BTBT - NASDAQ

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Bit Digital Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Cameron Schnier, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Cameron.

Thank you, Mariana. Good morning and welcome to the Bit Digital fiscal year 2023 earnings call. Joining us on the call today are Sam Tabar, Chief Executive Officer; and Erke Huang, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind all participants that some of the statements we will be making today are forward-looking. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those projected in these statements. I therefore refer you to our latest 20-F filing and our other SEC filings. Our comments today may also include non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details and reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our 20-F filing, which is on our website. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call up for questions. [Operator Instructions] With that, I will turn the call over to Sam.

Thank you, Cam. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on the call today. In my prepared remarks, I'll discuss three things, our fourth quarter and full year results, discuss a number of achievements, and three, our thoughts on the outlook of 2024 and our future ambitions. Cam and Erke will then provide more detail on our financial results. And then we'll open the line for your questions. 2023 was quite a year. It was a rebound year for our industry and a foundational year for Bit Digital. We began last year with bitcoin prices below 17,000 and ended above 43,000 with the majority of that gain occurring in the final months of the year. The price rally has continued into 2024 with the price of bitcoin reaching new all-time highs. The bitcoin price rally was a welcome reprieve for the mining industry, especially given the upcoming halving when mining rewards will be cut in half. However, we spent the last year focused on building a company that could withstand both halving events and cyclical gyrations in the price of bitcoin. More on that later in this call. As of December 31, 2023, our bitcoin mining fleet was approximately 93% carbon-free, which is a material improvement from our prior year levels, but a small dip below our prior 99% run rate. The decrease is because of our geographical diversification into new regions, namely Texas and Kentucky, where the power grids there use more carbon-based energy sources. While we continue to strive to be entirely carbon-free, we are willing to make certain compromises as we search for the best economics and the benefits of geographical diversification. As of December 31, we had approximately 101 megawatts contracted with six hosting partners. We have since added six megawatts, bringing the total to 107 megawatts. We are using approximately 80 megawatts as of that date, providing roughly 27 megawatts to support our growth initiatives. We are targeting an active hash rate of six exahash by the end of the year, roughly double where we are today. This means we'll have to secure approximately 37 incremental megawatts if we fill the capacity with new generation miners, such as the S-21. We are actively engaged in discussions with several hosting partners for new sites, and we have a strong pipeline of new potential locations. At this time, we did not foresee hosting capacity as a bottleneck for achieving our six exahash target in 2024. While we continue to believe in our infrastructure light approach, which is conducive to our own goals, we would consider owning a portion of our infrastructure at the right price and returns profile. Our balance sheet remains a core strength with approximately $140 million worth of cash and digital assets at the end of February and zero debt. We believe, we continue to believe, a strong balance sheet and liquidity position is one of the most important features to withstand halving events. In October, we proudly announced a new business line, Bit Digital AI. Importantly, we didn't just announce an aspiration to start a business in AI because we noticed it was trending. We had carefully considered this business long before the announcement, and it was critical to us that we not only - we were not only confident in our ability to execute on this strategy, but to secure an anchor customer prior to any announcement. Our core competencies include sourcing specialized computer systems, data center selection, and network design. Our GPU business fits seamlessly within these strengths, allowing us to go from signing a customer contract to installing and deploying an incredibly complex network of more than 2000 GPUs in a matter of months. This contract is now generating over $50 million of annualized revenue, and our sights are set on expanding this business line, both through expanding the scope of our existing customer contract and by onboarding new customers. We're actively engaged in conversations with new prospects, and we hope to be able to announce growth initiatives soon. We are targeting a minimum of $100 million in annualized run rate revenue from this business by year-end, and we are confident in reaching that goal. While we have purposely remained debt-free to date, we would consider leverage as a means to accelerate the growth of our Bit Digital AI business, as we believe predictable cash flows from that segment are much more conducive to debt relative to bitcoin mining. We understand that we are unlikely to receive full credit for this business until we start reporting the financials. Given that this business started earning revenue at the end of January of 2024, our first quarter 2024 results will be the first time that this business shows up in our financial statements. While we can't offer guidance on the specifics of the margin profile, we will state that even at current bitcoin prices, our Bit Digital AI business earns substantially higher margins than our mining business, even on a pre- halving basis. I'll now hand over the line to Erke who will discuss our financial results.

Thank you, Sam. I will now discuss certain financial results for fiscal year 2023 and the fourth quarter of 2023. The total revenue for 2023 was $44.9 million, a 39% increase compared to the prior year. The revenue increase was primarily driven by increase of deployed mining fleet and a modestly higher average bitcoin price. Our bitcoin production increased 21% year-over-year to 1,507 with an increase in our active cashflow partial offset by increase of network difficulty. Our ETH staking strategy generated approximately $700,000 in 2023 in its full year of operations. Cost of revenue was $29.6 million for 2023, an increase of approximately $9 million from 2022. The increase was primarily driven by increase our active mining fleet. Our electricity price was approximately $0.05 cents kilowatt hour for 2023. Our production cost per bitcoin defined as electricity and other hosting fees divided by bitcoin production amounted to approximately $15,700 for 2023. Profit sharing fees amounted to around 3,900 per bitcoin for 2023. Depreciation amortization expense was $14.4 million in 2023 compared to $26.8 million in 2022 with a decrease due to - primarily due to lower carrying values for miners. But we expect [DNA] increase in this year due to our recent GPU procurement and new miner purchases. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.4 million in 2023 compared to a loss of $26.9 million in 2022. The improvement was primarily driven by better cash margins and reduced digital assets impairment charges. As a note, we have not yet adopted new FASB fair value accounting rules but plan to implement the change for our first quarter earnings report this year. GAAP earnings per share for 2023 was a loss of $0.16 compared to a loss of $1.34 in 2022. That's a great improvement. Adjusted earnings per share was approximately $0.12 compared to a loss of $0.34 in 2022. Adjusted earnings per share exclude approximately $16 of DNA, $10 of, sorry - $0.16 cents of DNA, $0.10 of share-based compensation and $0.02 from a loss or write-off of a deposit. Our average fleet efficiency for active fleet was 28.8 joule per terahash as of December 31, 2023. Our goal is to improve the metric materially as we progress through this year. CapEx for 2023 was approximately $66.7 million. Approximately $55 million of that was related to our digital AI business. The remaining spent for the initial contract was largely offset by the proceeds we received from the sale-back lease transaction we executed for 768 GPUs. We raised approximately $66 million of net proceeds from the insurance of 21.5 million ordinary shares in 2023. Approximately 14.7 million shares were sold in connection with our ATM offering, the majority of which were issued during the first quarter. The proceeds were used to fund our growth initiatives for general corporate purposes and to fortify a balance sheet ahead of the halving. And we're cautious of dilution and owning [indiscernible] equity when we have identified opportunity to deploy capital in higher return areas, such as our digital AI business. I will now turn the call back to Sam for closing remarks.

Thanks, Erke. We have a great team in place and I'm proud of the foundation we built in 2023. 2023 was an interesting year for the mining sector, to say the least. It seemed as if up until the third quarter, the industry's overarching focus was on improving resilience ahead of the halving. That is to say, mining companies were seemingly focused on deleveraging, improving the balance sheet and lowering costs so that they would be in a more stable position when mining rewards were cut in half in 2024. As many of you probably noticed, that sentiment changed dramatically in October as bitcoin charged past 30,000 and then above 40,000 by year-end as optimism around a bitcoin ETF reached fever pitch. The improvement in bitcoin price changed the narrative from resilience to growth and ambitious growth announcements were generally rewarded by the market. Now in 2024, bitcoin is up around 50% year-to-date and mining stocks are generally in the red for the year. It's as if market participants temporarily forgot about the halving in late 2023 and then recently remembered. We never forgot. We are of course very pleased with the improvement in digital asset prices. It has had a material impact on the value of our liquidity position and we are less likely to have to make difficult decisions following the halving compared to where we would have been if bitcoin was near October 2023 levels. That said, we think improved bitcoin prices are masking the fragility of certain business models. We think current bitcoin prices are causing investors to overlook the importance of having non-correlated revenue streams that could produce enough cash flow to cover fixed expenses. Even if bitcoin goes parabolic, we think there is significant value in having cash flow streams that serve as a downside hedge. Look, we are a fundamental long-term believer in both Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, if we could accurately predict and consistently - if we could accurately predict, sorry, apologies. If we could accurately and consistently predict the price of bitcoin, we'd be trading call options and not buying ASICs. We are trying to build a company that is less driven by speculation and more driven by strong underlying fundamentals. The historical trend for bitcoin prices has been higher and we're in the camp of course, that bitcoin will continue to achieve new all-time highs as time progresses. However, if you want to enjoy the good times, you have to survive the hard times and that's the mentality we rely to plan our business. We are differentiated in the realm of bitcoin miners. Our operational and treasury management strategies are unique. We own over 15,000 ETH at the end of February and over 12,000 of that is actively staked. As far as I can tell, we own one of the largest ETH stacks of any publicly listed company in the United States. It's our view that a portfolio with both ETH and Bitcoin will outperform a bitcoin-only portfolio over the medium term, especially when you layer in the rewards from staked ETH. We also see the potential SEC approval of a spot ETH ETF as a major medium term catalyst for the price of ETH. But we fundamentally believe that ETH's strong monetary policy and strong ecosystem provides a compelling path forward, regardless of the SEC's decision. Bit Digital remains categorized as a bitcoin miner, but frankly, we are much more than that. We have a growing HPC business that is already on track to produce more revenue in 2024 than our mining business generated in 2023. These are complementary business lines that we believe strengthen our financial profile and will provide an incredible optionality in terms of capital allocation. And with that, I'd like to open the line for some questions.

Thank you, Sam. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Mike Grondahl, Northland Securities. Please go ahead, Mike.

Thank you. The first question, Sam, is really about capital allocation. Can you kind of talk about how you're investing between the HPC opportunities and the bitcoin mining opportunities? Like, how do you think about payback, margins, and then really funding both of those growths? But first, talk about the returns and margins and payback, bitcoin versus HPC.

Sure, Mike. Thanks very much for your question. Look, it depends on - the way we think about capital allocation between GPUs and miners depends on the market prices for the equipment when we execute the respective orders. So to reach our $100 million revenue target for Bit Digital AI, we'd probably need to invest around $60 million at the current prices. And to double our fleet size, to add three exahash, that cost would be around $45 million at the current pricing. It depends on the model we select. So capital allocation decisions are going to be based on a returns basis model. We don't want to just grow both businesses, but we're not going to just grow for the sakes of growth if the returns don't justify the expenditure. Cam and Erke, do you want to add a little bit to that?

Yes, if I may add, the return for bitcoin mining and return for HPC hosting or computing power hosting, they're different, but it really depends on the market conditions and for bitcoin price and for the contract we sign with the customer and especially for the HPC equipment we procure. So those are generally good businesses where we're monitoring them closely, especially for bitcoin, there's a [half a million] ahead of us. So we want to see where the market stands and to make decisions.

And yes, Mike, I mean, at current market pricing, it would be about $60 million or so to double the run rate revenue for Bit Digital AI to $100 million. And then to add three exahash is about $45 million, depending on the model. So, I mean, that's all based on what we could see now, but obviously that could change.

Great. And then kind of following up on that, you mentioned your eagerness, or desire, to kind of layer some debt into the business, potentially on the HPC side, but you also have, if I read it right, like $140 million of liquidity with $34 million of that being cash. How would you see funding, some of this growth in 2024?

Well, just before I - I'll let Erke respond to that a little bit, but I just want to take a step back and mention that philosophically, the company never took on leverage in the past to fund it - sort of a Bitcoin fleet. And the reason for that, is that you can't predict cash flows. So, if you can't predict cash flows, because you don't know where the Bitcoin price is going to be, taking on leverage to buy Bitcoin mining equipment is stupid, frankly. So, we never took on leverage philosophically for that reason. However, on the HPC business side, that's very different. There's certainty of revenue. We have a contract. We know exactly how much we're going to make. So taking on leverage when you can predict cash flow that, makes a lot of sense. But on that front, to that point, I'll just leave it to Erke, to respond in a more detailed manner.

Yes, thanks, Sam. And just like you said, for the AI business, we can model it out, and the contract is, for three years. And the reason we're thinking, about taking on debt on that business, to - further improve the profit margins, and which the model allows. So, the future growth can be funded, by existing cash on balance sheet and the credits, or debt we're taking on and the prepayment, or deposits from the customers. So, that would be sufficient for our growth. And again, we're cautious about dilution. So, we want to input the capital to work as much as we can. But, you know, and the condition of the business, the underlying business, or model allows us to do so.

Got it. And then maybe lastly, I would just ask, the 2,000 GPUs you're renting to this one customer. Can you talk about, the incremental opportunity with that customer, and how that plays out? And then you mentioned, you were talking to other new prospects too, like how deep is the pipeline?

Sure, I'll take that. Just as first brush. Just on that front, with respect to diversifying the customer base for HPC business, we're engaged with a number of clients, of prospective clients. I could think right now, I believe five. Although there are many, many more knocking on our doors. We've shortlisted a very small number that, we're actively working on. There are various stages, in terms of how advanced each discussion is. But there are several clients, beyond our anchor client, where the talks are pretty advanced. And the types of customers we're talking to, are quite diverse. They're both big and small, startups and later stage tech companies. And some of these prospective clients, are not yet renting GPUs, and others are currently working with other providers, and they wish to diversify. So, we've had customers approach us that, are working with another HPC provider, but again, they're trying to diversify their vendors. So it's been very promising and that is simply outside the anchor client that we have. With respect to our anchor client, there is insatiable appetite, to continue growing the business. And that's why we're pretty confident that, we'll get to a $100 million run rate by the end of the year.

Maybe one more, could it be larger than a $100 million? I mean, I understand it's capital heavy, but?

It can be, but we're targeting end of, we're targeting $100 million by the end of the year.

And Mike, if you just recall, when we initially announced the business, we did put out a binding term sheet with that customer, which provided up to 4,096 GPUs. So, we've executed about half of that, but that sort of indicates, their sort of immediate desire, for that quantum. And it could theoretically stretch above that, but it's pretty, the contract is more plug and play, to scale up to that number.

And look, I'm sure plenty of people, are thinking about the AI unit economics. Gross margins are substantially higher than, as I mentioned, than our core mining business, even at current prices. The overhead is very limited. Our Q1 financials, will provide detail on the achieved margin profile. So, we do target a sub two year payback period, however.

Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Mike. Shall we go to the next question? Next we have Kevin Dede from H.C. Wainwright. Kevin, please go ahead.

Can you guys hear me okay?

Yes. Hi, Kevin.

Hi.

Yes, we hear you. Feel free to ask your question.

Okay. Yes, I was hoping you could dive in a little bit on the Ethereum Flywheel, please, Sam. Just maybe talk about what you allocated for the year, what you expect to allocate next year, what sort of returns you see, maybe a little bit on your decision between, native staking and liquid staking, which tokens you prefer to use. And ultimately the contribution and piggybacking off Mike's line of thinking, the capital allocation process there?

Sure, let me just discuss conceptually and philosophically. We'll get into the numbers in a moment. Bit Digital invented a business model, where we call it the Bit Digital Flywheel, where we take the rewards from Bitcoin, we put a material portion of that into Ethereum, then we stake a lot of that Ethereum, then we take the staking rewards and we pour that back into our operations. That is a business model, as far as I know, no one has ever done, and we've invented that. Also, one thing, another thing that's unique, as I mentioned in our call, is that we have probably the largest, if not one of the largest ETH stacks in any public company in the U.S. There is a lot of value in that. I've been personally in the Ethereum space for many years, and there's functionality that Bitcoin doesn't have. Bitcoin is digital gold, Ethereum has smart contracts, you could basically rewrite the entire financial system with Ethereum. There are two very different things, both equally of value. In terms of how we allocate, in terms of how we allocate our Bitcoin to Ethereum, I'm going to leave that for Erke.

Yes, we continue to convert Bitcoin to Ethereum, and Ethereum's generating about 4% of revenues. And now, majority of our staking, I would say 95% plus, is through native staking. Because the - but the waiting time to get into native staking is one day, and exiting out is one day as well. So it's very liquid. The only reason we're trying liquid staking, sorry, we're using native staking now. The only reason, we're doing - sorry liquid staking was, because there was a line of getting into, there was a time it took about two months, but now it's very liquid. So I anticipate going forward, we'll still use native staking as a primary source for staking.

Yes, and Kevin, I mean, you just wouldn't expect it to grow as a proportion of revenue, just with the advent of the Bit Digital AI revenue stream. And just in terms of forecasting, I mean, it's a mid-single-digit yield, but that's in ETH terms. So I mean, the revenue contribution is very contingent on the ETH price at the end of the period.

I should remind everybody on the call that there's no halving event in Ethereum or in AI.

Yes, Sam. In fact, Ethereum's deflationary at this point. Can you just sort of ballpark where the numbers fell out for the year, because I didn't get a chance to see them? Understand less emphasis on it going forward, given all the other options you have. Makes perfect sense. Next sort of line of questioning, Sam, if you indulge me, would just be on the financing of the GPUs that you have thus far and the contribution, or the investment you need to make going forward, to hit the numbers that you want. I think some of it you're sharing and some of it you're not. Maybe you could, just sort of help us understand, how that's working out?

Yes, we think about that pretty deeply. I'm going to have Erke, our Chief Financial Officer, talk about the financial weights on that.

Yes, so the current contract had been all paid out. We paid $55 million for the GPUs and about 20% as from the [Seldes-Bach] agreement that we had with the third-party. And going forward, like I stated on this call earlier, we're going to do some lending against those equipments. That's one option. And two, we're likely to use the same sort of Seldes-Bach agreement with potential partners. And three, use our cash on balance to fund the growth. So to reach $100 million revenue target, we would need to invest around $60 million, or so in current prices. And we have enough sufficient options in this moment.

Erke, if I may, I've got to congratulate you on your ability, to move right up the Super Micro demand chain. And I was wondering if you might be able to speak to that. How is it that you were able to position Bit Digital and Sam for that matter, against all the other competitors, you have demanding these machines? I think that is an understated, or an underappreciated advantage that Bit Digital brings to the AI space. Maybe you could elaborate on that?

Yes, I mean, our experience for procuring, those specialized equipments, came all the way back to, when we were in the Ethereum, PoW business. And we built those relationships, with NVIDIA and Super Micro, in the semiconductor industry partners. And it comes when we were trying, to procure those H100 servers. So NVIDIA and Super Micro give us quite a lot of support. And that's how we could procure those equipments, in such a short period of time, and also install them in Iceland, with our expertise in international logistics. And frankly, I was at NTTC yesterday. I'm going to have meetings with Super Micro right after this call. So, it'd be good to, and keep the relationship and to, for our future growth.

Wonderful gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Kevin.

But Kevin, thank you for highlighting. That is one of our secret sauces, in terms of our access, to get these machines from legacy relationships that, we've had going back years.

Next we have, next speaker, we have Joshua

Hi, can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Hi, guys, it's filling up for Joe. So first off, I want to congratulate you guys in the year. Obviously you guys, obviously talked about the AI how it's kind of transforming a little bit of the business, and how it's adding a good revenue stream, to you guys in 2024 and forward. I just wanted you guys to say, kind of answer something with, just in terms of the mining business. Have you guys already kind of had talks, with like just companies in regards to their miners? And are they kind of, like ready to like kind of sell those, or are they kind of holding off until the halving event and then seeing what's going on from there?

There's been, I'm happy to take that call, that question. There's been a lot of talk. We do get approached often about buying machines. But I think a lot of people are waiting to see what happens, after the halving. Historically, as you know, Bitcoin goes up quite a bit after the halving. One of the reasons why Bitcoin has gone up, a lot now and this is just my opinion, is that the Bitcoin ETFs have caused massive inflows into Bitcoin. So it's quite possible that the Bitcoin halving event, that has not been the catalyst, for the spike in the price of Bitcoin going up. So, there could be another catalyst after the halving event once that happens. And of course, if that's not overnight. It historically takes a while, could take a few months, even up to a year. But until people figure out where Bitcoin's going to be, where it ends up stabilizing. Then people are going to start taking a view, as to whether they'll sell their equipment, or not. So, I think there's a lot of holding going on right now, and people are just waiting to see.

Just to specify, there's no bottleneck from a OEM procurement perspective. Like we have all the access to miners we want, or need right now. It's more just a, product of us timing the growth.

Okay. Thanks guys. And then this is obviously, I'm kind of looking at the productions you guys release monthly. And over the past few months, over the past few months, we've kind of noticed the increase in network difficulty. You guys kind of expect this to continue just going forward, even with the halving?

Cam, do you want to take that?

Yes, I mean, there's plenty of miners coming online. Like if you look around at the public miner landscape, there's been pretty massive growth announcements and a lot of that has not yet been deployed. And obviously there's a lot of growth in the non-public realm that, is harder to track. But historically you do see a pretty meaningful portion, of the network hash rate drop off, following the halving events. So, it might not be, as dramatic of a decrease post halving this go around, but we would still expect some meaningful number to fall off, post halving and commensurately reduce difficulty.

Yes, to Cam's point, I think it'll be much less than it was in the past only, because the industrialization of Bitcoin is here unlike the other halvings in the past. And with the industrialization of Bitcoin comes the ability to absorb shocks. And so I think it'll be less of an impact than in the past.

Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Josh. Okay. For the next speaker, we have Edward Engel from Singular Research. Please go ahead, Edward.

Hi, thanks for taking that question. Can I confirm you can hear me?

Yes. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Yes, I just wanted to talk about the high level, the cost structure on the AI business. Specifically, would it be fair to assume that the gross costs, specifically the energy costs are decently lower for AI than Bitcoin mining?

Much more, but I'm unsure what I could say in terms of MMPI, but I'd like to, I know what the numbers are, but I'm unsure, if we're allowed to disclose that. Cam and Erke.

The electricity costs on a per revenue basis are dramatically less.

Great, just wanted to confirm, yes. And I guess from a footprint perspective, for the same level of square foot, would AI also be more profitable?

Yes, if you look at our, like we're running less than around two megawatts for that $50 million run rate, so on a per revenue basis compared to, we were using around 80 megawatts on the mining side, which generated $44 million of revenue in 2023. Obviously, Bitcoin prices are much higher, but even with that increase, I mean, it's from a footprint perspective, we're able to generate a lot more revenue on the AI side.

Perfect, thank you. And then one more on the ETH, one of the questions we're asked, so I'm just going to fill this in. Would you consider restaking ETH on like emerging protocols like Agile, or is it a bit too early to tell?

And that's a very good question, and maybe I can add. So, we now are having pretty much maturity data staking, but we are in more turn those restaking, or better, we call it enhanced strategies in one of our self-custody, the fund, Bit Digital net. So that's like experimental and R&D fund within the house that we're doing those higher returns in the ETH ecosystem. But we will ask when it, becomes a material, or a better return, so just fight. Thanks for your question.

Great, thanks for the color, thank you.

Thank you so much, Edward. And the next speaker we have is Alex Schmidt from CoinShares. Please go ahead, Alex.

Hi, good afternoon, good morning for you guys. Yes, I think given that most of my questions have already been answered, I'll just leave you, with like a more of a philosophical one. From a perspective of miners, how do you see the investment case for miners in relation, to now the possibility of investing in Bitcoin ETFs directly in the U.S.? We know that these businesses were peers to this type of investment before, but now investors have other options. So how do you see in terms of share price performance going forward?

Yes, I'm happy to answer that question. Feel free to express any opinions, Cam and Erke. But on that note, Alex, I agree with you that right now there's a lot more on the menu for investors to express their Bitcoin aspirations. So now they can express that. In the past it was through the Bitcoin mining sector, or the underlying commodity itself. Now there's a lot of Bitcoin miners in the sector and there is an ETF, a Bitcoin ETF. And there is the underlying commodity. And there are other ways to express Bitcoin aspirations. So there's a lot on the menu. All the more reason why we felt, it was very necessary to differentiate ourselves from the sector, which is one of the reasons why we have the largest ETH stack in the country, which is another reason why we built a vertical using our skillset that's throwing off very material revenue that's completely uncorrelated to the price of Bitcoin. And what we didn't want to do running this business philosophically is run it on hope, hope that Bitcoin goes up. That's not a good way to run a business. And so that's why we have done this tripartite approach of ETH staking and a very solid AI vertical and increase our Bitcoin mine fleet, doubling it to the size of the end of the year. We've differentiated ourselves like that. And so that, and we hope the capital markets, we know the capital markets, time is our friend. They will recognize that we built an all-weather business.

Yes, you mentioned growth in hash rate and you made some smaller acquisitions in the beginning of the year whilst your peers, have made massive ones. I just wondering, at current prices, despite the having Bitcoin mining has become attractive, very attractive again, do you think that holding your guns for much longer, maybe you could lose some of this rather cheap mining gears that's available still at the moment?

Erke, you want to - I have a view on that, but Erke, do you want to go first, and then I'll add?

Yes, I'm happy to. I mean, procuring miners really hasn't been an issue for us. We have all the channels to procure them. And from my point of view, I think miner price will just going to be more attractive going forward, and with the happening with the increase of network cash. So, now we are actively monitoring [where the network] difficulty will go. Especially after the happening and to make sure - the investment, or the procurement we make, can be return risk justified. It has been our strategy. So for example, from year late 2021, until the first quarter of 2023, we didn't make any minor purchases because it was just the model doesn't work out. So about, after Q1, 2023, we started growth again. So it's a matter of timing, and also the overall market conditions.

And Alex, I think you would expect the demand side post having, to subside to some degree. I mean, if no other reason than just based on if you look at public miner stock price year-to-date, I mean, cost of equity is way more expensive. So using that as a source of funding, basic purchases, is probably not going to sustain the levels we saw in late 2023. So I mean, we continue to have the view that, even if they go up to some degree that we're not risking missing a great value right now just by being cautious.

Yes. Okay. Thank you very much.

Okay, that concludes our Q&A session. And I would like to turn this back to Sam for final remarks. Thank you, Alex.

Thank you, Mariana. I think what I have to, I don't really have much more final remarks except as mentioned we built a solid business that, is an all-weather business. We have a great team in place and we are very proud of the foundation that we built in 2023. I don't have any further remarks. Thank you for joining us today. And we look forward to receiving any other further questions in the future.

And with that, I would like to thank everyone again for joining us today. Before we conclude, I also want to take a moment to thanks our shareholders, analysts and members of the press for participating and joining us. And thank you to everyone and have a great day.