ARBKF - Argo Blockchain plc (ARBKF) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2023-11-14 12:14:09 ET
Argo Blockchain plc (ARBKF)
Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call
November 14, 2023 10:00 am ET
Corporate Participants
Tom Divine - VP, IR
Seif El-Bakly - Interim Chief Executive Officer
Jim MacCallum - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Presentation
Operator
[Call Starts Abruptly]
Q3 Update Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen, click Q&a scroll to the bottom type your question and press sent.
Given the large attendance in today's call, the company will not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so.
Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I now like to hand it over to Tom Divine Vice President of Investor Relations. Good afternoon.
Tom Divine
Thank you, Paul. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's presentation and remarks may contain forward-looking statements. For our full risk factors, please see our form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the year 2022. With us today for our discussion of Q3 2023 results are Seif El-Bakly, Argo's, Interim Chief Executive Officer, and Jim MacCallum, Argo's Chief Financial Officer. And now I'll turn it over to Seif.
Seif El-Bakly
Thanks, Tom. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us today to discuss our Q3 results.
It was a strong quarter for us and I'm excited to dive into the numbers. Just a quick reminder for everyone of our three key priorities that helped guide us on a daily basis. We continue to focus on financial discipline and deleveraging operational excellence, growth and strategic partnerships for the sustainable future of this company. I hope you're seeing how these priorities have been manifested in the performance of the business over the last couple of quarters.
Before we dive into the Q3 results, I want to take a few minutes to discuss the current macro environment and some recent trends that we're seeing. The network hash rate continues to increase at a fairly rapid pace. The global network started the year at roughly 270 exahash per second, and it has grown approximately 70% over the course of the year.
Over the last two years, we've seen some seasonality emerge and hash rate and network difficulty partly due to the large amount of hash rate going online in Texas. During the summer months, we saw instances where hash rate decreased as Texas miners curtailed operations in response to high power prices. This is something we experienced that Helios, which generated significant proceeds in form of power credits. I'll go into more detail on that a little bit later.
But that seasonality does have an impact on network difficulty and hash price. So it's something that we monitor closely, especially as we head into winter mines were cold weather can also impact grade conditions and power prices.
Overall, the third quarter saw hash price trend down, bottoming out at around $60 per Peda hash per day during August and September. But it's rebounded strongly in late October and so far into November, rising to over at $90 per Peda hash per day. We've historically seen those temporary spikes from ordinal mins before which drive up transaction fees. We do expect hash price to stabilize as the backlog of transactions is processed.
Hash price takes into account the price of Bitcoin, the network difficulty and transaction fees at any given time. It's a metric that we pay close attention to, every $10 increase in the dollar per Peda hash per day has the potential to generate approximately an incremental 840,000 of revenue per month, or 2.5 million per quarter based on Argo's total hash rate capacity.
We're also paying close attention to some upcoming event that we believe will impact our business for; one. if approved by the SEC, we believe that a spot Bitcoin ETF will bring large institutional cash inflow into the space and will ultimately increase demand for Bitcoin. And of course, we have the 2024 halving approaching in late April of next year, as everyone knows that halving a feature of the Bitcoin protocol whereby the block reward is reduced by 50%.
As we approach the halving, our key focus is on three things; fleet efficiency, cost structure and the strength of our balance sheet. Argo has a strong fleet efficiency of right around 30 joules per tablet per tera hash, and we've had attractive power and hosting costs at an average of 0.045 per kilowatt hour so far this year. This combination of fleet efficiency, low power costs and hosting costs makes us well positioned for the halving.
On the balance sheet front, we've said this time and again, that one of our main priorities is reducing our debt and interest payments in order to strengthen the balance sheet to be well positioned for that halving.
Turning to our third quarter results, we mined 370 Bitcoin and generated revenue of 10.4 million which is a decrease of 17% compared to our revenue from Q2. This decrease was primarily driven by economic curtailment, we experienced at Helios during August and September. However, through this curtailment, we accrued $4.4 million of power credits through power trading activities at Helios, which more than offset our decrease in revenue versus Q2.
On the next slide, I'll go into some more details about economic curtailment and how that benefits us since we've gotten a lot of questions from investors pertaining to this source of net revenue. But put simply the power credits we accrued helped us achieve an overall power and hosting cost of less than 0.04 per kilowatt hour. For the quarter our mining margin was 58% translating into an average direct cost per Bitcoin of 11,736.
We also continued to focus on cost reduction and we reduced our non-mining operating expenses by 11%. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was 3.1 million, which is an improvement from the 1.1 million of adjusted EBITDA that we generated in Q2. In July, we strengthened our balance sheet by raising 7.5 million in gross proceeds to an equity raised with primarily institutional investors in the U.K., and also reduced our galaxy debt by 5 million. And at the end of September, our cash balance was 8 million.
Given our strategic decision to mine in Texas, I'd like to give a little more color on economic curtailment there. So on the screen is a slide that came out of an ERCOT presentation during a September meeting of its large flexible load Task Force. That's the group within ERCOT that is tasked with integrating large power demand such as Bitcoin mining into the Texas grid. The slide shows the impact of elevated power prices and the use of power by Bitcoin miners on September 6. If you follow the screen, Bitcoin mining usage is in blue, and the gray line shows the Power Price throughout the day.
So you can see a very strong negative correlation between the price of power and the consumption of power from Bitcoin miners. As power prices increased, it became less profitable to mine, incentivizing miners to curtail their operations. From this chart, it demonstrates how the majority of miners were shut off during peak hours of Power Price. As power prices came down in the evening, you can see miners ramp up their operations and their consumption increasing again. So this data is important as it demonstrates how flexible Bitcoin miners are and how quickly they can reduce power consumption when demand is high. As soon as prices spike above their breakeven point miners are turning off. This is what is meant by flexible load.
When the market price of power spikes to a maximum amount of $5,000 per megawatt hour, as it did on September 6. miners who are not hedged, will simply shut down and stop mining. The miners who have locked in their power prices can make a decision, they can either use that power for their operations and continue to mine or they can sell that power on the open market and make a profit from the difference in the prevailing market price and the price which they've locked in their power.
In other words, when the price is high enough, it makes economic sense to sell that power in the open market, rather than to use it and mine Bitcoin. In essence, that's what happens at Helios and through our hosting agreement we share in those proceeds. And for this quarter those power credits amounted to 4.4 million.
That being said, let me turn it over to Jim to provide some additional comments on our financial results for the quarter. Jim?
Jim MacCallum
Thank you, Seif.
As you mentioned, we generated 10.4 million of revenue for the quarter a decrease of 17% from Q2 resulting from economic curtailment. However, the power credits that we generated from the curtailment reduced our net power cost significantly and increased our mining profit to 6.1 million.
Our mining margin percentage was 58% for Q3, an increase over the 36% mining margin we achieved in Q2. During the quarter, we recorded a one-time non-cash provision of 1.2 million related to prior year sales tax expected to be received from the Canadian tax authorities. This is the majority of the 1.5 million of non-recurring expenses that we added back to adjusted EBITDA. We generated an adjusted EBITDA of 3.1 million, which is a strong improvement from the second quarter.
For the nine-month period ended September 30, we generated 5.3 million of adjusted EBITDA. At the end of the quarter we had 8 million of cash on hand. As Seif mentioned, we've seen a significant increase in hash price in October and so far into November. With our total hash rate capacity every $10 increase in hash price results in approximately $2.5 million of incremental revenue per quarter, which dramatically improves our profitability and cash flow.
This slide shows our cash flow from the end of June to the end of September. Our cash flow from operations excluding working capital changes was 1.5 million. As Seif mentioned, we raised 7.5 million in gross proceeds from the sale of equity, and we paid down 7.8 million in principal and interest on our debt.
At the end of the quarter, we had a net power receivable of $2.8 million adding that to the 8 million closing cash balance would have given us 10.8 million at September 30, compared to 9.1 million at June 30. We are pleased that we continue to improve our operating cash flow with our focus on operations and cost reduction. As we've shown in prior quarters, we continue to scrutinize all of our non-mining operating expenses and find ways to reduce costs.
In Q3, we reduced our recurring non-mining operating expenses by 11% as compared to Q2. Since the second half of 2022, we've cut our non-mining operating expenses by more than 70%. This cost reduction is important because it improves our overall margin and cash flow generation. Again, one of our key priorities is to reduce debt, which is critically important as we approach the halving. In Q3, we reduced our debt owed to Galaxy by $5 million to $27 million, and we ended the quarter with $70 million in debt. We're also in advanced discussions to sell certain non-core assets, which is an important part of our deleveraging strategy. We anticipate announcing further details by the end of the year.
With that, I'll pass it back to Seif.
Seif El-Bakly
Thanks, Jim.
In Quebec, we've now completed the deployment of our Epic block miners numbering around 2700. This represents around 300 Peda hash of additional capacity, bringing our total hash rate capacity to 2.8 exahash per second. We're seeing really good performance from these machines. And we're excited to have added them to our fleet just in time to take advantage of the recent run-up in hash price.
So all in all, and in summary, it was a great quarter for Argo, we increased our mining margin, our adjusted EBITDA and our total hatch rate capacity all the while continuing to cut costs and reduce debt. I'm also really optimistic about the trends that we've been seeing in the market with the increases in both Bitcoin and hash price. Argo is well positioned to capitalize on these trends as we move forward into 2024.
With that, back to you, Paul, and Tom for any questions. Thanks, everybody.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
So thank you very much indeed. Jim. Thank you indeed for the presentation. [Operator Instructions].
Tom Divine
Great. Thanks, Paul. Our first question comes from Bill Papanastasiou at Stifel. Halve price has been rebounding lately with the recent appreciation in the Bitcoin spot price. Can you speak to the improvements in Q4 '23 and elaborate on how it is impacting cash flow?
Seif El-Bakly
Sure. I will take that. Thanks, Tom. Thanks, Bill. Yes, the hash price is something that obviously we're paying very close attention to. It's come down a bit from it from its most recent peak at $90. But it's still significantly higher than the Q3 average of 67. So I mentioned this during our remarks, but really, for every $10 increase in hash price based on our total hash rate capacity of 2.8 exahash, we're generating an additional $2.5 million per quarter. So we did just have a difficulty increase of around 3.5%. So that tempers a little bit with the hash rate, that it's actually smaller than the difficulty adjustment we were actually expecting a year ago -- a week ago, sorry, not a year ago.
Tom Divine
Our next question comes from Kevin Dede at HC Wainwright. And this is from Jim. Can you remind me how you reduced the debt by 5 million? Did that come from operating cash flow?
Jim MacCallum
Yes. Thanks, Kevin. In July, you'll recall, we raised around 7 million of net proceeds. And immediately 25% of that went to reduce the debt, plus, we had another three amortization payments of roughly 1.1 million each. And that came out of our operating cash flow and cash on hand. So that's the three plus, the 1.7 is 4.8, or approximately 5 million there. Thanks.
Tom Divine
Thanks, Jim. Our next question comes from Chase White at Compass Point. Seif, now that all your machines are installed and operations are going well? Do you have any visibility into future growth options? Is there a timeframe for making any decisions?
Seif El-Bakly
Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Chase. Look, we're continuing our discussions with some key strategic partners and hope to share some updates with you on our next call. Right now, we're in parallel to that. We're focused on reducing our debt and cost structure. So it's really going to allow us to be opportunistic when we're thinking about the halving. So I think we're going to see a lot of opportunities in the market as a lot of unprofitable miners come offline. And we're basically just going to be ready to take advantage of that be it from an operational perspective, financial perspective, or strategic partnership perspective.
Tom Divine
Our next question was submitted in the chat. How were the non-mining expenses reduced by 11%? And is that reduction stable going forward?
Jim MacCallum
Yes. I can take that as I mentioned earlier, we were able to reduce our recurring non-mining OpEx by around 11% from the prior quarter. This was primarily driven by lower insurance costs or professional fees and lower salaries as a result of reduced headcount. And so yes, we believe this is going to be an ongoing reduction going forward. Thank you.
Tom Divine
Thanks. Our next question for Seif, from Kevin Dede, again from HC Wainwright. Can you speak a little bit about how the Epic block mining machines are performing in Quebec?
Seif El-Bakly
Hey. Yes. Thanks, Kevin. Our performance is just better than expected. We're seeing really good results, especially when we overclock them to about 130 tera hash per unit. Currently, they're averaging about 114 tera hash through the fleet. So they're representing about 11% of our overall hash rate capacity right now. Efficiency is on par with the S19s, J pros. They're capable of achieving good efficiency when we down clock them. So down clocking them, brings them to about 27 joules per tera hash. Up time is outstanding thanks to Quebec's reliable power. We're entering our curtailment season in Quebec, so minimal downtime. Still, despite that is to be expected.
From our wise, it's stable, it's performing as expected, Epic has been providing us with all the right updates, and then the installation process was amazing. Thanks to our techs. I got kudos to our operations team here. I think the rigs were deployed within 48 hours once they got to the data centers. So all in all, Kevin, I would say that they're performing better than expected.
Tom Divine
Thanks, Seif. Our next question for Jim. This comes from Jason F in the chat. Can you comment on Argo's capital structure and how you plan to continue addressing debt?
Jim MacCallum
Yes. Thanks, Jason. Yes, we continue to focus on paying down our debt. We've made significant progress in paying down our galaxy debt, especially. And we are continuing to look for other ways to strengthen the balance sheet. Some of the avenues we're exploring include non-core asset sales and potential refinancing of our existing debt. We have seen with the improvement in Bitcoin mining economics over the past month, more appetite for debt and equity financing from the capital markets. So we're having lots of conversations on that front as well. Thank you.
Tom Divine
Another question that we've received several times in the chat. How do you plan, or do you plan on expanding the mining capabilities in Canada? Do we plan on renewing our contract with Galaxy and continue to mine Helios once the two-year contract expires?
Seif El-Bakly
Yes. I'll take that. So good question. I think having our history or Argo's history beginning in Canada, I mean, we know it, we understand it. We love the reliability of the power here. But we're also nimble, we're flexible, and most importantly, we're mobile. So which really makes us geographically agnostic. When we're thinking about growth and opportunity, we're really looking at anywhere from hydropower, or in Quebec, or Texas or the deserts of Oman. So we're really, open and having these discussions accordingly and remain opportunistic, and again, geographically agnostic.
Tom Divine
Thanks, Seif. Another question that we received several times, including from [Satvir, Shugar] [ph] and Satish. P. When should we expect to hear more about the discussions mentioned on asset sales?
Seif El-Bakly
Yes, Thanks, Satvir, Shugar, and everybody else. I mean, I appreciate everybody's patience on this. As Jim mentioned, we're still in advanced discussions with partners. We're genuinely making good progress here. And we anticipate sharing something hopefully by the end of the year.
Tom Divine
Thanks. Our next question comes from Bill Papanastasiou, what are your network hash rate forecasts post halving and how well ARBK remain competitive?
Seif El-Bakly
Yes. Good question, Bill. Thanks. I mean, we're expecting to see a lot of hash rate come offline as miners with older generation machines and an older fleet. As mining gets more expensive and power contracts or good power contracts, it's just more difficult to find and to mine profitably. So as we've seen, in past halving cycles, I think the difficulty adjustment will fluctuate back and forth as the network flushes out the miners that are just right on margin or below. And I'm going to say this again, I mean, really, our focus is what we can control. And it's why in my initial comments, I say that we're so focused on efficiency and costs. So relative to the entire network, we have an efficient fleet. We're competitive from a power and hosting cost perspective year-to-date. Our power hosting has been all in at around $0.045 per kilowatt hour. So we're looking at, again, efficiency and operations. And we're also looking at potential hedging opportunities using derivatives, which I think everyone in this space should be looking into. And so I think those factors, the ones, at least, that are in our control, should enable us to remain competitive and continue to mine profitably after the halving. So, thanks for the question, Bill. It's a good one. And we're conscious of all of that.
Tom Divine
Thanks. And then this will be our last question. From Kevin Dede HC Wainwright. Seif, can you clarify when you reach 2.8 exahash, did that come from the block miner machines?
Seif El-Bakly
Yes. Thanks, Kevin. In our September monthly operational update, we announced that we had completed the deployment of our Epic blockchain machines. So and they represent around 300 Peda hash rate capacity. So that essentially enabled us to grow from 2.5 to 2.8 exahash. So the block miners have been online and hashing since the end of September.
Tom Divine
Great. Thank you, Seif. Paul?
Fantastic. Thank you very much indeed for addressing these questions. And of course, the company review all questions submitted and publish responses on the investor meet company platform for redirecting investors provide you with their feedback and is particularly important to the company. Seif, if I could just ask you just for a few closing comments, please.
Seif El-Bakly
Yes. Thank you, Paul. I just want to thank everyone around the world for tuning in to our earnings call today. Again, it was a great quarter for Argo with improvements in mining margin adjusted EBITDA and hash rates. So we really continue to focus on deleveraging and reducing costs. And looking forward to our next call to give everybody some more updates. So thank you, everybody, be well. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Jim. Thanks, team.
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Argo Blockchain plc (ARBKF) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript