HIVE Digital Technologies Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 13, 2024

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's webcast on HIVE Digital Technologies Financial Results for the Quarter Ended September 30, 2024. My name is Nathan Fass, Director of Marketing and Branding at HIVE, and I'll be your moderator for today's call. Before we get started on Slide number 2, I would like to briefly note the disclosures for today's presentation. Except for statement of historical fact, this presentation contains forward looking information within the meaning of the applicable Canadian and U.

Operator

S. Securities regulations. These forward looking statements are based on expectations, estimates and assumptions as of the date of this presentation. Further, in addition to discussing results that are calculated in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards, or IFRS, We will also make references to certain non IFRS financial measures, such as adjusted EBITDA. For more detailed information on our non IFRS financial measures, please refer to our management's discussion and analysis of our financial results that was published earlier today, which can be found on our Investor Relations website.

Operator

On the next slide, I'm pleased to introduce today's presenters Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman Aidan Killick, President and CEO and Darcy Douberis, Chief Financial Officer. I would now like to hand the presentation over to Mr. Frank Holmes for a macro recap of the quarter. Frank?

Speaker 1

Thank you, Nathan, and thank you to shareholders. I'm going to try to give a macro and then turn over the more granular material information to the HIVE team, Darcy and our CEO, Eitan. Next please. I always like to start this off because it's been a heck of a week since the elections. I think our stock has surged about 56%, but it's a non event for the DNA of our volatility over a 10 day period to be up or down 17%, which is significantly higher than the S and P 500 like a 5x.

Speaker 1

And the same thing on the down corrections. The volatility is much greater. And this changes over time. MicroStrategy used to have less volatility and now it has more volatility than what we have for shareholders. Next please.

Speaker 1

Well, one of the big factors driving all this besides the enthusiasm of President Trump winning has as you've seen this for many alternative asset classes like Bitcoin, it's the all time rising global debt. And as the all time global debt rises, more and more countries are greatly concerned. In particular, you see the central banks are buying gold. The U. S.

Speaker 1

Government maybe now as a policy will start buying bitcoin. All that enthusiasm relates to an alternative assets global debt climbing. And I don't see anything changing this for this century because too many of the G20 countries are still practicing what's called MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, which believes that you can use monetary policies to right size an economy. You can throw any type of socialistic policies, just print more money. And that really is a process and a stepping stone for devaluing a country's currency.

Speaker 1

So this is what makes Bitcoin in particular a high position so well in the rising debt levels. Next please. One of my favorite books that I've always and I had this opportunity over like 20 years ago to have dinner with James Sowiecki. He wrote a book called The Wisdom of Crowds. And there are times when the crowds are very wise.

Speaker 1

And that's the opposite of a group think where everyone is reading the same textbook and reading or watching one news station. This can happen much more often where there is centralized control of information flow and that's what happens in a lot of the G20 countries. We see this in Canada with CBC, in England, BBC. Same thing in Sweden, in particular when we go to countries like China or even Venezuela, all the media is controlled. So the group think is very different than when the crowd is wise.

Speaker 1

The stock market is a mechanism that the average price is pretty wise. And the stock market is usually 6 months ahead of the economic activity. And with that has come out new methodologies of predicting politics and election outcomes. So when if you've not read the book, I highly recommend you read it. Next, please.

Speaker 1

So we've seen a positive response to President Trump winning and you can see particularly the financial sector. A lot has to do with the SEC which has had policies not only anti crypto but really has created a big backlog for the formation, the creative process of the formation of capital, IPOs, SPACs, funding, etcetera. So we've seen that a lot of news came out last week that the major banking firms and brokers etcetera feel that there's going to be a lot of capital formation and this has led with the financials. And we can see other categories here. They've also participated in that boom.

Speaker 1

Hive shows up as this alternative asset class but also in information technology and small cap. Next please. Well, Trump's triumph wins the presidential race. So what is interesting about this visual is what you see the blue states is where Harris is 1. These are states where you did not have to have photo ID And that's what is really a big part, which it appears to us that the Democratic Party didn't really grasp the great concern over border security.

Speaker 1

It didn't grasp wokeism and what it was doing to public companies from ESG and DEI. There's many incidents that they were that the far left of the Democratic Party was not aware of what was going on across the country because it was a pretty broad sweep by the Republicans. Next please. So when you're a Bitcoiner like we are, America voted for Bitcoin And it's pretty ubiquitous across all the state lines, Democrats and Republicans. And I know a lot of great Democrats that are pro Bitcoin.

Speaker 1

And you can see that it's very positive for the ecosystem. And the thought leadership that's going to take place in America with bitcoin. Next please. Now we're seeing that 99.9% of bitcoin addresses are now in the profit. This is psychologically very important.

Speaker 1

Hive Digital took leadership a couple of years back in sponsoring education by the numbers for bitcoin magazine and we're also seeing that more and more people have bought Bitcoin besides the ETFs and record unprecedented fund flows into these ETFs has been separate wallets. So the psychology behind this is very, very positive for this industry. Next please. So one of the challenges is the Bitcoin hash rate has risen and that just means the profit margins are not expanding as fast even with bitcoin rising more people are coming in with better machines and that's the reason for our press release today that we have increased our exposure to buying Canon machines that are much more energy efficient so that we can maintain this ambition that we have of maintain this 1% of the foot mark sort of the footprint of Bitcoin mining and do we be able to expand over the next 12 months where we're going to be 2% of the global network. Next please.

Speaker 1

So Trump is America's Bitcoin President and this is a big event that many celebrated in Nashville and is positioned behind it. I want to thank all the Bitcoiners that actually supported the President and Democrats too that were really pro bitcoin ecosystem. And I think that that was a big sway that there was lots of marginal people in the middle that swing their vote from election to election and it swung in the direction of not so they voted Republican but really they were big cheerleaders of bitcoin and that's what swayed that decision. So I think it's a tip my hat off to all their support. Next please.

Speaker 1

So bitcoin climbs to record high following Trump's win the Republican Party vows to defend the right to mine bitcoin and this America's most pro crypto Congress ever says the coinbase CEO and the pro bitcoin senator Cynthia Loomis reaffirms bitcoin will become a national reserve asset and that is propelling bitcoin to higher prices and that is very positive for Hive who not only mines bitcoin using green energy, we hold as much bitcoin as possible. Next please. Hive is operating in 9 time zones and 5 languages. And to me, that's really impressive team that we've been able to build because we don't function in one state, in one language. We function in many time zones, in many languages and many translations, but we still have been able to be in the top of the breed when it comes to efficiency as miners.

Speaker 1

Next please. We have many firsts, first to go public as a crypto mining company in September 2017, 1st to develop its own ASIC mining rig, 1st to buy data centers and own the real estate which gives us a competitive advantage for the AI boom and build out, 1st to be green energy focused, 1st to balance the grid which we've been doing for many years now in Sweden and 1st to have an AI strategy utilizing our GPU chips where we're able to pivot from Ethereum mining into the AI universe. Next please. HIVE's mission is to help integrate the future of computing with the future of the climate to promote sustainability and environmental consciousness. Next please.

Speaker 1

High uses green energy, Canada, Iceland, Sweden and soon to be Paraguay, low electricity costs, low temperatures, fast Internet connections. Next please. This is a visual of our data center in Sweden, 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle. We have 5 data centers and it's all the you can't see it, but it's just behind that red building over there, the hydro dam. Next please.

Speaker 1

Something we did in sort of the concept of recycling our electricity and this is in Leshute just north of the city of Montreal in Canada where we mine with 30 megawatts of electricity, mine bitcoin. We heat a liquid that goes across the heats of building 5 times our size. We have about a 40,000 square foot building. We're heating a 200,000 square foot building from the same electrical same electricity, hydroelectricity, same molecules of energy using a radiator system in that building which makes whirlpools with 170 workers. So we're thrilled about being a leader in the concept of reusing these molecules of electricity.

Speaker 1

Next please. This is a visual to show you what we do, the 40,000 square foot data center across the heat is a 200,000 square foot factory. Next please. Hive is listed in Canada, NASDAQ and Germany, issued outstanding basically 118,000,000 shares of options 3,400,000 dollars. Our issue is $7,000,000 shares.

Speaker 1

This is as of September 30, 2024. Next please. The future is Bitcoin mining in Paraguay where we will double more than double our production and HPC for AI in Canada and Sweden. Next please. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity of meeting Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO and Visionary.

Speaker 1

HIVE has made significant investments to acquire the most powerful GPUs and expand our suite of chips. And we are a platinum on the platinum buyers. And I think that positioning gives us a huge advantage as we build out our data centers. Next please. So our 100 Megawatt Paraguay expansion in our recent press release, we show that we've broken ground in Paraguay.

Speaker 1

That's myself with the President of Paraguay. It's 100% green hydroelectricity. We've purchased the land. We're moving as fast as we can in building out this vision we have. And I think it's interesting because Hyve really is a like a functioning like what would be a good central bank or a banking that can basically assure the government's going to get paid every month.

Speaker 1

Right now, they sell their electricity to Argentina. Argentina has only paid them 50% of their money after 2 years. In other countries and surrounding, they need U. S. Dollars.

Speaker 1

So we are a natural currency hedge mining bitcoin using green energy and the electrical company owned by the government gets paid in a timely fashion every month in U. S. Dollars. So this is a win win for the Hyve shareholders and a win for the government. Next please.

Speaker 1

So this is another type of visual showing a combination of getting more efficient machines which Aydin will give you more granularity on and our goal to increase our exahash and to double our footprint globally. Next please. Hive, I'm so proud of this visual. If you take a look, it's earlier in this year, but Hive is the lowest G and A. And I think that, all the recent for the end of September data points are for our peers hasn't shown up.

Speaker 1

But clearly when we look at the past quarter of not having an ATM and the rest had an ATM, the majority of them, we just demonstrated a much greater discipline in how we give out our issues, how they're earned. We've commented that this using nonlinear strategy and we also very cognizant as myself being the Co Founder and Executive Chair on the cash flow return on invested capital model. And so that means our concept of building the business is very thoughtful as a money manager. And so shareholders should be very happy with this visual. Next please.

Speaker 1

Operational excellence, Anthony Power does this competitive analysis and this is really important the efficiency that we demonstrate. And on a consistently consistent basis we have been this high level most often bit firms is beside us or they're number 1. But it seems to be that it's a disciplined approach whereas we can see some of these other miners they have much they consume much more energy than us. They produce less bitcoin than us. And they are substantially less as you can see in the far right side, efficient as operational excellence would show of the utilization of the machines.

Speaker 1

So I'm very proud of what the team has been able to do and is a great value proposition for the Hyve shareholder. Next please. So research coverage has picked up during the summer and going this quarter from A. C. Wainwright to B.

Speaker 1

Riley to Northland to Stifel to Canaccord and to Cantor. Next week we'll be in Miami at the sorry this week at the Cantor Fitzgerald conference in Miami speaking. And the average says is $6.25 I believe that Stifel is believes that we have the potential as a technology company and in the data center business to hit $9 So that's at the upper range of the goal. Next please. So now I'd like to turn it over to Eitan Killick, our exec giving you an executive update as the CEO of HIVE.

Speaker 2

All right, Frank. Thank you for that excellent macro and strategy overview. Now I'm going to kick off an executive summary for this quarter period end September 30th. We ended this quarter with $22,600,000 of total revenue, of which $20,800,000 was from our Bitcoin mining business unit and $1,900,000 came from our HPC business unit where AI compute is run on our fleet of NVIDIA GPUs. We generated an overall gross operating margin this quarter of $1,100,000 which I think is commendable considering the very bearish mining economics of this last quarter, which have been the toughest on record where hash price has been between $40 to $50 a petahash per day on average.

Speaker 2

This is the first full post halving quarter that the bitcoin mining sector has navigated as the previous quarter period in June, part of April was still pre having economics. This quarter July, August, September all post having And even still, we generated a very respectable $5,600,000 of adjusted EBITDA and moreover ended the quarter with over 2,600 bitcoin mined with green and clean energy on our balance sheet. Furthermore, we've realized an annualized ROIC of 15% this quarter and as of November 11th, our share price includes $2 of net cash in bitcoin value per share, which is very, very attractive, I would say. And we're going to dive into that a little bit more. Next slide.

Speaker 2

So overview of the Bitcoin mining business. Again, we are a pioneer in using green energy for Bitcoin mining. We lead the sector with best in class uptime and efficiency. We reached 5.6 Exahash in October, and we have very exciting plans to expand to 12.5 Exahash by summer of next year. Again, we do this all with our very disciplined capital allocation strategy.

Speaker 2

We strive for optimized ROI. So every investment that Hive makes, we seek to be accretive. We do not scale for the sake of scale. We invest for the sake of profit. All the while, we run the business with the lowest G and A per Bitcoin mined.

Speaker 2

So we strive to have the best ROI, the leanest operation and the best performance. Next slide. And by the way, Frank and I have been the longest standing executives in the Bitcoin mining sector. We've weathered through thick and thin, having a very prudent and fiscal approach. And we've both been in the sector since 2017.

Speaker 2

No other company has had continuous executive management since the beginning and by the way, Hive of course was the very first bitcoin mining publicly traded company. And so with that wisdom and the battle scars, we're weathered and we're excited about this next bull market. This will be the 3rd bull market that we've experienced. Next slide. So Frank touched on the very exciting Paraguay expansion.

Speaker 2

So now I've prepared some slides for the analysts that will break it down on a quarter over quarter basis, How this growth is going to improve not just our margins, but our overall production. Next slide please. So this is a quarter over quarter projection of both our hash rate and our improvement in efficiency. So in Q1 of 2025, calendar Q1 that is, our target will be 6xahash from a recent announcement of 6,500 kanan 1566s. That will also improve our efficiency to 20.5 joules of terahash globally as we're upgrading our fleet of remaining 30 joule per terahash machines.

Speaker 2

Moreover, the first two exahash from Paraguay are going to come online in Q2 of 2025, which will further increase our global efficiency to 19.21 joules per terahash. And finally, when Paraguay is complete in summer of 2025, our global total hash rate production will be 12.5 exahash with a global efficiency of 17.6 joules per terahash. That's over 120% growth in the next 9 months, which is very exciting. Next slide. And by the way, as of November 11th, bitcoin reached a new all time high of $88,000 which is incredibly exciting.

Speaker 2

And so this has had some very positive impacts on our business and the bitcoin mining sector overall. Let's have a look. Next slide. So with bitcoin at $85,000 that talent that quarter by quarter analysis we provided where we scale to 6x a hash, then 8x and then 12x a hash over the next three quarters, our annualized mining margin will grow. All other things being equal, the current difficulty, but with our improving efficiency, our annualized mining margin will grow $70,000,000 by next quarter calendar Q1, dollars 95,000,000 by calendar Q2 and $150,000,000 when Paraguay is complete by summer of next year.

Speaker 2

So that is incredibly exciting. And when you look at the potential of where bitcoin can go, let's have a look. Next slide. Now, we cannot predict the price of bitcoin, but just to model it and we'll look at some historical examples, if Bitcoin were to rally to $120,000 our quarterly projections with our growth from 6 to 8 to 12 ex Hash show an annualized mining margin of $120,000,000 $160,000,000 $250,000,000 a year based on current difficulty. Now of course, Bitcoin price may fluctuate and difficulty may fluctuate.

Speaker 2

However, we are in current bearish mining economics and this reflects an improvement to more bullish mining economics. Let's see the next slide. As a result of the recent rally of Bitcoin to $86,000 we have seen the value of our hodl in 6 weeks grow by 37%. At the end of this period, on our balance sheet, September 30th, our hodl was worth $165,000,000 and that's based on our October hodl of 2,200 2,624 Bitcoin. And as of November 11th at $86,000 Bitcoin price that is almost a $250,000,000 $226,000,000 And it actually rallied to $88,000 later in the day, but we're just showing it based on $86,000 So this is great upside and it's a very exciting time and it shows how keeping a HODL balance with preen and clean Bitcoin really is in the best interest of our shareholders who want exposure to Bitcoin as an asset class.

Speaker 2

Next slide please. So here we look at some historical data to notice patterns of what bull market economics might look like. So as you can see, if you go back 4 years ago, post halving in April 2020, we saw Bitcoin rally to the then all time high in the $60,000 range in February and then later in November of 2021, the $70,000 range. And you saw Hyve's share price go from approximately $2 to over $20 per share. And so you can see because there is implicit volatility in crypto mining stocks more so than bitcoin, you will notice the rallies in the share price can exceed even the rallies in bitcoin price.

Speaker 2

So we've seen our share price rallied over $5 and this is with bitcoin going from $60,000 to over $80,000 in the last few weeks. So time will tell where the Bitcoin price goes from here. But you can also notice that last cycle, 4 years ago, we only had about $10,000,000 of HODL on the balance sheet September 30, 2020. This bull market we're going in with $165,000,000 of hodl as of September 30. And by the way, again, as of November 11, it's over $220,000,000 hodl value.

Speaker 2

So it's very exciting. Next slide please. This is another overlay where we actually show hash price relative to Hive's share price. So again, you saw hash price rally in that last bull market. And so what we noticed is that our share price continued to perform even though hash price fell through the bear market.

Speaker 2

And the reason why is through strategically upgrading our basic fleet and improving our machine efficiency, even though hash price dropped for the Bitcoin mining network, we were able to preserve and in some cases even improve our Bitcoin mining margins. And I believe that has been reflected in our share price, which remained quite steady over the last couple of years since the last bull market. So as we expect the potential for Hash price to rally, if there was another bull market, it would seem that with a strong huddle and some very exciting growth opportunities, there's a lot of potential upside if Bitcoin continues to rally the way it has, both for the overall sector and with respect to share price. Next slide. So really this summarizes the value propositions of Hive.

Speaker 2

We have demonstrated best in class ROIC, very disciplined and conservative capital allocation. We always purchase ASICS with the best ROI and we're constantly analyzing the market. We're data driven. We're heavily analytical, very rooted in math. We've got a very strong technical team and that's further evidence for our best in class uptime.

Speaker 2

And so this is an overview slide, but we're going to step through the analytics and all the comp data on the next few slides to back up this summary. Next slide please. So our recent announcement of 6,500 Canons, we decided to purchase this fleet of ASICs over 1.2x a hatch of ASICs because the ROI of these ASICs was over 30% faster than other ASICs available on the market. We scoured all the opportunities. We ran sensitivity analysis.

Speaker 2

We always look at our multivariate math equations and we found that this was the most attractive buy on the market. We've already received 500 of them. The remainder will be shipped 1500 a month between December March and that will get our overall fleet efficiency down to 20.5 joules a terahash. So that's exciting. Next slide.

Speaker 2

Our cash flow return on invested capital, again, leading the sector and implied 15% annualized ROIC. Again, coming from a very disciplined CapEx and capital allocation approach, we use our ATM to accretively scale our business. The dollar per megawatt build cost in Paraguay is incredibly attractive compared to other jurisdictions, notably in North America. Furthermore, green energy, low power costs and again, repurchase ASICs. We are always looking for immediate delivery with the most attractive dollar per terahash and ROI for all of our ASICs.

Speaker 2

And in our recent order with K9, it allows us to scale with cash flow as well. We're not taking one massive order all at once where we have to do a bought deal to dilute the stock, nothing like that. Our ATM has performed and has been very efficient and low cost of capital. And so this is how we believe that we've been able to lead the sector. And this is not a once in a quarter phenomena.

Speaker 2

As you could see, we have led the sector quarter over quarter for the last year. Next slide please. Similarly, we have the lowest G and A per bitcoin mine. So how do we have that? Well, we have high revenue per employee.

Speaker 2

We huddle over 9 time zones. Frank likes to call us the Navy SEALs. So it's a high performance work culture at HIVE. Everyone is extremely proficient. I'm very proud of my executive team that I get to work with every single day.

Speaker 2

We attend the conferences. We're always working when we're at conferences making sure operations are in tip top shape, always looking at new R and D initiatives. What is the best utilization of our data centers. Is it AI? Is it upgrading Bitcoin ASICs?

Speaker 2

And so we do this all with a very lean team because we've weathered bear markets and that's why I have that slide that showed that Frank and I and our executive Dean Darcy Duberis is the longest standing CFO in crypto mining for publicly traded companies. And so we understand the importance of having low overhead. So we're not just low overhead, we're low overhead, low cost and high performance. So we really want to deliver the best of both worlds and high value for our shareholders. Next slide, please.

Speaker 2

Again, operational excellence. Anthony Power, industry analyst. He's a CPA out of London. He's been covering the industry for years, highly respected and highly renowned. As you can see, our Hash rate utilization leads the sector for this calendar year Q3, 2024.

Speaker 2

Next slide. And in terms of Bitcoin mined per exahash, you could see that we are amongst the best performers in the industry. And you'll still notice it. Now you've got the top 2 or 3 crypto miners in Bitcoin for Exahash have comparable performance, but there's still quite a discrepancy across the entire industry. And we're talking variances of 5%, 10%, even 20% on a Bitcoin per exahash basis.

Speaker 2

And Bitcoin per exahash really is a reflection of how good is your uptime, how are you managing your fleet of tens of thousands of basics. And this gets much more difficult as you're in the multi exahash scale of crypto mining. And so when you think about Tier 3 in AI where you have to have 99.98 plus uptime, if a company is struggling to have 90% uptime in crypto mining, it would suggest that it's going to be pretty tough for them to get 99.998 percent in AI. But anyways, I think everyone is out on their own path and we just try to lead by example. Next slide.

Speaker 2

Now, this is one of my favorite slides here. So, as a Canadian domicile crypto miner, we think we trade at a very attractive valuation. This slide here looks at the market cap as of November 11th. Then it looks at the fair market value of the hodl position. What we do there is we look at the value of each company when you subtract the value of hodl.

Speaker 2

It's not quite enterprise value, but similar to of course, everybody's financials this quarter haven't come out yet, so we can't calculate enterprise value. But using what I like to call market value excluding total is a good way to compare the premium that companies are trading at any given moment in time because well we know what October production is for everybody just came out. And so then you can look at the amount of bitcoin that everybody's produced what they have on their hodl and look at the value per bitcoin mined and you could see we're trading at a value of about $3,600,000 per bitcoin mined or on an annualized basis about $300,000 If you normalize that ratio, as you can see high trades is the most attractive value, you could see our peers trade anywhere at a premium of 30% to 50% to 500% of what Hive trades at. And so with over 2,600 green bitcoin on the balance sheet, strong operating margins quarter over quarter, the leanest G and A in the industry for bitcoin mined, the best uptime in the sector, I really think Hive is a great company. I think our team has done a phenomenal job of delivering value for shareholders and it's going to be a very exciting year as we scale to 12.5 exahenge with our deal in Paraguay and upgrading our ASIC fleet along the way.

Speaker 2

And in addition to that, of course, our AI strategy. Next slide. So to summarize, we have over 2,600 Bitcoin mined with green and clean energy as of October 2024. We've demonstrated prudent stable growth across cycles. The management team that has been in the industry since 2017 are highest we have the most attractive enterprise value to Bitcoin mine as well as the best ROIC in the industry.

Speaker 2

We have a target to be 2% of global hash rate by summer of next year and we're in the process of evaluating conversion of our data centers from crypto mining to Tier 3 to power GPU cloud services and AI. Now, we're also NVIDIA cloud partner for AI and we're going to end this section by looking at our AI strategy. Next slide please. So this quarter we did $1,900,000 of revenue. If you look at the first half H1 of twenty twenty five for the calendar year, dollars 4,500,000 which is $9,000,000 annualized.

Speaker 2

So we're right around that $9,000,000 to $10,000,000 annualized rate. We have, however, seen a resurgence in the last month. So in October this year, which of course is the month after this reporting period, we did get back to $10,000,000 of annualized revenue. Now having a B2B model where the GPUs that we've been renting, the over 4,000 A Series NVIDIA GPUs that we've listed on 4 different marketplaces, we don't control the demand as there's a little bit of market fluctuation in demand as people might run training on models etcetera. And so we've seen growth and we just note that with our future expansions as we have some exciting announcements upcoming, we are focusing and targeting larger contracts with single clients for fixed terms.

Speaker 2

But it was great because we're managing almost 500 nodes. We are managing 480 nodes, super micro service, 8 to 10 GPUs per node. In addition to that, we have 12 nodes of H100s. It's almost 500 nodes, 4 92 nodes to be exact, which is a lot of GPU nodes to be managing across 2 data centers, 1 in Sweden and one in Quebec. So let's have a look at the next slide.

Speaker 2

We have a really exciting couple months ahead of us. Our target for $20,000,000 annualized revenue is still on track. We're going to estimate that for calendar Q1 as we have some incoming hardware that we will be deploying and press releasing to the market. As well our strategy to get to CAD100 1,000,000 by the end of calendar, 2025 is intact and that is infrastructure driven by 5 being vertically integrated, not just building GPU clusters, but delivering on Tier 3 data centers. And again, what we've done is we've demonstrated quarter after quarter the ability to service the Tier 3 AI compute business unit by maintaining the uptimes that are required in this sector, which are different and much more stringent than crypto mining.

Speaker 2

So we've demonstrated consistent revenue and I think it's going to be a very exciting year ahead. Stand by for updates from Hyve on our AI business. And on that note, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Darcy de Veras, longest serving CFO in Crypto Mining.

Speaker 3

Great. Thank you, Aydin. At this point of the presentation, I will take you through a snapshot of the period, looking at the most recently completed quarter and some financial indicators. We are providing certain non IFRS measures in the presentation today, as was mentioned earlier. The company believes that these measures, while not a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS, provides our investors an improved ability to evaluate the underlying performance of the company.

Speaker 3

These measures do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS and therefore may not be comparable to other issuers. Further details are found in the management discussion analysis for the 3 6 months ended September 30, 2024. Moving on to the next slide. The theme of this quarter's results is reflecting the full impact of the happening event that occurred earlier this year, along with the continuously rising Bitcoin difficulty rates that we're all experiencing. During this most recently completed quarter of September 30, 2024, we recorded $22,600,000 of revenue and $5,600,000 profit in adjusted EBITDA.

Speaker 3

This was driven by production of 340 bitcoin equivalent mined. On the next slide, we continue to have a very healthy balance sheet. We take pride in maintaining this healthy balance sheet and our cash position was $7,200,000 at September 30, 2024, in addition to $165,200,000 in digital currencies, primarily consisting of Bitcoin. We also had $6,600,000 in amounts receivable and prepaid, a slight increase from the prior period. The total market value of our strategic investments increased by 60.5% from the prior period to where it was at September 30 of $24,400,000 We have a strong net cash position and healthy working capital to support our operations and growth objectives with a current ratio of 5.6, which is calculated as current assets divided by current liabilities.

Speaker 3

And on the next slide, let's shift our focus to our gross operating margin on a year over year basis, comparing the Q2 of this year to the Q2 of last year. Our gross operating margin, which is calculated as total revenues minus direct operating and maintenance costs, decreased in absolute terms to $1,200,000 or 5% in the most recent quarter compared to $4,700,000 dollars or 21% in the same quarter last year. One significant factor to consider is the impact of the happening event that occurred earlier this year. This event led to mining rewards earned by miners in the Q2 of this year being halved compared to that comparative period that we're looking at last year. The gross mining margin is influenced by several external factors.

Speaker 3

These include the high mining difficulty currently being experienced, the reduced amount of digital currency rewards received by miners because of that happening, and the market price of the digital currencies at the time of mining, which has been higher compared to the previous year period. In the most recently completed year, we are reporting a net loss of $0.06 per share for the quarter compared to a net loss of 29% sorry, dollars 0.29 per share reported for the year ending September 30, 2023, the prior period. The net loss reported by Hyve is in accordance with the regulatory requirements of IFRS as we are a Canadian listed issuer rather than following U. S. GAAP, which some of our comparatives in the industry do.

Speaker 3

On to the next slide. And looking at our year over year revenue, we generated total revenue in the Q2 of fiscal 2025 of $22,600,000 versus $22,800,000 in the previous year's Q2. The steady revenues compared to the same quarter in fiscal 2024 can primarily be attributed to the average Bitcoin price, which is more than double what it was last year. However, this increase is offset by 60% rise in Bitcoin difficulty hash rates over the past year as well as the impact of the happening event on the current period's results. As mentioned previously, our gross mining margin, which equates to our revenues minus direct operating and maintenance costs, decreased in absolute dollars to $1,200,000 in the most recent quarter compared to $4,700,000 in the prior year.

Speaker 3

Onto the next slide, comparing our current fiscal Q2 quarter to the previous Q1 quarter, we generated revenue in the Q2 of fiscal 2025 of $22,600,000 versus 32 $200,000 in the previous quarter. This decrease in revenues versus the prior quarter was impacted by the having leading to less bitcoin produced and by a decrease in the price of bitcoin over the quarter over quarter averages. Our gross operating margin also in absolute dollars to $1,200,000 in the most recent quarter compared to $11,400,000 in the prior quarter's comparative. The decrease in gross operating margin versus the prior quarter was significantly impacted by the halving that took place early in the quarter and continuous increase in the difficulty of Bitcoin mining. And on to the next slide, our adjusted EBITDA in the Q2 of fiscal 2025 was $5,600,000 versus adjusted EBITDA of $14,900,000 in the prior quarter.

Speaker 3

I will highlight again that adjusted EBITDA is a non IFRS figure. In the Q2 of fiscal 2025, we experienced a net loss of $7,700,000 compared to a net income of $3,300,000 in the prior quarter. This time, I want to thank, as we all do here at Hyve, our loyal stakeholders. And I'll pass it off to Nathan Fast. Nathan?

Operator

Thank you, Darcy. That concludes the presentation for today. We will now begin the question and answer portion of our call. I see we have a few hands raised. I will ask to unmute Bill from Stifel.

Operator

The floor is yours.

Speaker 4

Good morning, gentlemen, and thanks for taking my questions. And congrats on breaking ground in Paraguay. For my first question, I was hoping you could share an updated capital allocation strategy as it pertains to HPC initiatives? And curious to hear how that's weighing on the back of management's mind on the with the recent rise in mining economics? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Hey, Bill. It's Aydin here. Thanks for that question. So we've been focusing on the infrastructure side of the HPC business earlier this year. Couple of months ago, we noted pipeline of conversion of existing crypto mining assets, data centers that we own.

Speaker 2

And so we've kept it high level and we've been focusing on cash flow. So right now, we are working on a few things that we haven't specifically commented on yet. So that's about as much as I could say right now. But the economics for both business units are both very attractive. And that's as far as HPC, that's sort of the extent of what I could say right now.

Speaker 2

And just stay tuned for more announcements. But we are gearing up for next generation compute as the data center requirements to power NVIDIA's next generation of GPUs will be a cut above of what exists today on the market.

Speaker 4

And just as a follow-up to that, can you offer more color in terms of what the outlook could be for gross margins on the HPC side? Has your targeted margin profile changed at all?

Speaker 2

No. So I think what's going to happen is the latest hardware like everybody knows that the H200 is out and that's the next version of the H100. It has twice the amount of VRAM. So really we see the indicative pricing for H100s and H200s in the $2 to $2.50 per hour range. And so when Blackwell comes out next year, how will that affect the existing H100, H200 pricing and what will Blackbaud rent out at?

Speaker 2

And so if you look back to when the H100 came out and the A100, the A100 had really good staying power even to this day. And so if you think of the melting ice cube analogy of dollar per GPU per hour pricing, it decreases a lot slower than in crypto mining. So I think for the most part, you could keep your margins as an analyst similar as new gear comes online. If you wanted to be more bullish, you could project perhaps upwards of $3 an hour for Blackwell. But that's just narrative and commentary, I think, because Blackwell has a substantially better performance than the H200, lot quicker flop speed, even more memory, etcetera.

Speaker 2

So it will I think the market will determine what they'll pay as a premium for that improved compute performance. I hope that's helpful.

Speaker 4

Yes. I appreciate the color there, Aydin. Just wanted to touch on Paraguay as well. Given the election of pro crypto President Donald J. Trump, curious to hear whether you're hearing anything with respect to the government's approach to Bitcoin mining.

Speaker 4

Has their approach shifted at all? I recall that there was a tariff increase that had capped expansion plans there to 100 megawatts. Is there potential to grow that out after the first site has completed? Thanks.

Speaker 2

We think that Paraguay is a very exciting jurisdiction to be doing business in. As Frank mentioned, he had met with the President. I plan on traveling there in December. And as mentioned, we've just broken ground, which is very exciting. So our first 30 megawatts will be completed in calendar Q2.

Speaker 2

So we are very mindful. We've done business in numerous jurisdictions globally. We've done business we're very weathered in Sweden, all throughout Canada and Iceland. And crypto mining globally, I think regulatory headwinds, it's just part of the game, and you have to know how to navigate them, right? So in Quebec, right, back in the day, that was the first province in Canada to issue a moratorium.

Speaker 2

Guess what? We're still happily hashing in Quebec. Same thing with New Brunswick. And in fact, we even have a demand response program in New Brunswick, which is the first of its kind. So I'm trying to just indicate at a very high level by having the right strategy, embracing authorities, be it the utility companies, the federal or regional governments.

Speaker 2

There's always a strategy. If there's a will, there's a way. And that's all I'll really comment on that. But I have a positive outlook on Paraguay. And I'm really excited to be going down there next month.

Speaker 4

Appreciate the color. Thanks, Ivan.

Operator

Thanks for that question, Bill. I will next ask Lucas from B. Riley to unmute and for the sake of time, request to please keep it to one question. Yes. Hey, guys.

Operator

Thanks so much. This is Nick Giles asking questions on behalf of Lucas. Frank, Iden. Thanks for the comprehensive presentation here. My first question is just curious for an update on how you're thinking about organic versus inorganic growth.

Operator

Any updated view on M and A in this space? And And does the transition of several of your peers to HPC make it more or less likely that we'll see consolidation in your opinion?

Speaker 2

I think that M and A has been an ongoing topic of discussion since the beginning of the sector, really in the capital markets in 2017. What the trend appears to have been is people are more interested in assets rather than acquiring the adjacent teams because usually you're paying a premium for those teams. And unless it's a real rockstar team, chances are people are really just going to be interested in the assets. So of course, we saw the whole Bitt Farms Riot saga unfold. I think where you see a really rockstar team with solid assets, you might see M and A, but then at the same time, I think it's just the commercial factors that really drive those discussions.

Speaker 2

So if it's accretive and I think the culture of both teams align, then it makes sense. And that's about as much as I could say for M and A.

Operator

That's helpful. I'll jump back in the queue for now. Thanks a lot. Thank you for the question. Next, we'll go to Darren from Roth.

Operator

Ask you to unmute. The floor is yours.

Speaker 5

Thanks. Yes, good morning. Just if I could, 2 part question here. So maybe Frank and Aydin, just how have your strategic thoughts changed as it pertains to your Bitcoin and digital infrastructure business as it relates to the election, sort of pre election, post election? 2nd part of the question, I know you guys are breaking ground in Paraguay, but how are you thinking about adding power usable power to your portfolio?

Speaker 5

Thanks.

Speaker 2

So I think the Trump administration has been very, very pro Bitcoin. If you go back to some of the speeches that he gave in Nashville, even Cynthia Lummis, it was very, very pro Bitcoin. So we're excited. We welcome it. He's got Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon joining the Department of Governmental Deficiency, Doge, which obviously is a cheeky nod towards crypto.

Speaker 2

So we think it's great. And as far as growing our power elsewhere, I can only comment on what we've publicly press released, but we're constantly evaluating opportunities to accretively scale the business. Again, we really want to have effective allocation of capital for our shareholders. And that's really what I could tell you, Darren. Stand by for more press releases.

Operator

Thanks for that question, Darren. Next, we will go to Brett from Cantor. I ask you to unmute. The floor is yours.

Speaker 6

Hi. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate the time. Your goal kind of being 2% of the 2020 market. Is that like a firm percentage?

Speaker 6

I guess if I'm looking at your target of 12.5%, that's less than the 2% of the current network attached and I would assume that would actually be a bit higher this time next year. So I guess how should we just think of your long term targets as a percentage of total network cash?

Speaker 2

Hey, Brett. Yes, it's Eitan here. So that's a great question. I'm a very mathematical guy and I could open Excel sheets and we could look at the time variant nature of Bitcoin mining network. But what we really try to do and what I train myself to do is just to provide simple run rate metrics that are easy to walk away.

Speaker 2

I'm very much aware that 2% could represent much more than 12.5x of Hash, but the 2% is our target. And so what we've got secured, constructions broken ground, ASICs allocated, etcetera, we have a clear path to 12.5 exahash. So that's what we are putting in the presentation and in our projections. So for all the analysts, it's really easy for them to have concrete numbers of where we'll be. But of course, there's always more opportunity to expand beyond the 12%.

Speaker 2

And our target really is to be at 2% of the network, right? So yes, I'm aware that that would constitute more than 12.5, and we certainly have plans to grow beyond the 12.5. 12.5 is just a concrete number. Again, the site is broken ground. We're building 100 megawatts.

Speaker 2

We've just ordered 6,500 canyons to upgrade our existing fleet. So I hope that answers your question.

Speaker 6

Perfect. Thanks guys.

Operator

We have time for one more question. We will give the floor to Mike from Northland. Please unmute yourself.

Speaker 7

Hey, thanks guys. Your 30 Megawatt HPC site, can you kind of comment on the demand you're seeing for that and the type of customers you're talking to and maybe when you could break ground?

Speaker 2

Yes. So I'll and just one more thing on the 2% of the Bitcoin network. Effectively, for modeling purposes for all the analysts, that would be producing 9 Bitcoin a day, right, based on current block order of yes, so just for Brett. Now, my good question. So the amount of GPUs to fill up, like if you have 30 megawatts of utility load, a 1.3 PoE, you're looking about 24 megawatts of IT load.

Speaker 2

That is a lot of GPU. So I think I commented in some previous conversations, the intent like a reference architecture cluster for Blackwell's 8 racks, right? So that's 8 times 72, if you do an NBL72, that's 576 GPUs. If you do it with, say for example, an H200 cluster, it's 32 nodes, 32 times 8 is 256. So what you're doing is you're building multiples of reference architecture clusters based on NVIDIA's design.

Speaker 2

And the goal is to find 24 month contracts for 12 to 24 month contracts for a reference architecture cluster. Again, that'll be 256 GPUs if you're doing an H200 cluster or 576 if you're doing a GP200 cluster. And so you would be seeking client demand in multiples of that. So again, we haven't press released anything specifically, but I'm giving you the tech backdrop and how the sensible way to scale that business is. So one would not go by 24 megawatts of GPUs, which would be 100 and 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars.

Speaker 2

What you would do is you would buy a cluster, deploy it, pre lease that and scale from there. And with the surplus capacity, you could always do colo. So I hope that answers your question. And when I say colo, you're renting out rack space for whatever it is, dollars 0.30 a kilowatt hour and rent it to others users downstream. We do, of course, want to build our own and we have built our own GPU clouds and rent because the GPUs rent for, again, as the numbers I cited earlier, dollars 2.50 an hour per GPU, which, again, for an H100, H200, because one GPU is approximately 1 kilowatt, that translates to $2.50 a kilowatt hour, right?

Speaker 2

Or if you rent the car for $2 an hour, it's $2.50 a kilowatt hour as well. So I'm just distinguishing between dollar per GPU per hour and then dollar per kilowatt hour, right? So we underwrite everything in dollar per kilowatt hour. So I hope that was helpful for you.

Speaker 7

Just following up, any comment on the demand you're seeing or when you might break ground?

Speaker 2

So we haven't press released that. So standby, although I'd love to provide you more color. I just have to say, stay tuned. Okay. Thanks, Aidan.

Operator

All right. Thank you again to all of our analysts for the thoughtful questions. That concludes our Q and A session and HIVE's Q2 2025 earnings call. Thank you again to our attendees and analysts for joining. We look forward to speaking to you again

Speaker 2

soon.

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Earnings Conference Call
HIVE Digital Technologies Q2 2025
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