Cipher Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:CIFR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Reggie Smith: Hey. Good morning guys and congrats on the build-out. I had two quick questions. I guess one this is probably difficult to answer and such to the extent that you could kind of walk me through your thinking, I think it will be super helpful. But thinking about that $250 million shelf offering, how do you — like what’s the calculus or the math behind tapping that versus the dilutive impact of it? Like is there a rule of thumb that investors or you kind of look to in deciding this is a good time to use that. When does it make sense? And what do those conditions look like?

Tyler Page: So tough to answer that question with specifics Reggie, it’s a good one. We think about it a lot. I think as a framework for it, we would want to use it to do something accretive. Well, let me actually say in two ways. I view it as it’s a nice thing to have in place just in choppy markets, right? It’s just yet another lever, we could tap if we had to Bitcoin — something terrible happens and Bitcoin drops to $8,000 and the market is stressed like it’s just another lever we can pull. But I think we’re more likely to think about using it opportunistically and the framework for that would be something accretive. So for example, if we could find an incredible price on rigs to immediately plug in at Odessa, we would view that as instantly accretive to shareholders.

And so that’s the kind of thing where we would think about it. Now, as I’m sure, you know there’s, many dimensions to thinking about using it. Our liquidity is steadily building in the market. But of course, we want to be mindful of not impacting the stock in an adverse way while we do something accretive.

Reggie Smith: Understood. Would — yeah, I guess I appreciate that you could be thought about it in a number of different ways. I think one way I was kind of thinking about it and tell me if this makes sense. If you were to think about exahash per share outstanding and kind of do the math that way. And as you did a shelf offering that would increase your shares outstanding, but it would also bring in exahash. Is that the right way to think about accretion?

Tyler Page: Yeah, it’s an interesting angle, I think

Reggie Smith: Or is it too complicated? I don’t know.

Tyler Page: It starts to get a little challenging. I think we probably fall back on a dollars-based profitability to drive value to shareholders. So exahash per share is I guess as a proxy, but it sort of ignores the hash price element of things, right? Because if we the problem with that is what if network cash rate goes to 1,000 exahash or something like that like you have to sort of think of both of those things at the same time if it makes sense?

Reggie Smith: No, it does. It’s a fascinating problem to solve. So we’ll be watching there. I guess if I could sneak one more question in. Very impressive price — energy price per Bitcoin numbers you guys posted just like the lowest I’ve seen among any of the Bitcoin miners so that’s great and hats off to you for that. My question how do you think about kind of the unit economics below the energy line? And what are you driving the business to there? And I don’t know if it’s overhead for you what’s the right way for investors to think about that too? Thank you.