Stronghold Digital Mining, Inc. (NASDAQ:SDIG) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Greg Beard: Yes, so, I think we have the benefit of not halving to be making debt amortization payments and we have no or very, very small obligations on CapEx today. So, we — and right now, today we’re generating cash. And so — and if you looked at our — at the potential for the improvement in efficiency of our mining fleet, I think you’re going to have to — we need to outlay the market what the — what a realistic timeframe is to do that, which we will do. But I think the best response for halving in our view is to drive power costs as low as you can. That’s really the most important variable that we can control. And just happily — luckily, we have a power curve and it allows us to do that. So, we’re going to end up with lower power costs and what we would have modeled a quarter ago given where the curve it moved just and position related to natural gas pricing being so cheap.

But I think if you were to study our balance sheet and our obligations, there are purposely low due to halving to let us get to the point where we should be able to begin to spend to upgrade the fleet on time, which will give us a benefit on top of having an extremely low power price. I think also at some point they were making a lot of progress on carbon capture and that project is really designed as well to give us an even lower power price sort of on a net basis for that. So, that say that’s one of the reasons that we continue to focus on carbon capture as a as a benefit to the company.

Joe Flynn: Thanks. That’s helpful. And I also wanted to dig more into the hosting business, so far demonstrated strong results. But I guess just what do you think the outlook is there? I was wondering if you could pursue additional opportunities on that front and on maybe what’s the overall advantages to kind of your model versus your traditional hosting model have definitely struggled over the past two years. There’s a lot of industry talk. I talk about the holiday mile going away I guess, how are you guys positioned in that respect?

Greg Beard: Yes. So, I think we’re — we think we have a good relationship with our partners and I think you’re really unlikely to see us enter into what I would just kind of like a regular way of hosting, while we run somewhere else is minor and sell them power. We strongly prefer the model. We share a significant amount of the bitcoin mining revenue with our partners. So I think we’ll expect them to continue in some way. And if we are I think I would view that as one of the opportunistic ways to drive the efficiency to better play from the miners is through expanding our JVs with our existing and new partners, something it’s a thing that we don’t we don’t — we’re not expecting any immediate changes to the JV structures.

Joe Flynn: Got it. Thanks. That’s all for me.

Greg Beard: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Dede with H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open.

Kevin Dede: Thanks. Hi Greg, Matt, thanks for having me on. Greg, kind of a I guess sort of a broad one. I was hoping you would take some time to walk me through anyone else. I was curious — on the carbon capture and the balance of now that you’re seeing 14% recovery a lower cost to deploy the carbon list and the balance of running the plants to generate the ash and the expected revenue off? It’s a big question. I know that you’re expecting accreditation are on Piro next quarter which means conceivably you could see revenue in the third quarter. At what point do you think you can just run both plants all out regardless of the PowerCurve?

Greg Beard: Yes, sort of I can’t. That’s what you’re describing is absolutely the goal. And I would say the last three months has been a bit better than confirmatory because it’s when you’re driving the rate of carbon absorption up. And not only is the — is the upper potential had moved up the rate that the Ashes carbonated has moved up. So the — not only is it going to require fewer cargo lifts to get the same job done, the cost of this cordless is coming down and labor is coming down. So, we’re really — I think we were very conservative in the early days and I sort of late last year describing the potential of the project, but it’s still in a while and we’ve made a ton of progress. And every — on every assumption has proven to be conservative so far, but it’s still too early.

It’s still too early to spike the football and say, hey we’re going to have extra more carbonless fully deployed and generating X amount of revenue related to that sequestration. I think that should happen. I would expect that we’ll be in a position to do that in the next quarter. But I think we’ve got it. We’re still testing just literally dozens of tests a week from now on. Now we’re testing this newly redesigned the cover live, number two that has an increased airflow. So I think it’s from our vantage point. I think when we see a plateau in the testing results and we’ve sort of iterated to the best cargo lift design that maximizes airflow and carbonation that also minimizes the CapEx build-out cost. That’s when they’ll say, hey now we’re ready to go ahead and do the build-out.