Canaan Inc. (CAN) Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Canaan Inc.'s Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded. Now I'd like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Gwyn Lauber, Investor Relations for the company. Please go ahead, Gwyn.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our earnings conference call. Joining us today are Chairman and CEO, Nangeng Zhang; and our CFO, Jin James Cheng. Liang Wang , Vice President of Capital Markets and Corporate Development; and Xi Zhang, Senior IR Manager, will also be available during the question-and-answer session. Our CEO will start the call by providing an overview of the company and performance highlights third quarter. Our CFO will then provide details on the company's operating and financial results for the period before we open up the call for your questions. Before we begin, I would like to refer you to our safe harbor statement in our earnings press release. Today's call will include forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, our outlook for the company and statements that estimate or project future operating results and the performance of the company. These statements speak only as of today, and the company assumes no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements that may be made in today's press release, call or webcast, except as required by law. These statements do not guarantee future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Please refer to the press release and the risk factors and documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent annual report on Form 20-F for information on risks, uncertainties and assumptions that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in such statements. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss both GAAP financial measures and certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of the company's performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from GAAP results. You can find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations with comparable GAAP results in our earnings press release, which is posted on the company's website. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Nangeng Zhang. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Gwyn. Hello, everyone. This is NG, CEO of Canaan. Welcome to our earnings call. Together with our CFO, James, we are calling from our Singapore headquarters to discuss our Q3 2025 business results, and let me start this with you. During the third quarter, the global macro environment remained highly uncertain. In particular, the U.S. reciprocal tariff policy increased mining costs in North America. However, we also saw the resilience of North American market. Once there was a bit more clarity, demand started to recover clearly during this quarter. Bitcoin prices increased from approximately $107,000 at the end of June and about $114,000 at the end of September. This showed a rapid increase in total global hash rate, which rose from 846 exahash per second at the end of Q2 to 1,041 exahash per second at the end of Q3. Accompanied by a significant rise in mining difficulty with growing energy competition globally, the mining industry is facing higher operational challenges. Despite the complex external environment, we delivered results that exceeded expectations. Total revenue for the quarter exceeded USD 150 million, up 50.2% quarter-over-quarter and 104.4% year-over-year and beat our guidance range of USD 125 million to USD 145 million. Gross profit reached USD 16.6 million, much higher than the USD 9.3 million reported in Q2. This improvements in the revenue and gross profit reflect our rapid response to the market demand and ongoing optimization of global mining operations. Supported by strong sales and revenue momentum, our cash balance at the end of the quarter increased to USD 119 million, representing an 80.9% sequential increase. In mining machine sales, we delivered a record high of 10 exahash per second of computing power in Q3, up 55.6% sequentially and 37.7% year-over-year. Our average selling price increased 33.8% year-over-year to USD 11.8 per terahash. Despite a slightly -- slight rise in cost per terahash due to the changes in international trade policies during this quarter, we achieved a product gross margin of approximately 17%. We continue to serve strong hash rate demand in Asia and also captured the recovering demand in North America. Notably, during this quarter, we secured large orders from well-known customers in the region including Bitfury, Cipher, CleanSpark, and Luxor. In early October, we signed a purchase agreement for over 50,000 A15Pro models with a U.S.-based miner client. This highlights growing recognition of our product performance, quality and service by North American institutional customers. In the consumer-grade mining machine market, our Avalon Home series continue to lead in this emerging space. In addition to regular marketing and promotional activities, we have also included the home series in our open source code program. We are actively growing our user and developer community and expanding our brand influence. At the same time, we are exploring new applications of the home series in smart home scenarios. Currently, we are developing software to make our products compatible with Matter, the mainstream protocol standard for smart home devices. In terms of consumer-grade product sales, we delivered 14,000 units of the Avalon Home series in Q3, generating over USD 12 million in revenue, a sequential increase of 115.3%. The Avalon Q model was the top performer this quarter by supporting scale sales through channel partners, -- the home series achieved nearly USD 4 million in gross profit with a solid gross margin of around 33%. Overall, our total product revenue reached USD 118.6 million with gross profit close to USD 20 million in Q3. The Avalon Home series contributed 10.3% of total product revenue and about 20% of product gross profit. Based on what you are seeing, competition in the consumer money market remains relatively healthy. We plan to maintain solid gross margins with launching new products and expanding channel coverage to drive scale. Turning to mining operations. Despite a notable increase in mining difficulty during this quarter, our disciplined execution allow us to steadily advance hash rate development analyzation and overall mining efficiency. As a result, we generated another quarterly record of USD 30.55 million in mining revenue while maintaining competitive power cost. In the third quarter, we added approximately 1 exahash per second of newly deployed capacity in North America, bringing our total deployed hash rate to 9.3 exahash per second by the end of the quarter and approximately 7.8 exahash per second energized. We mined 267 BTC during this quarter, which further contributed to our crypto asset balance. Our Bitcoin holding reached an all-time high of 1,582 BTC by the end of the quarter, providing solid support for our balance sheet. We are also actively exploring innovative mining projects. This quarter, we partnered with Soluna to deploy machines at a 20 megawatts wind-powered mining facility in Texas. In Canada, we worked with a local energy infrastructure partner on a pilot project that convert standard -- stranded natural gas into computing power. We also supplied the mining equipment for project designed to support local grid stability. These projects mark our first step into the energy infrastructure space, bringing with the utilization of stranded energy, our long-term vision is to integrate high-density interruptible Bitcoin mining loads with the energy-intensive AI and HPC workloads, building a future where computing and energy infrastructure grow together. We are entering an era in which AI software and data centers will profoundly shape daily life. At the same time, we believe that public awareness and the demand for sustainable energy will continue to grow. Throughout Canaan's history, we have held a consistent belief technology should make society more efficient. Today, we are seeing that vision become to materialize. We have unique advantages in this transformation with more than a decade of developing technologies that make chips and system more energy efficient. We are now extending these capabilities to both home use and traditional energy sector. Energy operators can use our computing system to balance the grid, improve transmission efficiency and generate new revenue. On the consumer side, utilizing access heat from home mining is only the beginning. Over time, we envision this concept expanding into broader home computing applications. For R&D, we continue to innovate and upgrade our products. At the end of October, we officially launched our next-generation Avalon A16 series. The air-cooled A16XP model delivers 300 terahash per second of hash rate per unit with an industry-leading power efficiency of 12.8 joules per terahash. This marks the first time our air-cooled miner have reached 300 terahash level, clearly showcasing our strong leadership in Bitcoin ASIC design. With improvements to production and supply chain, our global delivery system is now more flexible and resilient. Today, we have manufacturing capabilities layouts in Mainland China, Malaysia and the U.S., working seamlessly together to support delivery and aftersales service for consumers worldwide. While enhancing our product and supply chain capabilities, we have also sharpened our focus on core operations. Starting this quarter, we realigned our R&D team and around -- a team around the projects that offer clear revenue visibility and the strategic value. We have also streamlined headcount to support this focus. In addition to organizational and a cost optimizations, we are also allocating additional resources to expand our business footprint. We have established a dedicated consumer product team to optimize product quality and accelerate product integration. Additionally, we are also allocating more resources to our hash rate finance and energy infrastructure initiatives. We see new power-related opportunities in many regions from home users and small businesses to power utilities. In Europe and Asia, customers are exploring ASIC-based grid balancing applications. In North America, stranded energy opportunities continue to grow and with similar projects emerging globally, including the Middle East. In our digital asset treasury management, we continue to executing our flexible strategy. At the end of the third quarter, we held 1,582 Bitcoins and 2,830 Ethereum. In early November, during a market pullback, we strategically acquired an additional 100 Bitcoins as a part of crypto asset management strategy, further enhancing our asset allocation and the potential liquidity. To sum up, Q3 was a highly strategic quarter in Canaan's development Journey. We achieved strong revenue growth and improved gross profit, while also optimizing our business structure and organization. At the same time, we made an encouraging progress in several new areas. Looking ahead, we are fully focused on driving Q4 sales, fulfilling large customer orders and converting preorders for our new A16 series. At the same time, we are accelerating the deployment of newly signed innovative mining projects to further expand our mining hash rate. We are closely monitoring the impact of U.S. tariff policy, macro liquidity conditions and the potential changes in global mining and energy regulations. Taking all of these factors together, we remain cautiously optimistic for the fourth quarter and expect total revenue to be in the range of USD 175 million to USD 205 million. This outlook is based on current market and operating conditions and the actual results may vary with policy uncertainties and market volatility. This concludes my prepared remarks. Thank you, everyone. Now I will hand it over to our CFO, James.

Thank you, NG, and good day, everyone. This is James, CFO of Canaan. I'm very glad to share our Q3 financial results with you. Even today, we are witnessing Bitcoin price under big pressure. As NG stated at the start of the call, the macroeconomic environment in Q3 was highly uncertain. Reciprocal tariff policies from the United States added mining costs in North America. Global network hash rate growth continuously outpaced the Bitcoin's price appreciation. This all led to increased mining difficulty and intensified operational challenges across the industry. Despite market volatility, we delivered strong results this quarter. Our revenue exceeded our own expectations. Our gross profit showed consistent growth with the average selling price climbing again and our reserves of cash and digital assets increased significantly in our ending balance sheet of September. Let me give a quick summary of our financial performance. First, we delivered a total revenue reaching $150.5 million, exceeding our guidance and representing a 104% year-over-year increase. This was primarily driven by growth in our product sales of $118.6 million, surpassing the $100 million milestone for the first time in the past 3 years. This growth was achieved while we set a new record of 10 exahash of quarterly computing power sold and average selling price continued rising to $11.8 per terahash per second, a new high for the past 2 years. After a very quiet Q2, our clients from the United States started actively placing sizable and repeating orders for the A15 series. Sales of North American customers contributed 31% of our total revenue in quarter 3. We are happy to witness the strong demand recovery of the North American market. Also, our sales of Avalon Home series generated $12.2 million in revenue during the quarter, representing a 115% quarter-over-quarter increase. This is the first time Avalon Home products have contributed over 10% of total product revenue since the launch just over a year ago. As NG said, we are cultivating the consumer market and establishing our leadership position in the newly defined household mining category. Second, our mining business also delivered another record result this quarter. Mining revenue reached $13.6 million, an all-time high and a 241% year-over-year increase. We mined 267 Bitcoins during the quarter, representing 82% year-over-year growth. During the quarter, we deployed over 8,000 mining machines across our projects in the United States and other countries, expanding our total deployed hash rate by 14% from 8.15 exahash per second at the end of quarter 2 to 9.3 exahash per second at the end of quarter 3. Our installed computing power in the United States also grew by 20% from 3.66 exahash per second at the end of quarter 2 to 4.4 exahash per second at the end of quarter 3. We also strategically closed our mining operations in Kazakhstan and initiated a small-scale project in Malaysia. Next, our profitability continued to improve this quarter. Gross profit reached $16.6 million, up 78.6% quarter-over-quarter, marking a significant turnaround from a gross loss of $21.5 million in the same period last year. Product gross margin reached 17% this quarter. Both gross profit and margin continued their growth in quarter 3, extending the upward trajectory and reinforcing the positive trend. Our Avalon Home series generated nearly $4 million in gross profit with a gross margin of approximately 33% -- the Avalon Home series accounted for around 10.3% of product revenue, and it contributed 20% of the product's gross profit. The home series has already become a stable revenue pillar and a recognized gross profit contributor. Last but not least, our total cryptocurrency treasury reached approximately 1,582 Bitcoins and 2,803 Ethereum with an estimated market value of approximately $189 million at the end of Q3. Our unrealized total gain was approximately $87 million, reflecting the appreciation in value of the digital assets accumulated from mining and other operations. As of October 31, our total Bitcoin treasury increased to 1,610 as previously disclosed in our monthly report. In early November, we further strengthened our digital assets portfolio by purchasing another 100 Bitcoin. Turning to expenses. Our operating expenses totaled approximately $40.5 million. We recorded $1.5 million in onetime expenses relating to the operational efficiency initiatives, including organizational optimization, travel control measures and other related items. In addition, we recorded $1.2 million in impairments related to mining machines deployed in Kazakhstan. By the end of quarter 3, the price of Bitcoin increased to around $113,000 versus around $107,000 at the end of quarter 2. The price of Ethereum increased to around $4,100 at the end of quarter 3 versus around $2,500 at the end of quarter 2. This price appreciations resulted in an aggregate unrealized fair value gain of $5.7 million on our digital asset holdings. A noncash change in fair value of preferred shares impacted our Q3 bottom line by $9.5 million. This included $5.4 million from the Series A-1 preferred shares, which were fully converted during the quarter. And another $4.0 million from Series A preferred shares, which were fully converted in early October. To provide a clearer view of our underlying operational performance, we have excluded the impact of this accounting treatment from our non-GAAP measures. With all preferred shares now fully converted, we expect Q4 to include a final impact related to the change in fair value of these instruments. Benefiting from strong top line growth, improved margins and a firm cost discipline, we delivered positive adjusted EBITDA of $2.8 million in quarter 3. Our net loss per ADS narrowed to just USD 0.05 versus $0.27 in the same period last year, demonstrating continued momentum toward profitability. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow. We generated a net cash inflow of $53 million in Q3. This was driven by $189 million in sales collections, the highest quarterly level in the past 2 years and the supplemented by approximately $10 million in export VAT refund. These inflows fully converted the quarter's major cash outflows, including $56 million in wafer prepayments and $90 million for production and operations. As a result, our cash balance increased to $119 million at quarter end. Now moving to our contract liability. The balance of contract advances reached nearly $87 million as of this quarter end, over 85% contributed by North American clients. As of the end of quarter 3, we recorded account receivables of $7 million, all from the customers using Bitcoins as collateral for installments payments. We will continuously evaluate market demand and adopt corresponding credit policies with caution. Now turning to our recent fundraising. In early November, we closed a strategic investment totaling $72 million with 3 top-tier institutional investors, Brevan Howard, Galaxy Digital and Weiss Asset Management. The proceeds are intended to fund the acquisition and deployment of North American data center sites as well as the expansion of our Bitcoin mining machine production capacity. In late October, we renewed the ATM program to broaden banking relationships and enhance our financial flexibility for future growth initiatives. Following the renewal, we sold approximately $4.8 million of ADSs, raising gross proceeds of about $7.8 million as previously reported in the monthly report. We have selected to pause further sales under the ATM for the remainder of 2025. As of the date of the earnings, we have cumulatively repurchased approximately 5.1 million ADSs for approximately $3.4 million under our share repurchase program. In the future, we plan to execute on our repurchase plan as market conditions allow us. Moving forward, as our CEO just mentioned, strategically, we will continue our technology-driven efforts with the goal of improving the efficiency of society. These efforts include the development of energy-efficient chips and systems similar to what we did in the past decade. This includes an expansion of our energy operations, which leverages computing technologies. Also on the consumer side, these efforts include Bitcoin computing and heat reuse. To better utilize our resources, we set up additional internal controls to oversee the operation of our business. This priority of the strategic importance and will help to provide us with additional revenue visibility. We will increase the expansion of our consumer products and energy operation, but at the same time, streamline existing R&D and administration cost structure. In cash flow management, we will continue to invest in R&D on new products and wafers in the supply chain, and we will also seek opportunities that will increase our energy operations around the world as well as help our digital assets treasury to accumulate more digital assets on our balance sheet. All this will happen in a very dynamic environment. We remain cautiously optimistic as we execute on our strategy while focusing on protecting and increasing our shareholder value. We expect revenue for the fourth quarter to be in the range of $175 million to $205 million. This forecast reflects current market conditions. Actual results may vary given policy uncertainties and market volatility. This concludes our prepared remarks. We are now open for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Mike Grondahl from Northland.

The 50,000 machine order on the A15 Pros, can you talk a little bit about delivery timing there and gross margin on those sales?

Yes, this order for more than 50,000 A15 Pro units is one of our most important deals this year. So under the contract, we expect to complete all deliveries by the end of 2025. So far, we have shipped a part of the orders and are progressing in the remaining production and logistics as planned. Yes, given the size and the tight time line of this order and the fact that Q4 is generally a peak period for supply chain and logistics constraints, our production and operations team are working at full strength to ensure on-time delivery while maintaining product quality. And also looking, at the same time, we are expecting deliveries for other customers in parallel to avoid any impact on our long-term -- other long-term partners. This is a key test of our delivery management capabilities that's a really hard job. Yes. So for the gross margin, yes, we have a -- I think we have a positive gross margin. Yes, but maybe I cannot have the exact numbers. Yes, we have gross margins.

Got it. And then just maybe a follow-up. Your home mining sales have done really well lately. What are the margins on that business line versus the industrial mining equipment?

I think for our home mining series, in quarter 3, we get 33% of gross margin. And by the end of this year, I think we should maintain 30% -- above 30% gross margin. It is significantly higher than industrial miners. Yes, I think the competition -- yes. So yes, so I think for the home miners road map, we plan to launch several new products over the next 12 months. And further about the 2C product portfolio, always consumer products need a refresh every year. So we need to refresh almost all existing models in the coming year. So -- but still, for 2026, our most important KPI for the home series is still go mainstream and break out of the crypto niche. So please give us some more time.

Next question comes from the line of Nick Giles from B. Riley.

This is Henry Hearle on for Nick Giles. So for my first question, when is the earliest you guys could ship your new A16 models and at what scale? And what are your expectations on price and margin, respectively?

Yes. The A16 series was officially launched at the end of October. And now we are at the first batch simple production and yes, and we finished the testing stage. According to our plan, we will start shipping samples to selected customers by the end of this month for their testing and evaluation. Yes, this is constant with our euro launch strategy. And we expect to begin our volume shipments in the fourth quarter of 2026. And yes, we will adjust the production and the delivery pace dynamically based on the presale and customer feedback. For pricing, we will adhere to market-driven principles, taking into supply-demand account and the competitive demand dynamics and the customer mix. So at first, I think as a new flagship product, A16 delivers major performance. The air-cooled A16XP can offer over 300 terahash at 12.8 joules per hash, so which is really industry leading. So I think it will provide higher returns per unit. And also, we can share this benefits with our customers. Yes. So about -- I think our margins based on the current wafer material and manufacturing cost, the per terahash cost for A16 is under control and this is in our expectations and also the yield is acceptable. So I think the product pricing power will help us to offset some cost pressures. Sure, the A16 cost per hash is higher than A15. So yes, so let's see. Thank you.

Yes. And then for my follow-up, I wanted to get your guys' thoughts on the fact that several public Bitcoin miners have been very vocal about winding down their mining operations in the medium term. And then at the same time, supply of ASIC appears to be increasing. So what do you guys think of the market impact will be? And then how is Canaan responding to this trend?

Yes. I think for this question, yes, we observe that some listed miners maybe they are facing balance sheet pressure, share price performance issues and a desire to pivot towards AI HPC have publicly started their intention to reduce Bitcoin mining over the medium term. Yes. But for -- in my perspective, firstly, I think the slowdown I don't think the global hash rate will slow down in the near term. And also the HPC -- AI HPC deployment is still needs some time. By our investigation to the energy market in the U.S., the AI HPC applications needs high-quality energy electricity and which is -- the high quality always means higher cost. So I think fundamentally, at the next 1 or 2 years, the mining -- the power is suitable for mining is not the competition with the energy used for AI HPC is not the same electricity. So I know our customer, including ourselves, is thinking about how can build mining -- AI-ready mining facilities for the future. But in this stage, deploy more Bitcoin miners is still the best way to allocate energy today and generate revenues [ engine ] -- from this stage, not waiting for another 1 or 2 or 3 years. So I think still the things it's hard to be foresee for long term. So we focus on -- yes, so because there's no answer for 3 or 5 years later. So we -- now we are focused on cooperate with our partners to fulfill their requirements. Also, we also -- we are trying to find more energy resources in U.S. and building our own mining site today. And maybe -- and we should have potential possibilities to transfer to the AI infrastructure in the future. This is what we -- I personally observed in the past maybe 6 months.

Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Cassidy from Rosenblatt Securities.

Congratulations on the strong results. And your guidance for $190 million for the fourth quarter is impressive. Is this -- orders also scheduled out into the first quarter? I guess what kind of visibility are your customers giving you?

Thank you, Kevin. I think quarter 4 is a peak quarter in terms of seasonality, and we provided the guidance in a very optimistic way. And also, we have already collected some of the orders. We try our best to deliver in quarter 4. Looks to me, quarter 1 traditionally is the low season because there is New Year and the Chinese New Year together in the western part of the world and the Eastern part of the world, both having all kinds of holidays and the global logistics supply chain is not in the normal shape. So I don't personally seeing another peak time for quarter 1. I think the revenue could going down a little bit. But we will try our best to deliver quarter 4 first and then we predict quarter 1 later when we have a clear understanding about the demand. Also, recently, the Bitcoin price is not in a good shape. So it's under turbulence. And some of the customers, especially the smaller ones, they tend to be more cautious and hesitate to make up their decisions immediately. That will also have a kind of impact on quarter 1 orders. So we will try to make a flexible supply. Anyway, currently, I think the demand is still higher than supply. We're just focusing on quarter 4 delivery first. And then let's see how it goes in quarter 1. Maybe we can balance between the demands of the sales and also the self-mining side. If we do have some inventory, we can allocate to self-mining in United States, that will also be a long-term strategic goal for us. Yes, I think that's my two cents, Kevin.

Good detail. And maybe you did note that there's a rebound in demand in the U.S. Is the U.S. market which is less sensitive to the price of Bitcoin?

Sorry, tell again.

Okay. Yes. Just you had mentioned that with the price of Bitcoin being down in just very recent times last few days, and you mentioned that would be sensitive to the demand for mining machines. And I was just wondering if the rebound we've seen in the U.S., I think you said it was 31% of revenue in the third quarter, whether that continues even with -- I guess, is it less sensitive in North America to prices of Bitcoin versus the rest of the world?

Yes, Kevin, look, to me, in my observation, North America is now the leading area for global mining industry. The whole total hash rate in North America is some percentage between 35% to 40% globally. And there are around 20 listed companies in North America doing mining. They are kind of institutional players. They are more professional building up the sites, the electricity facilities and eventually becoming mining sites. So they have their schedule. It's not easy for them to stop their own schedule even when Bitcoin price has some short-term turbulence. For them, they look at long-term goals. That's why they are not very price sensitive in very short-term time. But we observed the tariff did have a kind of impact on their cost structure that increased their mining cost. That means some of the miners, especially the smaller ones, even they are sitting in the United States with a consistent policy advantage, they could still withdraw from Bitcoin mining to other activities. They may want to change their miners purchase plan in quarter 4. So I should say U.S. customers are most important customers for us, and we observed their worries in short term, but we also respect their long-term strategic goals, and we try our best to support their strategic goals to get realized. So that's something we do together with them.

Yes. And also, I think for looking at this year, specially, the market initial expected is the demand will flow rapidly into North America. However, changes in tariff policy led to a significant contraction in North America demand from late Q1 and Q2. And at that time I think everyone was very nervous, but Asia demand ramped up quickly and partially offset the weakness in North America. And in Q3 and Q4, North America customers showed very strong resilience. Together, we adapted to the new trade environment and the demand there has recovered quickly since the end of Q3. In fact, for the potential already delivered in Q4, North America has begun -- has again accounted for more than 50%. So Bitcoin price volatility is constant. Sharp moves over a few days or weeks do cause some customers, especially small customers to pause and reassess. But over multiyear time frame, I think the impact is underlying demand trend is limited. And I highly disagree with like running business by country numbers day by day. So this is my personal opinion. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Donovan from Compass Point.

NG and James, so how much inventory do you have left for the A15 series? And then for 4Q '25 guidance, what mix do you expect between A15 orders and preorders for A16s?

Thank you for the question, Michael. I think our inventory in the end of quarter 3 is like $200 million, including some of the raw materials like wafers, like other components. And it mainly reflects the strong demand in quarter 4. And you have already known, we got the big order around 50,000 units to United States. So we have to prepare the inventory. Other than that, if we digest the inventory in quarter 4, I don't think our inventory level will be that high. In quarter 1, we will see a lower inventory level for A15. And that's because we are expecting the uncertainties of the market demand in quarter 1. And for A16, I think it's mainly like quarter 3 to be the mass delivery. I think the early delivery could be late quarter 2. But in the transition, we will continue to produce A15 and make it better and better. I think that's the plan. Did I answer your question, Michael?

Yes, you did, James. I appreciate that. And I guess for my next question, can you expand a bit more on the pilot projects that you have, the 2.5 megawatts in Alberta, Canada and 4.5 megawatts in Japan. What are the growth opportunities in those 2 countries?

Yes. I think for -- we are running several similar pilot projects globally. I think this includes Japan, Canada, U.S. and as well as some small projects is ongoing in Europe and Asia, other Asia countries. Since these are pilots, our primary goal is to validate the technical approach and the business model rather than maximize early-stage financial returns. Yes, it's thanks to the use of trends, gas and energy, the power cost for these pilot projects is relatively low and the project level gross margin are decent. But like most mining operations, meaningful economic benefits ultimately require scale, yes. But based on the current results, we believe these pilots all have the potential for scale up -- this [indiscernible] is very important to remember that power and gas infrastructure are very, very traditional long-cycle industries, building trust and proving out a new model takes time and patience. Our strategy is to run the pilots in a stable way, cements the partnerships and then we will pass on to the larger megawatt levels at the right time. For example, the Canada strand gas project, there's a very highly possibilities to scale up to 20 megawatts in the middle of next year. And also, we can do more like I just mentioned, the AI-ready mining sites -- mining farms in U.S. with our partner, Luxor. So yes, so I think still there's -- please give us some time.

One moment for the last question. Our last question comes from the line of Kevin Dede of H.C.W.

NG, I'm wondering about your self-mining objectives. Can you refresh us on where you plan to take self-mining and in particular, Ethiopia, which remains the largest contributor of your exahash. We're hearing that power tariff rates have increased there, and we're wondering how you might rethink hash deployment.

Okay. I think for our strategy, now in short term, there is some pullback in Bitcoin price and many people are asking the question about our strategy of self-mining. Yes, I think in the near term, over the -- maybe over next few months, our attention will be on delivering large mine orders and which does slow the pace at which we add our self-mining hash rate. Please remember there's still other customers, we cannot lose our long-term partners at this time. So we -- because of the lack of machines, at the same time, we are actively developing more power resources, including potential greenfield sites. These projects have longer construction cycles, but relatively controllable cash outlays. And they offer better long-term value and operation flexibility. The gas to compute pilot in Canada with Aria Energy and the 20-megawatt data center projects in Texas with Soluna -- examples, for what we see in the market, I think this is indeed more attractively priced mining assets now. The pullback for this Bitcoin price give us benefits to get more energy resources, especially in U.S. Yes. So I think particularly projects with solid resources but short-term funding pressure. So this offers us better entry points. We are continuously screening special [ entities ] and strict return and the risk control. And we aim to expand our self-mining footprint in a more prudent value attractive way. So yes, so in short, I think we are still keeping the expansion in U.S., and we are moving to the more fundamental site like the -- sites like the energy infrastructure and long term. Yes. And I think the big order and Bitcoin pullback give us some time to redirect our direction to find a more better way to expansion in U.S.

James, I was wondering if you could offer a little more color on the $56 million wafers purchase and the $90 million processing. Would that include pretty much everything that you need for the 15 and 16XP, at least as you see orders initially. And how much of it do you think translates to the Avalon Home series?

Well, Kevin, I don't think $56 million is the -- all the wafer supply we can get for quarter 1. It's actually some payments happen to be in the face of payments just in quarter 3. So the $56 million is some prepayments and also some close payments for the previous contracts. And I think in quarter 4, we will pay more. It's just a kind of pacing difference. And for the home series, I think currently, it's winter time, we observed the demand from North America is actually getting stronger compared to quarter 3 and quarter 2. So it seems like we will allocate more chips to home series. But of course, we don't want to generate a lot of inventory. We will still produce according to the orders. But to be very honest, currently, we have already noticed the home series will occupy a higher percentage in quarter 4. And while the total revenue is so big, so we are expecting the sales for quarter 4 of home series. And actually, a lot of buyers, a lot of consumers, they posted in their social media talking about Avalon Q. They like it because it's quiet and it can generate Bitcoins and using the same kind of energy they in the past, they buy a heater can do. So actually, we can feel the passion from the consumers asking more for the supply side. That's why when we do allocate the chips I think internally, we have some discussions and sometimes even very fierce competition between the consumer sector and the industrial sector. But of course, NG will try his best to balance different product lines and different categories, try to satisfy most of the customers and consumers.

Yes. And also, currently, the macro environment is indeed very complex and changing very fast and especially for the semiconductor sector like the DRAMs price is maybe doubled in the past few months it indicate that how the types of the global capacity for the semiconductor industry. So currently, I think we have the demand because the demand of advanced chip growth, especially for the AI-related applications and many other stuff, the foundry capacity today is very tightened and also the price is trending up significantly. I think this could impact both our manufacturing costs and mining CapEx. And -- but this is influenced the whole industry, not only us. That said, well, we cannot share the exact figures, but we already have secured a meaningful wafer allocation for next year at a favorable pricing and payment terms, thanks to our strong relationships with our key suppliers. The volume is built on a very cautious number, but this will -- I think this will definitely give us a good cost position heading into 2026. Yes, this is my two cents.

James, you didn't touch on the $90 million processing. Can you just give us a feel for that and what the implications are for future cash use?

$90 million. I think...

It's -- too much...

Yes, I think -- you mean the $72 million we fundraised from the strategic investors and also $7.8 million from ATM program. I think putting this together, it's like $80 million.

Yes. Okay. No, I thought that when you were discussing cash use in the third quarter, you mentioned $90 million. I apologize. I probably have the number wrong, but...

Yes, you mean the operational and the supply chain together, the expenses?

Right, okay.

I think that -- yes, that outflow is for some payments of the supply chain, like components, like all kinds of production and logistics to ship the components from here and there, a lot of things, including some of the expenses related to that. I think that's a major part of the supply chain expenses. And also, I think there is the R&D, G&A and also sales and marketing fees inside this. I think the run rate is still like $28 million to $29 million. Even the P&L shows it's like $40 million, but that includes a lot of noncash items like share share-related salaries, but the rest goes to like $28 million to $29 million to -- for the normal operation. And also, we have expenses related to the operation like travel, like marketing, especially for the consumer product, we start to have some marketing try in quarter 3, but not much expenses. But that is something we try to do in the transition from a pure machine company to a kind of an operational company with energy and also with -- to consumer product. We will also increase our marketing expenses in the future. I don't know if I answered your question?

Yes, yes. Just one more little nuance. I'm just wondering if those payments include prepayments for supply chain -- securing supply chain components through the December quarter and into the March quarter?

That's a wonderful question, Kevin. Usually, we only do prepayments for wafer. Most of the components, we usually get the components first, and then we pay them a little bit later in different kind of terms, for example, like 15 days, 30 days, something like that. It's not -- usually not an advanced payment.

Well, congratulations on that 50,000 unit order. Congratulations on the sharp pop in revenue and gross margin.

As there are no further questions now, I would like to turn the call back over to the company for any closing remarks.

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to reach out to us, and we look forward to speaking with you throughout the quarter. Thanks.

Thank you. That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for everyone for attending. You may now disconnect.