Hut 8 Mining Corp. (HUT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Hut 8 Corp.'s Analyst and Investor Call. You can find Hut 8's continuous disclosure documents on the company's website at www.hut8.io under the company's SEDAR+ profile at www.sedarplus.ca and under the company's EDGAR profile at www.sec.gov. Any comments made during this call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities legislation regarding the future performance of Hut 8 and its subsidiaries. The statements made reflect current expectations and, as such, are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the factors discussed in Hut 8's registration statement on Form S-4 dated November 7, 2023, available under Hut 8's EDGAR profile at www.sec.gov. In addition to the Risk Factors section of Hut 8 Mining Corp.'s Annual in addition to the risk factors section of Hut 8 Mining Corp.'s Annual Information Form dated March 9, 2023, and Hut 8 Mining Corp's other continuous disclosure documents, Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2022, and the company's other continuous disclosure documents. Except as required by applicable law, Hut 8 undertakes no obligation to publicly update or review any forward-looking statements. I would now like to turn the call over to Hut 8 CEO, Jaime Leverton. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Audra. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to mark the most significant milestone we've had to this point in Hut 8's history. I want to begin by acknowledging the countless hours of work that has been invested across our team from coast to coast that got us to the finish line today. Architecting, announcing and then closing the largest M&A transaction in our industry's history is a tremendous feat, and I am so honored to lead such a remarkable team. I'm also grateful to the Board of Directors for their guidance throughout the process. I am so proud to share that Hut 8 now has a unified team of more than 200 people who are focused on maximizing value at the intersection of energy and infrastructure. We are unrivaled amongst our peers as together, we proudly operate a market-leading enterprise focused on maximizing value at the intersection of energy and infrastructure across traditional and next-gen data center value chains from design to construction to operations and energy management. We are experts in scaling for growth and leaders within the institutional Bitcoin mining sector. And in addition to the approximately 850 megawatts of capacity under management across 11 sites throughout North America, 5 traditional cloud colocation and emerging technology sites and 6 digital asset mining sites, we have a near term path to grow to more than 1 gigawatt of capacity under management. We are also taking a more disciplined approach to portfolio management with diversified revenue streams and uncorrelated fiat-based business unit. In addition to our HPC business, our hosting business totals 250 megawatts of capacity, bringing in significant monthly recurring fiat revenues as does our managed services business, which is a robust 680 megawatts and growing. Both sides of our business also have a strong track record of forging blue-chip growth partnerships to scale both rapidly and cost effectively as we've done with our joint venture at King Mountain, Texas and as we're planning to do with our Stalking Horse Bid for 4 energy sites in Ontario. With this merger now complete, Hut 8 has increased its fiat-based revenue from approximately 19% for 12 months ended June 2023 to approximately 30%. We hold pro forma total assets of $713 million, a substantial asset base, $290 million of which is in Bitcoin and cash. Hut 8 Corp.'s pro forma net assets of $497 million with the new company enjoying a positive network after deducting liabilities from assets. Again, thanks for being here with us today. We are grateful for your continued loyalty and know that the best is still yet to come at Hut 8. I would like to invite Hut 8's President, Asher Genoot to speak to our plan to drive operational excellence within the business. Over to you, Asher.

Thanks, Jaime, and hello, everyone. It's truly a landmark day for us in our business, and we're so glad that you have all made time to join us today. One of the major benefits of this union is the increased operational rigor that Hut 8 will have. And to that end, we have added 3 new distinct teams that are dedicated to driving efficiencies and excellence at Hut 8 across our company in the 11 North American sites. Our managed services team has a laser focus on driving project revenue and value, and end-to-end efficiencies. This team sources, structures and executes development projects and property management agreements with institutional clients, builds and manages client relationships and optimizes site-level P&L's performance by executing initiatives to maximize revenue and reduce operating costs. Our corporate development team has a second to none emphasis on driving value. Their task with managing portfolio performance by tracking and optimizing the return of current assets and investments, identifying and executing initiatives to drive investment ROI and equity value and continue to pursue new growth opportunities. The corporate development team will also manage and prioritize the pipeline of investment opportunities, underwrite new greenfield projects, and structure and execute strategic M&A and joint ventures. Our seasoned energy team will continue to work with utilities and energy generators to expand flexible load development partnerships, both front of the meter and behind the meter, which has a large total addressable market with strong upside. In addition to these 3 new teams across the company, we are committed to increasing our operational efficiency and cost management as we recognize there's work to be done across recent underperformance at our Canadian digital asset data centers. To that end, we are implementing our managed service business, which includes our proprietary purpose-built software at our [ go to built ] sites to manage and optimize our performance on a minor-by-minor level, enhance our energy management and implement a go-forward plan to improve our operational efficiency and minimize our operating costs. We are leveraging our new energy hedging team to secure optimal power costs and reduce our exposure to energy price volatility so that we can maximize the value generated from each electron we consume. We're heavily investing into building a competitive moat around our proprietary technology. We are hiring key senior staff while focusing on building out our low volatility, high-margin managed service business, which helps us to continue setting us apart from our competitors meanwhile improving our profitability. We are looking to diversify our data center footprint into new low-cost power markets, allowing us to further increase profitability. This action includes pursuing our previously announced Stalking Horse Bid for 4 energy assets in Ontario, totaling 310 megawatts. Now I will ask my business partner and Hut 8's new Chief Strategy Officer, Mike Ho to speak on opportunities in AI.

Thanks Asher, and hello, everyone. I'm thrilled to be here with all of you on what is the most significant day in our company's journey so far and the start of what I'm sure will be -- will prove to be a transformational union. As you know, Hut 8 has proven to be ahead of its time since it announced the acquisition of 5 data centers 2 years ago. It set a precedent that other miners have since tried to emulate but only Hut 8 has established operations with traditional cloud and colocation enterprise clients. Notably, Hut 8 was among the first to repurpose its A40s for AI and machine learning applications in Q3 of 2022 when Ethereum moved to proof-of-stake. My primary focus as Chief Strategy Officer is identifying opportunities for Hut 8 to leverage differentiated capabilities to bridge clear supply-demand gaps in nascent markets, which includes the unmet demand for high-density data center infrastructure to power next-gen workloads like AI. With our combined infrastructure and diverse team of experts, Hut 8 has the ability to deliver near and midterm demand for high-density data center infrastructure today. We don't need to build out our infrastructure. Our existing services power next-gen workloads like AI, while solving for constrained data center supply and energy bottlenecks that incumbent data center operators or miners can address swiftly. We are actively seeking additional opportunity to invest in the immense growth potential of AI and hope to have more share in the coming months on this front as we continue to be committed to capitalizing on the promise of this transformational computing architecture. Jaime started the call by saying that Hut 8 is truly distinct within the industry, both with respect to this merger of equals and our shared vision for maximizing value at the intersection of infrastructure and energy. The entire executive team and I couldn't agree more. We are on the precipice of the next chapter in Hut 8's history, and I could not be more excited. Our team has the ability to scale rapidly. In fact, we stood up and energized 1 exahash of computing power in just 43 days. We have a proven track record of not only building and operating, but importantly, optimizing site infrastructure, which is crucial as we head into the halving. With our purpose-built software that manages both machines and energy in real time, machine by machine and an in-house energy hedging team, we have the differentiated capabilities to bridge the supply demand gap in nascent markets. We are experts in the stressed asset turnaround, having energized Compute North's bankruptcy assets, and we expect to energize both Celsius and Validus' assets in the near term. We're also expanding the breadth and revenue profile of our GPU offerings and cloud architecture. We have ordered approximately 1,000 H100 GPUs for delivery in Spring of 2024. These machines have a different and more dynamic revenue profile from our current suite of CPU and GPU products in our cloud and colocation data centers. This is just the beginning for us, and we're so grateful to have the support of our team, our Board, our investors and the broader community. With that, I will ask our operator to open the line to analyst questions.

Thank you, Jaime, Asher and Mike. We will now move to the Q&A portion of the call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, we have no questions. That will conclude the call for today. A transcript of this call will be available on the Hut 8 website in the Investors section. Thank you for joining us at the Hut 8's Analyst and Investor Call. You may now disconnect.