Bitfarms Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 14, 2025

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you for standing by and welcome to Bitfarms First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press 11 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press 11 again.

Operator

I would now like to hand the call over to Tracy Krumi, SVP, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, and welcome to Bid Farm's first quarter twenty twenty five conference call. With me on the call today is Ben Gagnon, Chief Executive Officer and Director and Jeff Lucas, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, please note this call is being webcast with an accompanying slide presentation. Today's press release and our presentation can be accessed on our website, bitfarms.com, under the Investors section. Turning to slide two.

Speaker 1

I'd like to remind everyone that certain forward looking statements will be made during the call and that future results could differ from those implied in this statement. The forward looking information is based on certain assumptions and is subject to risks and uncertainties, and I invite you to consult Bid Farm's MD and A for a complete list. Please note that references will be made to certain measures not recognized under IFRS and therefore may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. We invite listeners to refer to today's press release and our MD and A for definitions of the aforementioned non IFRS measures and their reconciliations to IFRS measures. Please note that all financial references are denominated in U.

Speaker 1

S. Dollars unless otherwise noted. I'd also like to remind everyone that we will be at the following upcoming conferences: Consensus twenty five, which takes place today through May 16 in Toronto the AIMS Summit in London from May Bitcoin '20 '20 '5 Conference in Las Vegas from May 27 to May 29, HPE Discover in Las Vegas from June 23 to June 26, and Northland's Virtual Growth Conference on June 25. There will be opportunities for in person one on one investor meetings around these conferences. So if interested, please reach out to investorsbidfarms dot com.

Speaker 1

And now turning to slide three. It is my pleasure to turn the call over to Ben Vignon, Chief Executive Officer and Director. Ben, please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Tracy. Good morning, and welcome to Bid Farm's Q1 twenty twenty five earnings presentation. I'm thrilled to address our esteemed audience of investors, analysts and stakeholders who have joined us today. Your support and engagement are invaluable as we navigate one of the most transformative periods in Bid Farm's history. Turning to slide four.

Speaker 2

The global demand for compute power is surging, driven by AI innovation, cloud computing, and data intensive applications. Bid Farm's is fully equipped to meet this insatiable demand with our robust North American energy portfolio and operational expertise. A recent McKinsey report cited that by 02/1930, companies across the compute value chain need to invest a staggering $5,200,000,000,000 into data centers to meet worldwide demand for AI alone. This is based off of a projected 156 gigawatts of AI related data center capacity demand by 02/1930, '1 hundred and '20 '5 of which will be added the next five years. In five years, the power needs for HPC and AI will be almost 10 times the power needs of Bitcoin today.

Speaker 2

The bottleneck on the growth is not chips, but power. And this is where Bidfarms comes into play. We are no longer solely a Bitcoin mining company. We are evolving into a leading North American energy and compute infrastructure company. This strategic pivot leverages our core competencies and energy portfolio, positioning us at the forefront of the exciting high growth sectors of high performance computing, artificial intelligence and energy infrastructure, while maintaining cost effective and efficient upside to rising Bitcoin prices.

Speaker 2

Today, we'll guide you through our solid progress in Q1 with a focus on two key priorities for 2025: continued US expansion and advancing our HPC and AI business. By focusing on these priorities, we aim to drive long term shareholder value, capitalize on macro tailwinds in energy and compute markets, and establish Bitfarms as a leader in powering tomorrow's economy. Turning to slide five. In Q1, we made extraordinary progress in rebalancing our portfolio towards United States and HPC and AI infrastructure, executing two transformative transactions that set the stage for our future growth. First, we acquired strategic US energy campuses and power generation facilities, giving us immediate HPC development opportunities and a robust multi year growth pipeline in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2

With these two flagship campuses, each boasting a multi year pathway to nearly 500 megawatts of power capacity in prime locations, we are attracting interest from institutions with a robust appetite for power and compute infrastructure. Second, we strategically divested our Iguazu Paraguay Bitcoin mining site. This site was purpose built for Bitcoin mining and lacked the fiber and market demand for HPC and AI conversion, making it misaligned with our new HPC and US centric strategy. The strategic site divestiture was profitable and brought in significant cash proceeds for reinvestment in our U. S.

Speaker 2

Growth initiatives. More importantly, it allowed us to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in capital expenditures needed to complete and equip the site for Bitcoin mining, preserving our balance sheet strength for higher value opportunities and keeping our capital, time and efforts focused on The US and HPC. The rapid and simultaneous execution of these transactions demonstrates Bitfarms agility and forward thinking approach towards managing and developing our energy and compute infrastructure portfolio. We're not just planning for the future, we're building it. To support this pivot, we've restructured our organization, streamlining operations and aligning teams for HPC and AI development in The US.

Speaker 2

We've onboarded top tier executives with expertise in HPC and AI and construction management, enabling us to collaborate at an accelerated pace with our world class advisors, WWT and ASG. These advisors have brought extensive resources and expertise, helping us assess, design and co market our HPC assets to prospective clients, significantly collapsing development timelines and ensuring better outcomes. Lastly, on the Bitcoin mining front, we grew our Exahash under management over 50% in first quarter to 19.5 Exahash. We are now incredibly well positioned to take advantage of rising Bitcoin prices with almost no planned Bitcoin mining CapEx remaining. Importantly, with fewer than three hundred minuteers left to clear US Customs and those 300 scheduled to clear this week, we have practically no foreseeable tariff risk on our miners.

Speaker 2

Over 94 of our purchased miners are now installed. And with the final install of remaining miners occurring this quarter, we've effectively completed our planned Bitcoin mining growth initiatives. Through this fleet upgrade, we have gained market share and reduced our operating costs per terahash dramatically. Importantly, with no material CapEx planned for Bitcoin mining, the majority of our current 2025 CapEx investments will focus on electrical infrastructure, namely substations, transmission lines and civil works. The capstone of our Q1 achievements actually occurred on April 1, when we secured up to $300,000,000 from a division of Macquarie Group, one of the world's largest infrastructure investors.

Speaker 2

The deal validates our HPC and AI development thesis and provides the capital to begin development of our Panther Creek campus, which I'll discuss shortly. The initial $50,000,000 tranche is secured by Bid Farm's assets with an additional $250,000,000 that will become available as we achieve specific development milestones. This partnership not only strengthens our financial position, but also opens doors to other top tier collaborators, enhancing our credibility and outcomes in the HPC and AI market. Turning to slide six. The foundation we built in Q1 was what we needed to do as a company to facilitate our pivot to HPC in The US.

Speaker 2

I'm proud to say that we accomplished in Q1 exactly what we sought out to get done. Now with this foundation complete and with the right people, advisors and assets in place, we are focused on developing our HPC business in a systematic and scalable fashion. Our HPC and AI business is being built on a structured, repeatable process designed for scalability and efficiency across our portfolio of data centers. For every site, we will seek to convert into HPC. We will develop the master plans while pursuing site specific strategic financing partners or structures to finance the infrastructure development in an accretive fashion to our shareholders.

Speaker 2

Afterwards, construction of infrastructure and the customer acquisition process will both ramp simultaneously in order to accelerate timelines. This repeatable approach ensures we can streamline workflows and replicate our success and learnings at Panther Creek across other sites in our portfolio while maintaining consistency, optimizing resources, and wherever possible collapsing timelines. I would now like to take a moment to zoom in on Panther Creek, where we have secured initial financing and are making great progress on the master site planning. Turning to slide seven. With a potential capacity of nearly 500 megawatts supported by multiple power sources, ample fiber access, and strategically located near major metropolitan areas and existing data center clusters, Panther Creek is going to be our first HPC campus.

Speaker 2

We've made significant progress on Panther Creek's development since we secured the site in March. On this slide, we have some renders of one of the conceptual data center plans for Panther Creek that are coming out of the design and engineering of the site master plan. So far, we've created preliminary site map plans, three d models, and test fits for various data center designs, allowing us to optimize the campus layout across numerous phases of development and design. Phase one and phase two substation design and engineering are nearly complete, and we've also conducted site visits with leading manufacturers and suppliers of modular data center infrastructure, exploring innovative solutions to accelerate deployment and reduce costs as we build for the HPC needs of the future. Further engineering, design and planning are underway with the goal of finalizing the master plan for Panther Creek in the second quarter.

Speaker 2

Once complete, we'll break ground in the second half of twenty twenty five, initiating construction of transmission lines, securing key substation equipment and beginning civil works to prepare the land for active construction. Simultaneously, we'll be ramping up customer acquisition efforts, engaging prospective clients to refine the infrastructure based on their specific needs. This dual track approach ensures we're building a market ready facility that maximizes value without wasting any time. Turning to slide eight. I'm excited to share that the feasibility assessments from WWT and ASG have validated the suitability of all of our US sites, Panther Creek, Scrubgrass, Sharon, and Washington State for HPC and AI conversion.

Speaker 2

These sites boast the critical attributes needed for high performance data centers, immediate power capacity, ample land, robust fiber networks, proximity to major metropolitan areas, and positioning in high demand compute markets. For example, Panther Creek, Scrubgrass and Sharon in Pennsylvania benefit from their location in the PJM interconnection, one of the largest and most reliable power markets in The US with access to multiple power sources for enhanced reliability. In Washington, our site is strategically positioned in a region known for stable low cost hydropower below 3¢ per kilowatt hour and the existing data center cluster that is developed around it, making it an ideal location for HPC and AI development. These assessments confirm that our US portfolio is not just viable, but exceptionally well suited for conversion. Each site is ready to support the infrastructure demands of AI workloads from power intensive GPU clusters to high speed data connectivity.

Speaker 2

Our ultimate objective will be to convert all US sites to HPC and AI over time, starting with Panther Creek as our flagship campus. This validation strengthens our confidence in our strategy and positions Bitfarms to capture a significant share of the rapidly growing HPC and AI market. Importantly, the work at Panther Creek also serves as a blueprint for our broader US portfolio. We're undertaking similar planning and engineering across all our US sites, creating a scalable pipeline of HPC and AI data centers to bring to market. Each campus and site will benefit from the lessons learned at Panther Creek, improving efficiency and reducing development timelines as we expand development across our US portfolio.

Speaker 2

Turning to slide nine. As we look to the future, Bitfarms is poised for extraordinary growth in 2025 and beyond. Building off of our strong Bitcoin mining experience and foundation, our strategic pivot to HPC and AI infrastructure aligns us with the rampant demand for compute power, driven by AI innovation, cloud computing, and data intensive applications. With a clear path to 1.4 gigawatts of power capacity, we're building an exciting energy and compute portfolio to power tomorrow's economy. Our energy portfolio has been rebalanced to 70% North American, with all US sites validated for HPC and AI conversion.

Speaker 2

We are now well positioned to maximize the value of our power portfolio through HPC conversion and of the structured development processes, world class team and advisors to do so rapidly and efficiently. Our Bitcoin mining operations produce free cash flow to support the business and our HPC development. And our Bitcoin 1 program builds off the success we achieved in 2024, delivering cost effective exposure to rising Bitcoin prices and seeking to amplify returns. Lastly, we are doing this with a financial foundation that is stronger than ever. With up to $300,000,000 in financing from a division of Macquarie Group coupled with strong liquidity, we have the capital to execute our vision accretively with minimal dilution.

Speaker 2

Bidfarms is not just adapting to the future, we're building it. And for our shareholders, this represents an unparalleled opportunity to invest in a company at the forefront of a transformative industry with significant upside potential that we believe has yet to be recognized by the market. Thank you for joining us on this exciting journey. I'm confident that our strategic vision, disciplined execution and strong financial position will deliver exceptional value in the quarters and years ahead. Turning to slide 10.

Speaker 2

And with that, I will turn the call over to Jeff for the financial update.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Ben, and thanks everyone for joining us this morning. Before we dive into the first quarter numbers, I'd like to highlight a few key elements about our financial position. We are well capitalized for 2025 and beyond, and our financing model as we focus on HPC and AI is straightforward. Our Bitcoin mining business remains solid, achieving steady mining margins and providing a consistent cash flow stream to fund our G and A and debt service as we build out Panther Creek. With our minor upgrade substantially complete, we have no plans nor the need for any substantial minor purchase programs.

Speaker 3

Our low CapEx mining business is largely derisked and is well positioned to benefit from any potential Bitcoin side. And importantly, the CapEx requirement to grow our HPC and AI business in the near term are funded with the recent financing secured from Macquarie Group. In short, with steady mining economics, no plan for additional large amount of purchases, minimal impact expected from potential tariffs, and the remainder of this year's capital expenditures funded or with financing in place, we are confident that our financial position will enable us to efficiently and cost effectively grow our US HPC and AI business. Turning now to slide 11. We are excited to join forces with Macquarie to finance our HPC and AI business cost effectively with minimal dilution.

Speaker 3

In addition to funding the initial phase of our build out at Panther Creek, their expertise and their vast experience in HPC and AI infrastructure financing will be integral as we look to further scale the project and expand to other sites within our portfolio. Our highly valued and appreciating North American assets, combined with the higher margin and predictable earnings stream characteristic of HPC and AI enabled us to secure this attractive debt facility. These funds are dedicated to financing the HPC data center development at our Panther Creek location. Announced in April, the initial tranche of $50,000,000 will cover the soft cost development with a $250,000,000 project financing tranche available for drawing as we achieve specific development milestones. Turning to Slide 12, our first quarter financial performance.

Speaker 3

With the acquisition of Stronghold, our operations expanded to encompass power generation and hosting. In the first quarter, we earned and received $6.99 Bitcoin for total revenues of $67,000,000 up 33 year over year. Revenue from our mining activities was $65,000,000 with a balance of about $2,000,000 from our Volta Electrical Services subsidiary and from Stronghold's Bitcoin hosting and electricity generation businesses following our March 14 acquisition date. Our gross mining profit was $28,000,000 representing a direct mining margin of 43% and an average of $40,100 per bitcoin mined. Cash G and A was $20,000,000 and included unusual and non recurring professional service fees of about $2,000,000 in the quarter, primarily for expenses incurred in connection with the stronghold acquisition in the sale of our Iguazu facility to Hive Digital Assets.

Speaker 3

Operating loss was $32,000,000 in the quarter and included $17,000,000 of impairment charges attributable largely to our Argentine operation and the impact there of higher energy prices and unfavorable foreign exchange rate movements. As a result, net loss for the first quarter was $36,000,000 or $07 per share. Turning to slide 13. For the first quarter, our adjusted EBITDA was $15,000,000 or 23% of revenue. This encompasses primarily our self mining revenue supplemented by income earned on our hosting activities and our electricity generation.

Speaker 3

Focusing on first quarter operating performance and per Bitcoin metrics, gross mining profit was $28,000,000 up 43% of mining revenue. Our direct mining cost per Bitcoin in the first quarter was $47,800 with our all in cash cost to mine a Bitcoin at $72,300 compared to revenue per Bitcoin earned of $92,500 resulting in profit per Bitcoin of just over $20,000 for a cash profit contribution from our mining activities of about $14,000,000. I wish to note that as we continue to prioritize growing our HPC and AI business, we no longer plan to publish monthly production reports. Instead, we'll be providing regular updates and progress with our HPC and AI initiatives. We believe this aligns more closely with the strategic direction of our business.

Speaker 3

Turning to Slide 14. I'll now speak to our liquidity and our anticipated capital needs. As of May 13, we had total liquidity of approximately $150,000,000 comprised of cash and unencumbered BTC. In addition, under the Iguazu sale agreement, we expect to receive from Hive twenty six million dollars ratably over the next five remaining months, and we project generating on average about $8,000,000 per month of free cash flow from our mining operations. We anticipate this to be sufficient to meet our remaining CapEx needs for 2025, which we project to be under $100,000,000 Importantly, this number does not include any near term HPC and AI capital needs, which are planned to be funded by Macquarie.

Speaker 3

In closing, we believe our financial position provides a solid foundation to execute on the HPC and AI initiatives that Ben laid out this morning, and we look forward to keeping you updated as we continue to scale our US operations. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator for questions and answers.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, ask a question, you will need to press 11 on your telephone. Our first question comes from the line of Mike Colenise of H. C. Wainwright and Company.

Operator

Please go ahead, Mike.

Speaker 4

Hi, good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. First one for me is on the HPC AI side. Jeff, you highlighted $100,000,000 or so of CapEx that's not including any additional development of the HPC data centers. But if you could provide maybe some more specifics as to what the infrastructure development to continue to build out the 500 megawatts of total expected capacity that would entail that total number.

Speaker 4

And then from a infrastructure development standpoint, what would need to happen thereafter in terms of client discussions for you guys to bring the site to the next stage?

Speaker 3

So let me start off initially here by just commenting here that we're actually working now in the final stages of our master development plan, what we're going to do with Panda Creek. So we're actually going to have

Speaker 5

a lot more

Speaker 3

information forthcoming shortly here in terms of what those expenditures are going to be. But right now we're still in the process of putting together the expectations here. But Ben, maybe you want to add about some of the timelines and expectations that we have there.

Speaker 2

Yeah, happy to. And thanks for the question, Mike. So first thing is, as Jeff said, we're completing our master site plan, it's supposed to be done this quarter. And that's one of the next key development milestones in order to access the full $300,000,000 facility with Macquarie. Just give you a ballpark of what that $300,000,000 can accomplish for us at that Panther Creek site.

Speaker 2

Effectively, we can build out all of the like powered land infrastructure for the full 500 megawatts there at the Panther Creek location, or we can build out the initial substation and the first building of HPC for Power Campus, and we need further financing to finish out the remaining five or six buildings there.

Speaker 4

Got it. That's very helpful, Ben. Appreciate that. And then on the Bitcoin mining side, you guys have obviously improved the fleet efficiency quite a bit through the transfer, transform the fleet upgrade here to 19 jewels and terahash. But curious, is there any further room to optimize or improve your overall power costs on the Bitcoin mining side?

Speaker 2

So we have two different things there. I mean, first, we have about 6% of the miners still remaining to be installed. All of those miners that are waiting to be installed have efficiency higher than the 19. So there's going to be marginal improvement there, on the energy efficiency side. And I think the big part of this here is that with the PJM facilities that we've secured and the active mining that we're doing throughout Pennsylvania, we now have a lot of energy trading opportunities in our portfolio.

Speaker 2

So for the first time, we have a lot more control and flexibility of our power prices. But what this means is that you know, we're not seeking to achieve a certain dollar per megawatt hour figure or seeking to do is optimize free cash flow out of those mining operations on a daily basis. And so some days it might make sense to pay, you know, a higher price and flex a little bit more hash rate. Some days it makes sense to, you know, run less and target a lower price. So with those PGM facilities, we have a lot more control over energy.

Speaker 2

And that gives us a lot more downside protection, a lot more optimization here on the free cash flow. And that's our big way here of managing hash costs rolling forward. Thanks, Pat. Thanks, Mike.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Szczynski of Cantor. Please go ahead, Thomas.

Speaker 6

Hi, Ben and Jeff. This is Thomas on for Brett. Thank you for taking my question. I guess you just mentioned the master plan as part of the additional milestones for the additional $250,000,000 secondary tranche from Macquarie. I guess what specific other development milestones must be met to access the additional $250,000,000

Speaker 2

Jeff, do you want to take that?

Speaker 3

Yeah. Actually, the milestones are pretty straightforward here going forward here. The way it works here is that as we put together the Mass Development Plan, we've identified what the anticipated capital expenditures are gonna be along the way. Once we have the, really the approval from Macquarie for the Mass Development Plan, we can begin drawing upon that facility here to take advantage of each of the various tranches of the capital requirements arise. So it's actually a pretty straightforward mechanism here.

Speaker 6

Awesome, thanks. And then just one more, if I may. Ben, you mentioned as we enter the second half of twenty twenty five, you will look to start securing some critical substation infrastructure. I was just wondering if you've already put yourself in the queue for some of the long lead items here, given the high demand for this infrastructure.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Tom. We're still working on the master plans. We haven't placed deposits on any of the equipment yet. There are timelines here or so that we should expect to have the first tranches of additional power probably in twelve to eighteen months from today at the Panther Creek location. And that includes our anticipation that we'd be putting orders down for substation equipment in the second half of next of this year.

Speaker 2

Awesome. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Tom.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Grondahl of Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead Mike.

Speaker 7

Hey guys, thanks. It seems like you're off to a nice start with Panther Creek. How would you rank scrubgrass, Sharon and Washington State? Do you guys have an internal ranking or will it be customer demand that drives what's next? Just kind of like your thoughts there.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Mike. It's a great question. We've had a lot of initial conversations with potential customers and Panther Creek stands out as the best opportunity site that we have in our portfolio. That's due to a couple of reasons. One, it's got the most amount of immediate power over the next twelve to eighteen months.

Speaker 2

And it also has a very clear runway here for the next three years to scale up to several hundred megawatts. And third, that proximity to New York and Philadelphia is probably the best geographical location that we have in our portfolio for HPC, most in demand. As we look across our other sites, Washington, Scrubgrass, Sharon, the sites have different qualities and attractiveness to different kinds of customers. Scrubgrass, very, very similar kind of footprint and demand as Panther Creek. But Panther Creek is just a little bit further along in the additional power connections to the grid that we're going to be able to use to scale that up to several hundred megawatts.

Speaker 2

But it effectively has almost all of the same characteristics as Panther Creek. It's just Panther Creek is a little bit further advanced in its timeline. Sharon is an interesting one as well because it has 110 megawatts there that should be ready, in the back half of next year. And that's a very attractive one as well. It's got the size and scale to facilitate a lot of interest to customers.

Speaker 2

But it's a little bit lower in the priority queue or a little bit, it just doesn't have the further expansion capacity that really makes Panther Creek and Scrubgrass such exciting prospects with that multi year development ramp up to almost 500 megawatts. Washington is a very different kind of site. It's a much smaller site, so it would be targeting a different kind of customer. But it also has probably the most cost effective and reliable power in our portfolio. For HPC in Washington, the expected price is about $26 or $27 a megawatt hour.

Speaker 2

So that's the lowest possible cost we have across our entire portfolio. It means that we'd have really, really healthy margins. And we'd be going after a different kind of customer, probably something like a government agency who'd be interested in taking the whole site and having the data sovereignty and the security also themselves. So the different sites have different attractive qualities for different potential customers. And clearly, Panther Creek is our flagship one that we're going to develop.

Speaker 2

But after we've completed our master site plans here in this quarter, we're going to be replicating similar efforts across all of those other sites in The U. S. So that we have a pipeline here of sites to market to customers simultaneously.

Speaker 7

Got it. That's helpful. And then Slide 14 has you know, CapEx needs for 2025 less than a hundred million excluding HPC. That less than a hundred million, what is it going for? Is that a little bit more infrastructure?

Speaker 7

Just help us where that's being spent.

Speaker 3

Sure, let me start off and think I'll look at if you wish. First of all, we actually have that amount here. It's worth about $75,000,000 is where we are at this point in time here, of which roughly about $5,000,000 actually is logistics costs associated with our miners as we have further deployment strategic locations of these. On top of that, the balance of that really is gonna be spent primarily in Sharon and to a degree on its scrub grass and pantal locations, just sort

Speaker 2

of building out as Ben pointed

Speaker 3

out the electrical infrastructure. And for that we have about roughly around $70,000,000 60 5 million dollars for that overall. So that's kind of where we have it allocated at this point in time.

Speaker 7

Got it. Okay. Hey, thanks for that color, Jeff.

Operator

Sure. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Kinstlinger of Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead, Brian.

Speaker 8

Great, thanks so much. Last quarter you mentioned the hyperscalers would go through a quick assessment initially to see if the location is worth dedicating their time for a more thorough evaluation. At what point and what do they need to see start that initial assessment?

Speaker 2

So thanks for the question. I mean, had initial conversations with potential customers even before we had closed on the Stronghold transaction. One of the key things for large scale potential customers like that is certainty around their investments. And so it's really important for us to first secure the sites before those advance to the next level. And the next big thing here for us is completing the master site plan, because that includes things like the timeline expectations, the budget estimates, the Gantt charts for how construction builds out over time, what are the phases of development and expected power draws at what points in time.

Speaker 2

And that is really the next key thing that we need. With that in place, it's a lot easier to go and have these serious conversations with potential customers.

Speaker 8

Great. And my follow-up, you've sold 60% to 70% of your Bitcoins mined over the last two quarters. With the financing in place for HPC and AI and your limited CapEx for Bitcoin mining, how should we think about Bitcoin HODL versus planned sales going forward?

Speaker 3

So really for the sales going forward here, we plan to use that to address our operating requirements here, which are roughly about, you know, the fixed costs that we face are roughly about 6 to $6,200,000 a month. So above and beyond that though, we're gonna be looking to accumulating a huddle here. Are using it very strategically and tactically for a Bitcoin 1 program here as a means of using derivatives and instruments like that, you know, to really enhance the value and the quantity of Bitcoin that we have here.

Speaker 8

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Nick Giles of B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead, Nick.

Speaker 9

Thank you very much, operator, and good morning, everyone. This is Feder Chabalin on behalf of Nick Chell. Ben and Jeff, my first one is about macro environment. Where where are you now in the process of discussion with potential tenants for your HPC capacity? And how would you frame up the interest of the capacity in PJM specifically?

Speaker 9

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thanks for the question. As we said, we've had initial conversations with customers to verify and gauge their interest. But what we really needed to do to take those conversations to the next stage here is to have the certainty and the timelines for energization and power availability and the construction schedule and associated budgets and costs. All of that is in the planning stages right now in that master site plan, development phase, which should be expected to be done this quarter. And then we're going to be ramping up those efforts quite aggressively here, not just at our Panther Creek location, but replicating the exact same process here of doing the simultaneous master site plan for a site, as well as going to secure or seeking out site specific financing or site specific financing partner for that particular conversion or new construction build, so that we can also put that into the pipeline of sites that are being marketed out to customers simultaneously.

Speaker 9

Thank you for this color. And my my my next one is you you you already finished the assessment of potential HPC sites. So and what what would be the CapEx CapEx need per one megawatt of gross capacity? And what are you looking for in terms of your prospective customer on customers for this HPC capacity? And are you expecting kind of CapEx split for development with HPC megawatts, between you and potential tenants?

Speaker 9

Any color here would be be helpful.

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's a good question. The big thing here for us as a business, when you're looking at how we're driving shareholder value, kind of look at where we as a business are priced and valued. I think most of the Bitcoin miners are maybe somewhere in kind of like a three to five multiple of adjusted EBITDA. We're a bit lower. We're roughly two times adjusted EBITDA.

Speaker 2

And when you look at what the data center REITs are doing, it's 20 to 30x. So the big unlock here in shareholder value comes from the long term contracted revenues themselves, as opposed to any particular facet of the development in itself. And so there's a variety of different business structures and models that we could use in order to secure those contracted revenues. And there's a balancing act between CapEx associated with the model, the revenues that are possible per unit of megawatt hours sold and the margins that you'd get on each unit of energy sold as well. And kind of think of it as a spectrum with the lowest cost being on the powered land.

Speaker 2

That would be in the few hundreds of thousands of dollars a megawatt. Once you get up to the powered shell, we'd probably in the low 2,000,000 to $4,000,000 a megawatt range. And to move up the stack further to have a completed building ready to throw in racks, it's going to be closer to maybe $8,000,000 to $10,000,000 a megawatt. We think the sweeter spot here, at least for Panther Creek, is probably going to be on the powered shell range. That seems to be in most of our conversations where the sweet spot is between CapEx investment, total revenue per megawatt hour and margin is trying to focus on not the most amount of revenue per unit of megawatt hours sold, but how do we convert over the most amount of megawatts for the least amount of CapEx with a focus on our return on invested capital.

Speaker 2

So that gives you kind of a sense of kind of what are the relative costs and the way that we're looking at the various business structures. I'd also say that across our portfolio of sites, different models are going to make sense for the different sites and the different potential customers. It could very well be that in these conversations with potential hyperscaler customers, they want to take over and control more of the build and more of the operations. And with things like government agencies, maybe in Washington, they're more keen to just have a site turnkey ready to just plug in computers or maybe even want to have those computers on-site already. So there's a variety of different business models that we're approaching.

Speaker 2

But really, the primary next steps here are the master site plans and the financing in place to begin construction and conversion across all those sites.

Speaker 9

Thank you, Ben. That's extremely helpful. And I promise the last one, it's a quick follow-up on on max financing. So 15 it's I I know someone already asked it, but want to understand it a little bit better. 50,000,000 is initial draw, and $2.50 is conditional.

Speaker 9

Again, could you clarify what milestones should be achieved to be able to draw the next trenches? And what is the size of these trenches? Just want to understand the timeline here. Thank you.

Speaker 3

So we have a fair amount of I'm sorry, Ben, did you want to comment?

Speaker 2

Yeah, I mean, just maybe I can just sum up the question really quickly. You know, there's only two tranches here. There's the 50, and then there's the two fifty for the total of 300. You know, there's one key development milestone here for the two fifty as Jeff said to earlier, which is the completion of the master site planning. That includes, you know, all of the engineering schematics, the designs, the site maps, the budgets, the Gantt charts for construction.

Speaker 2

So it's a very comprehensive multi year development plan that we need to have in place in order for us to convert over and access the full 300,000,000 under that facility. But there's just the two tranches there, the 50 and the two fifty.

Speaker 3

And in reference by the way to when we specifically draw, that's as the needs arise. So once we have the map development plan in place here, we can then proceed to get, you know, we have a particular project or an investment, then we actually can just present that and work with Macquarie on that and get that financed as the payment stream unfolds.

Speaker 9

Thank you, Ben and Jeff. Appreciate all the color and continue. Best of luck.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Martin Toner of ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead, Martin.

Speaker 4

Good morning, everyone. Thanks so much for taking my question. I believe the Macquarie financing is for two years. Just wondering where you think you'll be in terms of development at that time and or I guess slightly before that and how you what what options do you think there will be to to refinance and increase financing from there?

Speaker 2

Happy to jump in there. And it's a good question, Martin. So the facility, as I said, would be enough in our calculations right now to either do the first HPC data center building completely, and a bit of infrastructure beyond that for the electrical or it's enough for us to do all of the powered land infrastructure for the entire site. As we continue to develop and as we continue to make progress on the HPC site, we should expect that opportunities for raising further capital at increasingly lower costs are going to be available. And so as we've made progress and want to expand the development process beyond the first building onto the next several buildings, we'll be seeking more financing at that time.

Speaker 2

And we expect to have increasingly lower cost capital as we get further through the project, so we get closer to contracted revenues and free cash flow on the site.

Speaker 4

Super. Thank you.

Speaker 9

You what

Speaker 4

conditions would motivate you to build out infrastructure for the entire site as opposed to, like going for that like first dollar of rental revenue, which seems important for lower cost financing going forward?

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, really, what we're trying to focus on right now is infrastructure, which is going to service either different kind of fork in the road that you want to take. So that's the high level stuff of the substation infrastructure, the transmission line infrastructure, the civil works on the land that prepares the land for construction. Those are the areas that regardless of which final direction is taken, those are the steps that need to be done regardless. And so as we progress here further with the initial site works, initial infrastructure works and conversations with the potential customers, it's really going to be the potential customers demand and timelines, which are going to ultimately determine how we're moving forward and what's being prioritized, either at the total amount of land or the first building.

Speaker 2

You know, it's highly likely, that the first building will be prioritized over the entire powered land. But really, that's going to be dependent on the outcome of the conversations that we're going to be having at a much more accelerated pace in the second

Speaker 7

half of this year.

Speaker 4

Super. Congrats to the team on the progress. That's all for me.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Mark.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Papanasasu of KBW. Please go ahead, Bill.

Speaker 10

Yeah. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. For the first one here, Ben, perhaps you can take a minute to speak to your outlook for Bitcoin over the medium term and how that could translate to the Bitcoin mining industry. A number of peers, including Bitfarms, have been cooling CapEx spend and dilutive financing recently. Perhaps you can share your thoughts on the prospect for attracting investor dollars here going forward.

Speaker 10

Thanks.

Speaker 2

Hey, Bill. Yeah, absolutely happy to speak to that. We actually have the same outlook on Bitcoin mining economics since about mid-twenty twenty three. So for the last two years, we've been operating under, the same set of assumptions, which was at the end of twenty twenty three, you know, we expect that mining prices or mining hardware prices should be at their lows with kind of fear and uncertainty going into the halving. We should take advantage of that by locking in as much of the mining hardware as possible.

Speaker 2

And we want to get that hardware in place for the 2025 bull run, which we have done now. And it was always our view that 2025 bull run was really going to be the big opportunity here for miners and that we'd want to have that diversification kind of sometime in 2026 so that we have a different revenue stream if Bitcoin pulls back in 2026 as we kind of forecast it. So when you look at where we are now middle of the year in 2025, we've done what we sought out to do in order to best position ourselves where we think the Bitcoin mining economic cycle is going to play out. And so far it's played out more or less along what we anticipated. Last quarter, we actually had a sensitivity table in the Q4 deck, which showed what were our expectations for Bitcoin price over time and what was our expectation for ending network cash rate for each quarter.

Speaker 2

So what we did there, if you refer back to that slide, there's kind of a sensitivity table and more of a refined area within that sensitivity table, which gives the reader management's best expectations for where Bitcoin price, where network hash rate should be at the end of each fiscal quarter through 2026, And what that means for implied hash prices. It also overlays on top of that, some sensitivity colors there so that you can see what the implied direct mining margins would be across those scenarios. We're pretty confident that the Bitcoin mining infrastructure that we have right now and the Bitcoin mining hardware efficiency and hash costs that we have is going to be generating pretty healthy margins and free cash flow through 2026. And that's the view that we've had for at this point, quite some time now. And it really has not changed.

Speaker 2

I think our focus here is really making sure that we had that Bitcoin mining infrastructure in place. So we had that upside exposure to Bitcoin prices. But where we stand now in middle of twenty twenty five, we think the best opportunity for us to invest capital is not in further Bitcoin mining right now, but it's actually electrical infrastructure specifically for HPC and AI.

Speaker 10

Awesome. Always appreciate your color on Bitcoin mining, Ben. And now just taking a step back and running through all the progress with the transition from some of your Bitcoin mining plans to bringing AI HPC capacity online and securing a long term partner. What would you say are the biggest lessons learned over the past year or so? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's an interesting question, Bill. We started off on this with great expertise in energy infrastructure and development. I think some of the areas that were new to us and things that we didn't understand were just the different levels of requirements and quality controls around HPC, which have never really been prevalent in our business before, which is why we engage with specific advisors to help us bring in those resources and really get caught up to speed really quickly in terms of what the differences are between the two businesses and the infrastructure that we're building. Hard to say what's the biggest lessons, but I can give you like one example. We have a site in Quebec, for instance, that is next to a former industrial plant with a big coal chimney.

Speaker 2

Coal chimney has been there for decades. It's been untouched for decades. But it raised concerns for the structural integrity of the adjacent property to ours on our property for HPC development. It was things like that trying to think beyond even not only what our facility is capable of, but what are the implications for the significant amount of CapEx that goes into an HPC site for even the adjacent properties, which might impact us. And that hasn't really been a consideration for us before in the past on BTC.

Speaker 2

But with our advisors at WWT and ASG, we've really learned a lot very, very quickly. We've done the full assessments of all of our sites across The US and Canada, we've got the site priority list, we understand what are the areas to focus on, what are the areas to address, what are the areas of concern, what are the areas that are strategic value add and are really, really strong marketing points. We've learned all of that through our advisors from the last couple

Speaker 9

of months. So we're in

Speaker 2

a really strong place right now in the development process. We're basically laid a very strong foundation here and now we have a very clear identified, structured and repeatable process that we're going to be implementing across all of our US sites in our portfolio.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Dobson of Clear Street LLC. Please go ahead, Brian.

Speaker 4

Yeah, thanks very much for taking my question. You know, as speak to consultants and potential clients, do you think just from a very high level you could characterize the willingness to devote resources on the set of enterprises and hyperscalers for, call it, near term data center expansion. There's been there's been some hand wringing in the industry that that this type of spending is slowing down.

Speaker 2

Do you

Speaker 4

think you could just address that?

Speaker 2

Yeah, you know, the demand here for HPC data centers is really insatiable. I know there's been, you know, obviously a lot of market news around DeepSeek and around Microsoft over the last several months. But really that doesn't come up in most of the conversations that we've had with potential customers. Everyone is moving at full speed. And I think the key thing here is that those are really short term kind of market reactions to headlines.

Speaker 2

But when you're looking at the investments that are taking place and the kind of development timelines associated with HPC, hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars going into these sites, multiple year timelines, you can't get distracted in that process with a headline. You have to keep moving forward or you'll never get the site completed. And so for I think most of the customers out there, DeepSeek, the Microsoft news did not impact them at all. Their demand is still rampant. And when you look at kind of the expected growth in this demand over time, it matches the same kind of dynamics that we have in Bitcoin as a compute market.

Speaker 2

There's really only been one time in Bitcoin's history where the bottleneck on growth has been chips and that was the 2021 silicone shortage. Throughout the rest of Bitcoin's history in that compute market, the growth or the bottleneck on growth has always been power. And that's the exact same situation that's playing out in HPC. I cited that McKinsey report at the beginning of the presentation, which outlined 156 gigawatts of expected demand for HPC. The Bitcoin network right now is about 15 to 20 gigawatts.

Speaker 2

And so it's almost a 10 times increase in total demand compared to where Bitcoin is today. And most of that does not exist. So we don't see any slowing down in the demand. We don't see any slowing down in the investment. We are still very much in what seems like kind of 1990s internet kind of stage where people are just getting their first websites.

Speaker 2

People are just kind of understanding how this technology works. They're just getting their first exposure here. But we haven't even really started to dig beneath the surface on what AI is going to do and what the levels of energy consumption and compute are going to be required to unlock next phase of this industrial revolution.

Speaker 4

Yeah, very good. Thanks very much.

Speaker 9

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joe Flynn of Compass Point. Please go ahead, Joe.

Speaker 5

I wonder, you know, go into more detail on the comment you made in regard to, you know, Panther Creek being best suited for a powered shell approach. Just wondering, you know, what ultimately you know, how you came to that decision? And if you see opportunities, you know, maybe to bypass some of the, you know, due diligence process we've seen in the market for, you know, more of the, you know, more of the fully built out sites. And then in in that regard, how how would you think about what is the goal to ultimately pre lease the site, which then the required capital would become the equity component of the financing? Or how do you think about next steps in that regard?

Speaker 5

Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Thanks, Our primary goal here is unlocking shareholder value through long term high margin contracted revenues. That is the big driver of shareholder value for us that we're trying to tap into. And we always have had a focus in this company of return on invested capital. And that means that oftentimes we're doing things like we don't want to buy the most efficient and most expensive miner because we believe that we can get a better ROIC by going kind of one tier down in the mining stack, saving a lot of CapEx and getting a better ROIC.

Speaker 2

We're still very much in the decision and planning stage here with the various customer conversations that are happening and we'll be ramping up in the second half of this year. So it's really going to be determined by what are the demands of the potential customers and what would that mean in terms of CapEx timeline and expected ROIC. We expect that the further you go along the stack and the more CapEx involved, yes, you're going to get higher revenues. Yes, you're going to get higher margins. But we think that there might be a trade off there on the return on the invested capital bit.

Speaker 2

And that those marginal increases in extra CapEx may not be justified by the actual margins that you get and may actually result in a worse ROIC or a lower ROIC than kind of going lower in the stack as we've always done with Bitcoin mining. But again, this is very preliminary. We're going to do whatever makes the most sense in terms of unlocking shareholder value through those long term contracted revenues for those high margins with that emphasis on how do we balance out the CapEx and the ROIC in order to deliver that best return for shareholders. And that's ultimately going to be driven by the customer demand and the customer conversations that we're continuing to have.

Speaker 3

Great. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back to Ben Gagnon for closing remarks. Sir?

Speaker 2

Thank you everyone for joining today. Just like to reiterate our recent strategic moves to rapidly transform this company. We've quickly become a US focused energy and content company. And we have a strong underlying Bitcoin mining business with a lot of exciting potential to see HNI. We look forward to keeping you up to date on our progress.

Speaker 2

And thank you very much for attending the call.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Bitfarms Q1 2025
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