Fermi Inc. Common Stock (NASDAQ:FRMI) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript May 14, 2026
Fermi Inc. Common Stock misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.3 EPS, expectations were $-0.03393.
Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Fermi America’s First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please note that today’s event is being recorded. I’d now like to turn the call over to Rodrigo Acuna, from a Director of Investor Relations. Rodrigo, the floor is yours.
Rodrigo Acuna: Good morning, and thank you for joining Premium America’s First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. With me today are our Chairman of the Board, Marius Haas, Co-President of the newly established Office of the CEO, Jacobo Ortiz Blanes and Anna Bofa, and our Interim Chief Financial Officer, Rob Masson. Today’s call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements reflect management’s current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. For a detailed discussion of the risk — please refer to our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our recent reports on Form 8-K. Any non-GAAP measures discussed today are intended to provide supplemental perspectives on the company’s ongoing operations. I will now turn the call over to Marius.
Marius Haas: Thank you, Rodrigo. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We’re at a meaningful inflection point in Fermi America’s development. with Firming 2.0, we’re moving forward from the entrepreneurial foundation that built this company to the institutional framework required to scale it. Fermi was built on delivering reliable private grid power at scale to the hyperscale compute infrastructure that the AI economy requires. That hasn’t changed. — and market conditions continue to validate our approach and value proposition, forecasts for AI-driven power demand buried but the central tendency has moved meaningfully upward over the past year. In the near term, the picture is 1 in which power availability not capital and not demand appears to be the biggest constraint.
It’s clear that delays are being reported across announced projects globally. — and those delays are being driven by core interconnection time lines and equipment availability. What’s important for you to know is that our strategy is oriented towards addressing that specific gap. And it’s why we believe our project is advantaged. Our mandate today is to execute with the governance commercial relationships and operational discipline that our investors rightly demand and expect. On today’s call, we’ll cover several important topics. First, I’ll address the leadership changes and the steps we’ve taken to strengthen governance, commercial execution and financial discipline. Second, Anna will cover commercial progress, including tenant engagement, regulatory and nuclear.
Third, Jacobo will provide an operational update on Project Matador, including recent site progress across procurement and construction. And finally, Rob will review first quarter results and liquidity. To begin, I want to take a moment to directly address the recent changes in leadership. Last month, the Board removed Toby Neugebauer from the position of President, Chief Executive Officer and Director. He was terminated for cause. The Board’s decision was deliberate. It was unanimous among the directors involved and it was the result of a careful and comprehensive process that included guidance of an independent counsel. Importantly, the Board firmly believes the move was in the long-term interest of this company and its shareholders. While Tobi played a critical role in building something genuinely ambitious, the Board recognized that over the next 18 months, firming needs to operate differently.
We need to execute multibillion-dollar contracts with investment-grade counterparties while continuing to evolve as a public company advancing towards commercial operations. This evolution is what Fermi 2.0 is all about and executing it will require changes at the top. These include 3 significant actions. First, we have strengthened our governance structure. I have assumed the role of Chairman of the Board, bringing experience from Dell Technologies and the enterprise technology sector. We expanded the Board from 5 to 7 directors, adding Myles Everson, Larry Kellermann and Jeffrey Steve. As our former CFO, Myles knows the company inside and out. Larry currently serves as our Head of Power and has more than 40 years of experience building multibillion-dollar power generation asset portfolios.
Jeffrey is a seasoned Chief Executive and Chairman with deep experience scaling industrial enterprises into public company caliber organizations. We have engaged hiring struggles, a respected executive recruiting firm to lead the search for our next CEO. That process is underway, and we have a preliminary slate of highly qualified candidates already in hand. We’re focused on identifying the right person, a seasoned leader with experience leading large, complex companies. relationships with hyperscalers and fluency in project financing to take firming to commercial operations and beyond. Additionally, we have hired Rob Masson as our interim Chief Financial Officer. Rob has more than 20 years of public company financial leadership. His track record of driving growth and enterprise value across multiple industries is exactly what this company requires as we scale Project Matador and cultivate institutional relationships.
Second, we have formalized our operational presence. We’ve established a new corporate headquarters in Dallas in addition to our permanent on-site presence in Amarillo. Dallas positions us close to key stakeholders and deep talent while [indiscernible] keeps our team embedded in Project Matador’s build out. And third, we have actively rebuilt and expanded our commercial relationships. Since the leadership changes in April, our commercial momentum has strengthened. Tenant conversations that had previously stalled have been reinitiated, and new prospective tenants have entered our data room. The market’s response to the structural changes we’ve made have been constructive, and we’re increasingly confident that this evolution positions firming to accelerate the execution of our first binding tenant agreements.
And I will provide more color in a moment. At this point, I want to quickly touch on a few topics that are top of mind. I’ll start with liquidity. Rob will discuss this in more detail shortly, but here is the main takeaway — we have multiple levers we can pull, and we’re managing this company so that capital decisions are driven by strategy and not by pressure. Next, our former CEOs ill advised call for an immediate sale of the company. The Board has carefully considered that view and rejected it outright. Our for sale at this moment is not in the best interest of the long-term shareholders, especially with anchor tenant negotiations advancing and our financing structure intact. As any responsible public company should be, we’re always open to value-creating opportunities, but we’re not going to be stampeded into a short-sighted decision.
Lastly, I’d like to talk plainly about what has not changed. The assets and fundamental value of our business have not changed. We have a campus on the path to 17 gigawatts of private power with a 6-gigawatt clean air permit in hand and an additional 5 gigawatt applications filed. We have more than 2 gigawatts of long lead time gas generation, either on-site or under a firm contract. We have great partners, including Texas Tech University, which has reaffirmed its support. Our mission has also not changed. The country is in a generational race for AI compute and that raises bottlenecked high power line. As I mentioned earlier, behind the meter gigawatt scale redundant private power that is delivered on the necessary time line is not a nice to have, with the hyperscalers and frontier model developers.
It is the constraint. Fermi was purpose-built to relieve that constraint. If anything, the macro thesis that served as the basis for our highly successful IPO is sharper today than it was then. And perhaps most importantly, the fantastic team executing on our vision has not changed. The engineers and project managers who pour the foundations handle supply chain logistics, manage EPC contractors and run permitting our sheer, remain focused and are moving forward. I will now turn the call over to Anna for a commercial and regulatory update.
Anna Bofa: Thanks, Marius. I’ll cover 3 areas today: commercial progress, regulatory advancements and the continued derisking of our nuclear program. I’ll start on the commercial side. The most important message is that the market has not walked away from this asset. If anything, recent engagement has reinforced the strength of Project Matador and the urgency of the customer need we are addressing. The underlying customer need has not changed. If anything, it has intensified across hyperscalers, neo cloud providers and enterprise compute operators, the same constraint keeps coming up. access to large-scale, reliable power on a timeline that matches AI demand. That is the commercial opening for us at Fermi. Fermi 2.0 is about making the company easier to work with, creating a more streamlined commercial interface for customers and partners who want to move quickly and confidently.
That means faster decision-making, tighter commercial coordination and a more direct path from diligence to binding agreements. Over the past 2 weeks, we’ve hosted multiple prospective tenants and strategic partners at our site. The feedback has been highly constructive. Customers and partners continue to view Project Matador as one of the most advanced and customer-ready large-scale power campuses they have evaluated. That matters. Because customers are not looking for conceptual capacity. They’re looking for credible near-term power, real infrastructure, secured equipment, permitting progress, land control and a team that can execute. The conversations we’re having are increasingly specific. Customers are working with us on capacity planning, delivery sequencing, power availability, reliability, operating structure and the commercial frameworks required to move from interest to execution.
Importantly, these conversations are continuing under the office of the CEO structure. Customers are not waiting for a permanent CEO appointment to engage. Their need is immediate and they are working with us now to match capacity requirements and potential delivery paths. We are also evaluating strategic partnerships with established and respected data center operators and infrastructure partners. We view those partnerships as potential accelerators, a way to expand our execution capacity, increase customer confidence and serve a broader set of tenants while maintaining commercial discipline. So the commercial message is straightforward. Demand remains strong. The asset is being validated directly by the market and Fermi 2.0 is giving the structure to convert that demand into binding agreements with the right counterparties at the right economics and on time lines, we believe we can execute.
We will announce binding agreements when they are signed and when disclosure is appropriate. We are encouraged by the progress, and we believe the changes we’ve made have strengthened and accelerated our ability to transact. On the regulatory front, the most significant milestone of the quarter happened in February with the receipt of our clean air permit for 6 gigawatts. This represents the second largest permit of its kind in the U.S. This is not just a regulatory milestone, it is a commercial milestone. The approval is a key enabler of our commercial program. It provides prospective tenants with the regulatory certainty they need to commit capital to long-term agreements at this scale. In late March, we filed for an incremental 5 gigawatt gas permit, giving us additional flexibility as we build towards the broader campus vision.
We have also filed for foreign trade zone subzone designation for our imported generation assets. Once that’s received, it will deliver meaningful tariff relief and duty deferrals, which has a quantifiable benefit to our balance sheet. Finally, on nuclear, this work is about strengthening the long-term commercial value of Project Matador. We have a front-end engineering and design agreement with Hyundai Engineering and construction that cover site layout and civil cost estimating. Doosan Enerbility has also commenced preparation of forging dies for our reactor pressure vessels. It’s worth noting that we’re the first private company to be admitted to the NRC’s accelerated National Environmental Policy Act pilot program. This work in combination with the DOE financing track significantly derisks the long-dated portions of the campus buildout and underscores the national strategic priority assigned to this project.
I will now turn the call over to Jacobo for an operational update.
Jacobo Blanes: Thank you, Anna, and good morning, everyone. Construction of Project Matador continued to advance during the quarter. Our team is focused on consistent strategic execution. We have continued to build our team and strengthen our systems and processes. We have now installed more than 11 miles of perimeter fencing, nearly 5 miles of high-pressure gas pipeline 7 miles of water distribution lines, providing 2.5 million gallons a day, and we have built a 2 million-gallon water storage tank and secured additional water rights for the site. We have also brought 86 megawatts of power from XL to the site. Looking at our power generation assets. frame turbines are currently undergoing refurbishment in Houston, and we expect them to be completed by the middle of next month.
The foundation for these turbines have already been poured. Our Siemens SGT-800 generator sets have arrived in Houston and cleared customs. The foundation for these gensets have been prepped at the site and are almost ready to be board. Lastly, the club turbines representing 1.1 gigawatts of combined cycle capacity are scheduled for delivery in the third quarter of this year. With an additional 6 Siemens SGT-800 turbines, which are secured and scheduled for delivery in 2028, our total natural gas generation equipment is roughly 2.2 gigawatts. With this significant milestone and the conclusion of Phase 0, we post additional site development as it was always planned until a tenant is signed. Future capital deployment will remain disciplined and aligned with commercial progress.
Through our $1.4 billion investment in balance sheet assets, we have established a speed to power advantage that we believe is unmatched and highly compelling for customers facing rapidly growing compute demand. Bottom line, we’re in a great position to mobilize immediately upon lease execution. Our supply chain is secured, our EPC contractor relationships are intact and stronger than ever. and we’re highly confident in the availability of labor in the region. Finally, Fermi 2.0 is focused on stabilizing and scaling what will become a generational opportunity through disciplined execution operational clarity to transparent leadership and long-term shareholder value. I will now turn the call over to Rob for the financial review.
Robert Masson: Thank you, Jacobo. For the quarter, we reported a net loss of $189 million. About 70% of that was noncash. It was driven primarily by share-based compensation associated with our broad employee equity program. We also incurred a $25 million loss on the retirement of the Macquarie term loan. Cash used in operating activities totaled approximately $7 million for the quarter. It benefited from $29 million of accounts payable and accrued liabilities growth, partially offset by $7 million of cash used on prepaid expenses and other assets. This resulted in $22 million of net working capital benefit. Without this benefit, we used approximately $29 million of cash. We are committed to managing corporate overhead as we invest in bringing Project Matador to life.
We invested $441 million in property, plant and equipment during the quarter. That brings our cumulative investment in Project Matador to more than $1.4 billion. The primary allocation was to natural gas power generation, including turbine procurement across our Siemens and GE fleets. The remainder was deployed to site infrastructure, substation equipment, electrical interconnection and early nuclear predevelopment. With regards to liquidity, we ended our quarter with $243 million in total cash. Notably, this quarter, we fully repaid the Macquarie term loan. By doing so, we replaced approximately $150 million of high-cost debt with more favorable equipment financing. We have $785 million of new equipment financing facilities, anchored by $500 million from MUFG, one of the world’s leading infrastructure lenders.
This debt is structured as nonrecourse to the parent company secured by the underlying generation equipment. In late March, we also secured more than $156 million of financing with Yorkville, which will support general corporate expenditures. This agreement provides additional flexibility at the parent level while our equipment level facilities fund our long lead time power generation assets. To date, we have not drawn on this facility. In total, we’ve now secured nearly $1 billion in financing commitments as we scale up Project Matador. Importantly, moving forward, we will be disciplined with our deployment of capital by more closely matching cash outlays with capital inflows that arise from tenant agreements and the transition to project level finance.
Taken together, we believe our sources of capital and disciplined deployment provide funding for our near-term development activities. Looking beyond our existing sources, we expect to fund the next phase of Project Matador through a combination of tenant prepayments, additional nonrecourse equipment financing project level, nonrecourse debt and taking advantage of government programs, including the DOE Office of Energy Dominance financing. I will now turn the call back to Marius for closing remarks.
Marius Haas: Fermi 2 is defined by the convergence of 2 things: The tangible asset base we have already constructed and the institutional capability we are now deploying to realize its full value. We have converted investor capital into more than $1.4 billion of infrastructure at a site that few, if any, competitors can replicate on a comparable time line. Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen an exceptional level of receptivity in our strategy and plans from every corner of our ecosystem. Our prospective tenants, existing suppliers and partners, government officials and most importantly, our employees have been deeply engaged, which strengthens our conviction in the path we’re on. Our Fermi 2.0 strategy and execution plans are now in full motion.
At the management level, our focus is clear and disciplined, attracting premier tenants who recognize the unique value of our platform, building the best private power grid on the planet in close collaboration with our suppliers and partners. Ensuring sufficient capital to support liquidity needs, accelerating strategic partnerships in both power and data centers and investing in our people and talent pipeline, including key leadership additions. At the Board level, our mandate is to ensure that the company scales into a truly enterprise class organization by doing the following: Establishing clear strategic and operating priorities designed to enable consistent flawless execution. Conducting a thorough, disciplined process to hire a world-class CEO who can lead this next phase of growth.
and proactively addressing outside interference so that leadership can remain focused on running and growing the business. Above all, we are aligned around a single overarching objective, maximizing long-term shareholder returns. We look forward to updating you on our continued progress as we execute on the Fermi 2.0 vision. Operator, we’re now ready to take questions.
Q&A Session
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Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Your first question is coming from Nick Amicucci from Evercore ISI.
Nicholas Amicucci: Just wanted to clarify. So in the release, you kind of laid out a 90-day plan that has kind of the 5 points of emphasis. So if we could just kind of define for investors what we should expect to see by the end of that 90-day period? And specifically, if you clarify whether the 90-day objective is a binding lease offtake or a nonbinding or both. And then is that tenant agreement kind of the gating item for the other 4?
Marius Haas: Nick, thank you for your question. I really appreciate it. I want to make sure that — the team is fully comprehensive of the fact that we’re 100% focused on executing on our plan and that we have just laid out for you. As to the next 90 days, it is our expectation that you should measure us on delivering on these 5 key points: A secured and binding tenant agreement that we maintain capital discipline to support liquidity, that we hire our next CEO that we deliver power at our project site and that we explore strategic partnerships for accelerating data center and power deployment on our site. Those are the 5 commitments and deliverables that we’re focused on for the next 90 days without distractions. That’s how you should measure us.
Nicholas Amicucci: Great. Very clear. Then if I could just touch on just kind of the cash component. So operating cash use was kind of limited in part by working capital benefit from accounts payables and accrued liabilities. So we now have — you have $243 million of cash and restricted cash, $421 million of debt. $441 million of CapEx that — that was incurred during the first quarter. And now this — now the $150 million of your fill commitment. So how should we think about kind of the normalized cash burn in 2Q and 3Q prior to a binding agreement? And should we expect any type of meaningful reversal of the 1Q payables or accrued liabilities?
Robert Masson: That’s good. So yes, let me talk about liquidity. As you said, we have — we had $243 million of cash and restricted cash at the end of the quarter. It’s important to note that we have strong equipment financing in place that covers most of our remaining expenditures on turbines and turbines and electrical power equipment, so we have these MUFG and Keystone Equipment secured on nonrecourse debt. Deal Bank, we have $160 million of capacity there. for 6 Siemens turbines that will be built and delivered by 2028. So we feel good on that side about our equipment finance. The Yorkville facility — we look forward. It’s that discipline Marius talked about looking at our payments and matching them to new tenant agreements and so forth. So you would see a disciplined approach going forward with capital.
Operator: Your next question is coming from Nick Lawson from Ocean Wall.
Unknown Analyst: It’s Max Taylor here from Ocean Mall just stepping in for Nick. It’d be great if we could get a bit more color on the 5 gigawatt air permit that you filed in March. or, and we fully expect it to be completed successfully by the fourth quarter of this year. So we remain confident in our approach. We learned that by being transparent, clear with our studies and what we were doing, we got the first one, and we expect the second 1 to be granted as well.
Marius Haas: I think Mac, just to add to Mac, just to add to it. I think the comments we received from the first 6 gigawatts was white in U.S. for more. and that triggered us going ahead with the application for the next 5 gigawatts as part of that process.
Operator: Your next question is coming from Vikram Malhotra from Mizuho.
Vikram Malhotra: Maybe just first, you put out — in the 90-day plan sort of securing a tenant agreement. I just guess one, why sort of put a shot clock in terms of specific 90 days? Is there something about conversations or tenant types or where you’re progressing to be that specific sort of given the history of the last year. So maybe just give us a bit more flavor on like what gives you confidence to sort of highlight over the next 90 days, you can secure a tell agreement?
Anna Bofa: Yes, happy to take that. So I think what gives us the confidence that we’ve been able to identify kind of what was holding customers back from engaging with us. And that was really the fact that they wanted to feel that they could trust us that they could build a long-term relationship with us. As you know, these agreements are 15 to 20 years. And so the counterparty is looking for assurance that who they’re partnering with is somebody that is going to be able to support them over the long haul. And so for us, that was why we made the changes that we made to ensure that we were a relationship company and that we could step in to support these folks over the long haul. So part of our confidence is about that. The other piece of our confidence is around the kind of state of our site, as mentioned earlier. — it’s much more clear how our process works on both sides so that they can engage with us confidently.
Marius Haas: I’d just add 1 final statement is that over the last 3 weeks, our pipeline has increased exponentially, much more so than we ever expected.
Vikram Malhotra: Okay. That’s good to hear. So I guess the second question, just 2 parts to it. On this tenant potential signing, are you able to give us some color on high level as we’ve — what we previously modeled in terms of potential revenue and more so the CapEx to build out this first lease, whether it’s — no matter what size we had thought we had sort of said first gig would probably be around $4 billion to $5 billion and the first gig would generate a certain amount of NOI. So can you give us any high-level color on what it would cost to build this out? And then just related to that, are you on a short talk with Texas Tech as well? Just maybe update us on, is there a stipulation still that you need to sign a lease by a certain date?
Anna Bofa: Yes. So what we’re looking at right now is maybe an evolution, we’ll call it, is we thought there’s now multiple structures that we can pursue that deliver the same economic value opportunity to these projects. And so we talked a little bit about our pursuit of potential partnerships with data center partners, power partners, infrastructure partners. We continue to engage directly with hyperscalers and — but we’ve realized that there is multiple paths to be able to achieve our financial goals with these projects. And so while we can’t say specifics, of course, around the numbers of the deals that we’re currently trading can say that we feel very confident that the deals that we have at hand provide the same kind of economic opportunity that we’ve always set out to achieve.
Marius Haas: I’ll add just a little bit, Vikram. One of the strategic priorities we laid out for the next 90 days is to explore partnerships to accelerate our data center and power deployment capabilities. That has a very interesting opportunities around additional capital infusion into the business that would come from our partnerships. So that’s extremely helpful. And on the Texas Tech question you had, let me reassure you that we have a very, very strong relationship with Texas Tech. We have met with the Board of Regions Chair. We met with the Board of Regions Special Committee overseeing the relationship with Fermi. I personally met with the chance for twice in the last 3 weeks. — we are both extremely motivated to ensure the long-term success of Fermi as it’s a highly visible project for both of us.
Operator: Your next question is coming from Skye Landon from Rothchild & Company.
Skye Landon: I know it might be early days, but just wondering if you can elaborate on the idea of exploring strategic partnerships for the power and the data centers. What does this potentially mean? Does it mean bringing in a more experienced operator for the power generation sets and things like that? Secondly, just checking on the power plan that you’ve shown within the slides — is the option of XL providing an increased level of power up to 200 megawatts still on the table? And just wondering why that isn’t part of the 2026 and 2027 power plan — and then still on the power plan, does this include the turbines kind of running in single cycle? Presumably at some point, these would need to move to a combined cycle? And just wondering when and how you would look to do that and if that’s part of the air quality per conditions?
Anna Bofa: Yes, I’ll start with the data center question, and then I’ll turn it over to the others for the rest of your questions. So on the pursuit of partnerships, particularly on the data center side, this is really a direct reflection of the conversations that we had with hyperscalers. And what we’re seeing is that, again, their demand is so high that they’re needing to pursue pads with partners to have additional capacity. And so we realized that by also pursuing those data center partnerships that there’s a way to kind of meet them where they’re at. The space has changed tremendously in the last 6 months. And so as mentioned before, realized that there’s multiple structures to be able to serve these customers. And so we want to ensure that we are meeting them where they’re at and also pursuing the things that they’re looking for to stay up to date on their needs.
And so that’s what we’re doing. The goal on the exploration of power partnerships is also a reflection of this need. One thing we’re looking at is how do we kind of look at additional capacity to serve more customers. As Marius noted, the demand that we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks is so strong that we’re now in a position where we’re thinking about how do we kind of bring more capacity to our site quicker. That we can serve additional customers. So those are the 2 reasons why we have pursued these partnership opportunities. And I’ll turn it over to Jacobo and Marius for your questions.
Marius Haas: Yes. I’ll add very briefly. Obviously, those partnership conversations are bounded by confidentiality agreements. So therefore, at this point in time, we can’t provide more information — but rest assured, these are the names in the industry that are coming to for me and wanting to partner with us to deliver the best-in-class service and product to our customers.
Jacobo Blanes: The last thing I want to add is that our generation equipment position is strong. It’s something that is unique to firming versus the rest of the market. And if I go power block by power block, our G6 be turbines are refurbished we’re ready. Our Xu units from Siemens, our brand new units, it’s again, 1.1 gigs. They’re finished in Germany and will be shipped over the summer to the U.S. our SGT-800s as we have reported are in the Port of Houston waiting to the site. So from that perspective, again, we have been very deliberate in getting our power ready we have 2.2 gigawatts of available power and $1.5 million of that, which we can execute by the end of 2017, provided we have a tenant and project finance. We’re going to be deliberate in how we execute our plan.
And then last but not least, we have — as we’ve reported, 200 megawatts from itself at that time is already at the site and an incremental 114 megawatts will come in the first part of 27. So we’re ready to serve customers.
Skye Landon: Great. And 1 more, if I may. Just on the EPC partners. Clearly, time lines are somewhat changing and are still pretty dependent on when you’re able to secure a tenant, so just wondering if you could kind of elaborate on the EPC market. Are you still looking to use the same partners that you’re originally looking to use how flexible are these partners in terms of the time slots that they can can do the work to install the power equipment that you need? And any additional color you could give there would be great.
Marius Haas: Sure. Thank you for the question. Absolutely. I mean we are in log step with our strategic partners, our G6 are being installed at from the very beginning where the company out of Houston go relevant power systems, they’re aligned with us. exactly the same situation with Primoris on our G6. On the class, we just completed an RFP. We’re not ready to announce who it is. But again, everyone in the industry, our strategic partners are completely aligned with us, including the Shield, our high-voltage equipment partner, and they’re all aligned and ready to execute alongside us. So the relationships are strong, and we’re moving forward.
Operator: Your next question is coming from John Hodulik from UBS.
John Hodulik: Maybe 2 quick follow-ups. First, and that might have just been answered, but the scale of the tenant conversations or the potential of contracts you guys are talking about. Is that in the sort of gigawatt scale that we had been sort of originally talking about? Or are we thinking about signing contracts and sort of smaller chunks to begin with? And then as a follow-up on the strategic partnerships, especially with the existing data center companies, are you guys envisioning a potential deal where you you work with an established provider like a DLR or one of the private guys to take down space on a wholesale basis. Or just work with them to approach tenants together? Or just anything that you could do to elaborate on a potential agreement of that sort would be great.
Anna Bofa: Yes. So we are looking at, again, multiple deal opportunities and each one of those has a different structure in terms of the size — so in some cases, it’s smaller chunks. In some cases, it’s a gig or higher. But we’re essentially in the position where we can kind of take and choose, how we can ensure that we can serve multiple partners over the long haul. So I can’t, of course, for confidentiality reasons, say the exact sizes what we do have at hand is, again, in some cases, it’s a couple of hundred megawatts. In some cases, it’s a gig or more, and we’re going to ensure that we move forward with the best possible partner with the time line that needs that up specific partner. On the kind of question around the partners, the way that we think of it is, again, how we can serve the customer on their time line.
So as you’re kind of negotiating these deals, of course, you’re looking at the amount of capacity that they’re looking for, but you’re also looking at the time line that they need. And so what we found is that different data center partners have different time lines available to meet the data center needs the MEP needs. And so we’re in constant communication, trying to align their capacity availability with the customers’ time line and the capacity that they’re looking for. So it’s a bit of a dance, as you guys know, with these deals, but what’s nice again is that we’ve got multiple options on the table and have the ability to move forward with the best possible deal for us right now.
Marius Haas: I would just add that on the data center partner side, they have significant demand that they have signed up for, for power their availability of power is obviously scarce. So they’re proactively coming to us with ideas as to how we can engage together to satisfy the demand that they’ve already signed up for. So not only does it bring a tremendous amount of expertise, wherewithal financing commitments, but it also comes with tenants. So that’s why it’s so interesting for us to engage those in those conversations and strengthen our position holistically.
Operator: Your next question is coming from [ Greg Rollins ] from Radway Capital.
Unknown Analyst: My first question is, could Mr. Neugebauer with his 40% shareholding blocker capital raise for whatever reason he may deem fit. The second is an observation. You’ve spent quite a bit of time and effort talking about the financing and the provision of power. But what about the financing and the building of the actual structures that are going to house the data centers. And ancillary to that, I’d like to talk about 2 models. The Digital Realty provides the buildings and the associated infrastructure that been a cooling systems. And for example, whereas Equinix also, in many cases, facilitates the financing of the tenant’s own equipment, which gives them a strong strategic advantage. Which model would you be following.
And then finally, just on an accounting matter, you will be — unlike other data centers, you will be providing the power, which you would have to charge them. I would assume that this is not rental income. And to that effect, you could be running into problems of your revenue for the power delivery exceeds more than 25% of your rental income. Have you thought about that? Thank you.
Anna Bofa: So I think we’ll start with — there’s a couple of questions in there. We’ll start with the — I’ll take your question around kind of financing structures for these kind of deals at hand. So as you know, the way that this works is you are constantly talking to lenders about the deal structure to ensure that you have the financing available to complete the deal. So we have really strong relationships with a number of project finance lenders in this space and they are actively involved in conversations with us and on all of the different deals that we have at hand that we’re currently negotiating. So we feel really confident on again, in being able to project enhance those deals. And of course, we wouldn’t pursue anything that we didn’t feel had financeable actability and so that’s part of our filter, again, is ensuring we can finance those deal structures. Also also had a question around was it a Toby’s share, the 40%.
Marius Haas: Yes, I’ll let Greg, yes, I’ll address that really quickly. As of right now, there is no shareholder meeting set, just to be clear, there is none. And then secondly, you might have noticed last night, we filed an 8-K where the Board has made modifications to the company’s bylaws in those modifications that would say that any changes to the Board composition will require a 70% bulk of the shares outstanding. And so you have to have a significant threshold here in order to make big modifications to the construct of the Board, all with the intent of protecting our shareholders, all with the intent of driving consistency and stabilization of the organization. We believe we’re in a great position to take advantage of the demand that’s out in the market for the assets and the services and the products we have. It’s our job to now execute flawlessly for our shareholders to deliver on that opportunity.
Robert Masson: And I can talk about the revenue recognition and accounting policy. We do intend to elect week status, and we are structuring our revenue recognition and all accounting so that we do meet those. So we do have that considered. And thank you for the question.
Operator: Your next question is coming from Derrick Whitfield from Texas Capital.
Derrick Whitfield: I have 2 questions. Perhaps starting with Slide 9. Could you offer color on the amount of aggregate power capacity you see in the market at year-end 2027 relative to the gross demand for data center power. The point being is if you compare your offering at year-end 2027, could you qualify how unique that capacity would be in the market versus what’s being built.
Unknown Executive: Sure. I’ll take a stab at that. What we’ve said before is we currently possess on our balance sheet control of 2.2 gigawatts of gas generation equipment. And what we’re saying based on having a lease on the project finance, we are able to deliver 1.5 gigs of installed power by the end of 2017 in simple cycle. That’s the way you should read it. Obviously, all driven by the time lines generated by our customer or tenant. That is the first domino that falls that then delivers the product project financing that then delivers the implementation of our turbines and so forth.
Derrick Whitfield: Great. And maybe perhaps shifting over to Anna. In your prepared remarks, you noted a more streamlined commercial interface for customers and partners who want to advance discussions — maybe could you elaborate on how the interface has changed and the degree it may have been an impediment in past client discussions?
Anna Bofa: Absolutely. So again, I think one of the key things about the change that we made was recognizing that at every point in a business’s journey move from kind of the vision that’s driving and building the momentum of the company towards a more, I would say, commercial organ structure to ensure that you can meet the opportunity from an economic standpoint. And so what we realized was that, that we were kind of at that inflection point. And so when you’re dealing with large companies, there is kind of a way of working, we’ll call it, that they’re used to. And we wanted to ensure that we were building the team, the structure, the process to be able to make it easier to work with us. So part of that means being very clear on what our capacity and availability is being really clear about how people can engage with us and speak with us.
being really thoughtful about how we build relationships, as mentioned earlier, relationships with everything in this industry. the tech community is very small. It is — if you know 1 person, they probably not at that knows you. And so we really just understood that what was most important or our process was to kind of professionalize and ensure that it was very clear how to engage with us. And that when you engage with us, it was positive and it was constructive, and it was geared towards a sheer goal of trying to get a deal with it together.
Operator: Your next question is coming from Paul Golding from Macquarie.
Paul Golding: Just wanted to ask a quick one combining a couple of the prior questions around the potential size of an initial deal and the project financing discussions is the ongoing discussion with lenders informing at all or influencing at all how you’re filtering or thinking about the size of the initial definitive lease across that landscape that you described as being smaller versus gigawatt scale. Does that influence your thought process around building the structures and being able to energize as you look at these potential counterparties and the conversations you’re having with lenders?
Anna Bofa: Yes, absolutely. So we’re, again, in a fortunate position where we don’t have to pick one structure over another. No matter the deal size of the kind of things we have on the table, we feel very confident that we can get the project financing for those. And again, we’re actively involved with our lenders as part of those kind of conversations. So if the deal is one gigawatt we feel like confident that we can get the project financing for an if it’s 200 gigawatts, we feel confident we can get the project financing for it. And that also, of course, relates to who the offtaker is and their bankability. So that is kind of our focus, again, is looking at all of our options on the table. But of course, all of those options, we feel very confident in our financial goals.
Paul Golding: And maybe just as a housekeeping question on the back of that, Anna. Wondering if the project financing landscape is generally amenable to the whole spectrum of counterparty creditworthiness that you’re seeing in terms of your inbound interest or if there is skewed towards high investment grade just in terms of where you are in your road map relative to the off-taker.
Anna Bofa: Yes. So obviously, creditworthiness is the key item at hand when you’re engaging on these deals. So again, if we have a scenario where there’s a customer who maybe isn’t as credit worthy, we have to, of course, find an additional partner who’s willing to step in and support that customer to be able to get the financing done. So there are multiple ways that, of course, we can do this. And again, as I’ve stated multiple times, we have several options, several structures on the table. But the key thing to take away is that all of those structures, we feel are financeable because of the way that we’ve laid out the opportunity.
Operator: That concludes our Q&A session. I’ll now hand the conference back to Marius Hass for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Marius Haas: Thank you, operator. Thanks for participating in our call today. We know there’s a lot of noise in the system. But as you’ve heard this morning, our leadership team is 100% focused on executing on our plan to create long-term shareholder value. As indicated, and I’ll just repeat it one more time, over the next 90 days, you can expect us to deliver on these 5 key priorities: securing a binding tenant agreement, maintaining capital discipline to support liquidity to hire our next CEO, and to deliver power at our project site and to explore strategic partnerships for accelerating data center and power deployment. We appreciate your interest and support as we work to build the power platform for the AI era. Thank you again for joining us this morning. Very much appreciate it.
Operator: Thank you. Everyone, this concludes today’s event. You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.
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