Earnings Labs

HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. (HIVE)

Q1 2023 Earnings Call· Wed, Aug 17, 2022

$2.21

-3.65%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+1.77%

1 Week

-17.87%

1 Month

-31.24%

vs S&P

Transcript

Holly Schoenfeldt

Management

Hello everyone and welcome to today's webcast reviewing HIVE Blockchain Technologies Financial Results for the quarter ended June 30, 2022. On Slide #2, I would like to briefly note disclosures. Except for statements of historical fact, this presentation contains forward-looking information within the meaning of the applicable Canadian and U.S. securities regulations. These forward-looking statements are based on expectations, estimates and assumptions as of the date of this presentation. Moving on to Slide #3. And on the next slide that before we jump into the full presentation, this is a visual that we like to include in all of our presentations called the DNA of volatility which just basically makes investors aware of the volatility of various asset classes. And as you can see here, HIVE and the cryptocurrency markets in general are historically more volatile than, say, the S&P 500 or the gold market. I would like to introduce today's presenters. Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman; Darcy Daubaras, Chief Financial Officer; and Aydin Kilic, President and COO. Moving on to Slide #4. I would like to hand the presentation over to CFO, Darcy Daubaras for a snapshot of growth. Darcy?

Darcy Daubaras

Management

Great. Thank you very much, Holly, and welcome to all of our shareholders and investors. It's been a very tough quarter for the whole industry, and we're wanting to give you guys an update on how we did because we think we've done fairly well compared to the rest of the industry. This is just taking a look at our earnings. And how things are put together on a financial statement point of view. We take a look at our operational earnings, which is our cash flow operations, and then we take a look at our investment earnings. Those are realized cash flows and the unrealized things, which are the things that can greatly swing on earnings of a company either higher or lower depending on how that quarter went. The next slide, please. Two of those things that are the noncash and mark-to-market charges that can greatly swing what happens in the company's earnings, mark-to-market in accounting is something -- it's a practice that involves adjusting the value of an asset to reflect its value as determined by the current market conditions, which we all know have not been great during this most recent quarter, that's taking a look at what a company would get for the asset if it was sold at that point in time, so that's external market prices or posted prices within the industry for cryptocurrency or for an asset like a minor if you're having to value it. The other thing is the noncash charges. These are taking a look at things for write-downs or accounting expenses. It doesn't involve a cash payment. These are items like depreciation, amortization, stock-based compensation and asset impairments are common noncash charges that reduce our earnings but not cash flows. Usually, what we do is we take a…

Aydin Kilic

Management

Thank you, Darcy, for the introduction, and it has been quite a quarter. I think that HIVE has done an exceptional job navigating what some may call a crypto storm. And so I'm going to jump right into the numbers. So looking at our performance through an operational lens, here's a recap of our monthly production for Q1 2023, our fiscal period. And so you could actually see here, we've got our production amongst all of our industry peers for April, May and June. And so what we've done is we report this on a monthly basis, and it is all based on public disclosure of monthly production reports from every crypto miner, you could see the total hashrate, the total Bitcoin produced and then the Bitcoin for Exahash. And you can see every month this quarter, HIVE has emerged as the most efficient in terms of Bitcoin per Exahash crypto miner. And getting into that 130 range when none of our peers were doing that, and this is because we have the best uptime. This is because we have the best uptime in the sector. And I've mentioned this before, it's really important to emphasize, as this industry scales to industrial and civic grades of infrastructure. People have to monitor their own substations, maybe they're behind the grid. There's a big part of this is energy management, and there's a lot of feet that's produced and you've got thousands and thousands of miners tens of thousands even. And so it's very different managing a 2 or a 10-megawatt operation versus a globally diversified 130-megawatt operation like a company like HIVE. So when we're talking about getting $27 million of gross mining margin or $44 million, either all U.S. figures, of course, of revenue given the hashrate that we have,…

Frank Holmes

Management

Thank you, Darcy, and Aydin for those presentations. And I want to sort of -- and then do a recap, a macro recap of how we survived and are positioned to deal with other headwinds and challenges going forward. Next, please. So it's so important to the leadership team. There's a picture of me, but really, it's people around me and how they're managing a portfolio, a suite of data centers that are in Sweden, that are in Iceland that are in Quebec and also in New Brunswick. Most companies have all their data centers and chips and mining away in 1 country, in particular, 1 state. So you just run into this inherent risk, but managing all these different countries and different issues is a bigger challenge. But what's really important is that we've been able to deliver on a relative basis to our peers, I think, very attractive performance. Next, please. So there's -- there I am. We're first to go public, first to mine, Bitcoin, Ethereum. First to buy data centers and to be 100% with an ESG -- green ESG strategy and to be interlisted in Canada, U.S. and Germany. And I think that's the reason why this call, I'm in Europe visiting in Sweden, our facilities, and I was just in Switzerland talking to investors because we are interlisted. Next, please. HIVE uses 100% green energy in Canada, Iceland and Sweden. We have low electricity costs. We have low temperatures and fast Internet connections wherever we are. But what's really sort of interesting to me is that all of the crypto mining stocks fell on average last year, 71%. And they seem to cluster day in, day out on a relative basis that having a green footprint like we have doesn't really get much traction.…