they're, you know, worth their weight in gold again. We, we see that as a point of optionality, but we don't expect to have anything plugged in at halving that would have an efficiency, under 30 or above 30.5 watts per terahash.

Tyler DiMatteo (Analyst)

Okay, great. Really appreciate the call there, Zach, and thanks for taking the time.

Zach Bradford (CEO)

No, thank you.

Operator (participant)

We will take our next question from Brian Dobson with Chardan. Your line is open.

Brian Dobson (Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, thanks very much for taking my question. So interesting, interesting thoughts that you shared on the potential approval of a spot ETF, I suppose. What are your thoughts on a, on a timeline for that approval? Do you have any estimate for how much capital we could see directed, you know, toward Bitcoin if one of those is approved?

Zach Bradford (CEO)

You know, anything I would say is gonna be maybe a guess, but I expect it'll be, you know, a matter of months, you know, not years. You know, Mike Novogratz yesterday got pretty public during their earnings call and some follow-on comments that, you know, his belief from insiders at BlackRock was that it would be, you know, four to six months out. He probably has better information than, than I do on this, so that, that's probably a, a good indication. We have had conversations with market participants over the past few months, and I, I do see it as something that is, you know, likely, you know, and it's something that is to happen in the very near term. Really looking forward to that.

From a capital point of view, you know, I, I think it's gonna just come down to percentages. You know, there's a lot of money being managed out there, once ETFs from these big firms come into play, there's nothing to stop somebody from putting 1% or 0.5% or even a 0.1% into these ETFs. When you think about the $ trillions under management, you know, that could potentially be a very large, you know, $ amount that flows into Bitcoin. What that is and how much funds would, you know, or a family office would consider to allocate into any of these ETFs, is just a guess. I do think that, you know, the regulatory certainty is a really big part of this, which again, we mentioned, we think is coming.

Even if when the ETFs come into play, there's not, you know, all the potential capital that comes in, you know, maybe we need another 12 months after that of additional regulatory certainty. When that happens, we could see a second wave, I think. I think this is a two-step process, potentially, unless, you know, from a commodities point of view, that certainty speeds up just a little bit more.

Brian Dobson (Senior Research Analyst)

Very helpful. Thank you.

Zach Bradford (CEO)

Thank you. Appreciate the question, Brian.

Operator (participant)

We will take a follow-up question from Josh Siegler with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.

Josh Siegler (Senior Analyst)

Yeah. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my follow-up. I just wanted to touch on immersion cooling. Now that you've been hashing in immersion for, for quite some time, I'm curious if you can comment on the efficiency gains you're seeing from immersion, and any color you have on its operations as well, would be helpful. Thanks.

Zach Bradford (CEO)

Yeah, absolutely. You know, we really like the results we're seeing from immersion. You know, I also think in future generation of miners, as the chips get more efficient and the nanometers get smaller, it therefore produces more heat, potentially, immersion is gonna become more and more important. As part of that, you know, I really do think that in 2024 and later, we'll look to build more immersion cool facilities. We specifically said that when we built Norcross, that, you know, we knew it wasn't gonna be the biggest site that we owned. It's actually amongst our smallest currently, but it allowed us to learn everything we needed to learn. Currently, it is running perfectly flat all the time, 24/7. Repair and downtime is substantially better than air cool.

Again, we're extremely happy from the results we've seen. We've also learned a couple things that we would change in the future. I do think in 2024 and later, we'll be ready to move into more large-scale immersion facilities. Now, when it comes to performance, we do gain some flexibility in immersion. You know, there's a lot of headlines and a lot of talk about the ability to overclock, you know, 100%, and that's not something we're interested in doing because the efficiency goes out the window. Instead, what we're seeing is we can hash at, you know, 8%-15% better and maintain or improve the faceplate or nameplate efficiency of many of these machines. It allows us to make gains on efficiency while maintaining those miners.

Very healthy temperatures, very long life, you know, happy environment for them to be in. We're, we're, we're happy with smaller gains, higher efficiency, which again, drives more to the bottom line. That's where we're gonna focus on our immersion in the future. We're not gonna try and do these massive overclocks because efficiency does go out the window. That, that's, I guess, the, the point of risk, I would say for, you know, when, when investors do hear about that, is you just need to know that that comes at a cost. Again, you can overclock when Bitcoin goes to, you know, 69,000, it sounds great, when Bitcoin comes, you know, down to current levels or even lower, like we saw in the winter, underclocking is actually more valuable. Flexibility is the real value in immersion cooling.

Josh Siegler (Senior Analyst)

Great. Thanks, Zach, and thanks for taking my follow-up.

Zach Bradford (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, with that, we will conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect your lines.