Bit Digital Inc

NASDAQ:BTBT

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Operator]

Hello, and welcome to the Bit Digital First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, depending on where you're joining us from. Thank you for being here. We are just giving a few more moments for attendees to dial in. So thank you for your patience. [Operator Instructions] Also as a reminder, today's conference is being recorded.I'll now hand the call over to your host, Cameron Schnier, Head of Investor Relations at Bit Digital. Cameron, the floor is yours.

[William Schnier, executive]

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the Bit Digital First Quarter 2024 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, yesterday's 6-K filings and our other SEC filings. Our comments today may also include non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our 20-F filings and yesterday's 6-K filings, which are 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.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Thank you, Cam. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on the call today. In my prepared remarks, I'll discuss 3 things: first, our first quarter results; secondly, an update on our strategic initiatives; and third, our thoughts on the outlook for the remainder of 2024. Cam and Erke will then provide more detail on our financial results, and we will then open the line for your questions.We started the year off strong, and our first quarter results speak to the effort and execution by our team. Our Q1 revenue grew by over 250% from the prior year and by over 85% sequentially. We generated $58 million of adjusted EBITDA and a fully diluted GAAP EPS of $0.43. The first quarter marks the first time that our 2 primary business lines coalesce to produce what we view to be an emphatic year to the start -- emphatic start to the year, pardon me.Our active hash rate was approximately 2.67 -- 2.76 exahash as of March 31 compared to 2.52 at the year-end. The lifting of certain curtailment programs should bring that figure above 3.0 in the near term. We employed a cautious approach to fleet expansion heading into the halving, and we are still evaluating the post-halving landscape for growing our mining fleet. Our goal remains to reach 6 exahash by year-end. We are in a number of discussions with counterparties for new hosting opportunities and fleet deployments, some of which we expect to be finalized imminently.However, we are still approaching fleet growth cautiously, and we will only implement new growth programs if the economics meet our criteria. Having 2 uncorrelated revenue streams allows us to be selective on the timing of deploying growth capital. Our average fleet efficiency for our active fleet was 28.3 joules per terahash as of March 31, 2024, a slight improvement compared to the year-end 2023. We aim to improve that metric considerably as we build out our mining fleet with more efficient miners.As of March 31, 2024, our Bitcoin mining fleet was approximately 85% carbon free, a decrease from our year-end 2023 run rate of 93%. The decrease was driven by an increased consumption of power grids that use more carbon-based energy sources. We continue to strive for our operations to become entirely carbon free, but we must weigh the economic trade-offs in each deployment. Ultimately, we do hope that the market starts to demand greater transparency on the power sources that miners use. This will help incentivize greater sustainability practices from the mining industry at large.As mentioned last quarter, we still need to secure around 40 megawatts to reach our 6 exahash goal. We are currently in late-stage discussions with several potential hosting partners that would put a significant dent into that requirement if the respective agreements were consummated. We are also actively evaluating several M&A opportunities, both on the mining side and for high-performance computing services, or HPC. We've seen an increase recently in reverse inquiries from entities either looking to be acquired outright or for some sort of strategic partnership. We expect the M&A opportunity set will likely ripen further on the mining side if the hash price remains near current levels.Regarding potential M&A, we're not particularly interested in solely acquiring hash rate. We're more interested in opportunities that fill a strategic gap in our portfolio or improve pro forma margins and returns. One of the reasons that we have slow played our exahash build out this year is because we wanted to maximize our flexibility to capitalize on opportunities that might arise post-halving. I believe one reason that prospective sellers have approached us is the strength of our balance sheet. We had have over -- we had over $160 million worth of cash and digital assets at the end of March and 0 debt. However, we are actively evaluating debt financing options to accelerate the growth of our Bit Digital AI business.Our first quarter 2024 results represent the first time that the contribution from this business referred to as high-performance computing services within our financials has impacted our income statement. For the quarter, this business produced $8.1 million in revenue and a gross profit of $3.2 million. You may notice that the revenue number is about $1.3 million lower than the sum of the monthly revenue numbers we published in our monthly reports for the first 3 months during the first quarter.The delta is driven by a onetime $1.3 million credit that we issued to our customer as compensation for reduced utilization during the initial deployment period, which included testing and optimization phases. To be clear, this is a nonrecurring charge. For illustrative purposes, if we add the credit back to revenue, gross margins for the HPC segment would be approximately 72.5% compared to the reported 61% that includes the onetime customer credit. I would also like to point out that the gross profit includes our lease expense as we treat that as an operating lease for accounting purposes.As previously disclosed, our anchor client for our Bit Digital AI business has requested that we double the size of the GPU deployment and contract another 2,048 GPUs. We are in process of finalizing the terms with our customer and respective vendors, and we hope to announce the final terms in the coming weeks. We also continue to progress in our discussions with other prospective customers.Our goal to grow the HPC business segment to $100 million of annualized revenue by year-end remains intact. Given the market pricing trends and volume-based discounts, it's unlikely that we will achieve this run rate only -- from only an additional 2,048 GPU deployment from our existing customer, assuming that the contract is finalized. However, we expect to be able to procure the GPUs at a reduced rate relative to our initial purchase. This should help us maintain a similar returns profile and payback period relative to our initial deployment.Nonetheless, based on our conversations -- sorry, nonetheless, based on our conversations with prospective customers and the overall view of the market, we continue to believe that we will achieve our revenue goal for the year. We are set up for a strong multiyear growth in this business. To date, we have invested minimally in the business development or customer acquisition side of the HPC business. However, it's become clear to us that we need to expand our team and add dedicated headcount to support the growth of this business. So we are now actively working on making very key hires that will help us accelerate that growth.I'll now hand over the line to Erke, who will discuss our financial results.

[Erke Huang, executive]

Thank you, Sam. I will now discuss certain financial results for the first quarter of 2024. Total revenue was $30.3 million, a 266% increase compared to the prior year. The revenue increase was primarily driven by higher realized Bitcoin price and the start of our HPC services business. Our Bitcoin production increased 13% year-over-year to 410.7. The increase was driven by an increase in our active hash rate and partially offset by an increase in Bitcoin network difficulty. Our HPC services business began generating revenue in mid-January and recognized $8.1 million during the quarter. This is net of a onetime $1.3 million credit we issued to our customer, as previously mentioned.Our Ethereum staking strategy generated approximately $326,000 during the first quarter, and the total cost of revenue was $15.2 million compared to $5.2 million in the prior year. The increase was primarily driven by an increase of our active mining fleet, higher Bitcoin network difficulty and the start of our HPC services business. Our electricity price was approximately $0.05 per kilowatt hour for the quarter. Our production cost per Bitcoin defined as electricity and other hosting fees divided by Bitcoin production amounted to approximately $19,700 for the quarter. Profit fees amounted to around $10,300 per Bitcoin for Q1. Profit sharing fees spiked due to the sharp increase in Bitcoin price. However, following the halving and reduction of block rewards, profit sharing fees should decrease materially in Q2 and current Bitcoin prices, which should partially offset the margin impact from the halving.General and administrative costs were approximately $6 million compared to $5.2 million during the prior year quarter. The increase was mostly driven by higher professional and consulting expenses. Depreciation and amortization expense was $6.8 million for the first quarter compared to $3.6 million last year, with the increase driven by a larger mining fleet and a GPU fleet that was deployed in early 2024. Adjusted EBITDA of $58.5 million for the quarter compared to $1.5 million in Q1 2023. The improvement was primarily driven by gross margin expansion and the introduction of high-margin HPC business and, of course, higher Bitcoin prices. We implemented the new FASB and fair value accounting rules during the quarter, which resulted in a pretax gain of approximately $43.5 million on our digital assets. GAAP earnings per share were $0.43 for the quarter compared to a loss of $0.03 in the prior year.Turning to our balance sheet. We held approximately $35 million of cash and restricted cash as of March 31, 2024, and our digital asset position was worth approximately after $128 million. The total assets amounted to $291 million at the end of the quarter, while shareholders' equity was $265 million. Our balance sheet remains debt free, but we are actively evaluating potential debt financing to grow our HPC business. CapEx was less than $1 million during the quarter and was used for the purchase of approximately 2,300 miners. Note that our capital commitment to the quarter was reduced by the decision to enter into a sale-leaseback agreement for 96 HPC servers.We raised approximately $38.7 million of net proceeds from the issuance of 12.9 million ordinary shares during the first quarter. The majority of the shares were issued in January when our share price was higher and the proceeds were raised to both partially fund the build-out of our HPC business and to fortify our balance sheet ahead of the halving.I will now turn the call back to Sam for closing remarks.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Thank you, Erke. Bit Digital is focused on building a company that succeeds in all phases of the cycle. We gladly benefited from the run-up in Bitcoin prices, but we knew that the halving would offset that benefit, and it has with the hash price falling to all-time lows at the end of April. We were expecting a difficult mining environment post-halving, and we prepared accordingly. We have a formidable balance sheet and an HPC business that already generates enough income to cover our cash overhead. It's also worth reminding ourselves that there is no halving event in AI.Look, we still run a profitable mining business at the current hash price, but the margin for error has been reduced. This is why we designed our business to be resilient to hash price as we don't want to find ourselves in a position of being held hostage by certain macro events we don't control. Bitcoin mining is speculative in nature, and we accept that risk/reward trade-off, but we don't want our entire business to be predicated on speculation. This is why we diversified into the HPC space. Bit Digital's AI business is not aspirational, it's real, and we see significant growth runway on the HPC side, and we are actively looking to capitalize on those secular tailwinds.We are starting to build out our team, and we've earmarked capital to expand our GPU fleet and also enhance the breadth of our offerings. Having 2 distinct business lines afford us optionality in terms of when and where we can allocate capital, we think this is a key advantage. We are not forced to always reinvest in a single business line regardless of the returns profile. We don't just have one lever. We are able to weigh different options at any given time and invest our capital in the area we expect to yield the best return on capital.Bitcoin mining is a capital-intensive business. Returns are primarily dictated by macro factors. It can be a great business or a terrible business at any given time depending on the hash price. We don't believe it's prudent for our company to pursue a perpetual exahash growth model that many in the sector champion, the idea of having to continuously raise external capital to chase exahash growth when marginal utility is naturally diminished by the consensus mechanism is a perplexing notion to us. We would prefer to invest in an uncorrelated business line that generates predictable free cash flow that can then be reinvested into the Bitcoin mining business when the returns justify the investment at any given time. As I mentioned earlier, we don't just have one lever.Finally, we believe our company remains considerably misunderstood by the markets. It is our opinion that our Bitcoin mining business and the HPC business are complementary and synergistic business designs, and we're able to grow the HPC business to a $50 million run rate revenue business in a very short time with the same team we used to run the mining business. That said, it does seem like the retail side of the market is more concerned about growing the mining business, while institutional investors would like to see us invest exclusively in the HPC business. It's unclear how this plays out. But regardless, we do believe our valuation will normalize over time.With that, I would like to open the line up for some questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Mike Grondahl with Northland Securities.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

First question, you received that letter about the second 2,000 GPUs back in late March, what's kind of taking so long there for final terms or final contract? And then do you think those GPUs will still be sort of installed and live by June 30?

[Erke Huang, executive]

This is Erke speaking.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Oh, I'm so sorry, I was on mute. I apologize. [indiscernible] Go ahead, Erke. I was on mute by accident. But go ahead, Erke.

[Erke Huang, executive]

Okay. Yes. So why it took so long was a combination of preparing all the vendors for the deployment? And yes, ultimately, as we're working with the vendor and the client to -- for deployment, so it took a little bit more time. And we are expecting to see installations by June 30 or around that time. So that's still the target.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Yes, Mike. So we're finalizing this in basically weeks.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

Got it. And June 30 is still, I don't know, your best guess of installation and when it's generating revenue?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Give or take a week.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

Okay. Okay.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

We're talking weeks here, not more.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

Got it. Got it. And related to that, you talked a little bit about a volume discount, which I think the customer is getting because it's a second 2,000. But I think you also referred to like a purchase discount. Are you finding, what, the market competitive for GPUs, so you're getting them at a lower price also? Could you just kind of explain that a little bit?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Yes. Erke, do you want to take that? I can -- it's either one of us.

[Erke Huang, executive]

Yes. So for a onetime credit was due to the backing up and the installation, then we give the customer [ that ]. And yes, we are seeing more competitive pricing for those service as the manufacturing production of chips from OEMs are coming up. So we should be seeing better pricing for our procurement -- from our procurement perspective as well.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

Got it. I think on the first 2,000, it was about $60 million for the GPUs and the networking equipment. Is it meaningly below that? Or, I don't know, can you kind of give us a sense of direction?

[Erke Huang, executive]

Yes, it's going to be lower, but like I previously said, its being finalized. So it's not finalized yet. We should be able to announce that in the coming weeks.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

Got it. Got it. And then in regards to potential customer 2, 3 and 4, you said you're hiring a team, a sales team, I think you said to help with that process. Has that process [ slowed ] down? Or is that still moving rapidly? I guess I'm trying to understand what your message is there about getting like a second or third customer.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

I'm happy to take that. So yes, so the process with potential clients is moving forward, but nobody owns that process at the moment, and that's why we're hiring ahead of revenue. We've been -- we're pretty much in final discussions with very experienced people in the relevant space. And we need somebody who actually owns the sales process to accelerate and unleash the business. And so we intend to do that key hire and announce that and in the medium term, build that team. But there is absolutely 0 salespeople at Bit Digital.Everything has been done with the existing management team so far. But in order to unleash and grow this business and to take on all the inquiries that we're getting, it's important that somebody owns that process, which is why we are in the process of interviewing this head of revenue person, and we look forward to making that announcement soon. But in the meantime, Mike, there's the clients, the potential clients, that is moving forward. But frankly, it could move forward faster if we had a head of revenue and that way someone is owning the sales process.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

Got it. I mean it's hard to draw a time line, but do you think you could announce something summer, fall, about a second or third customer? What's your best guess?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

For customer? Well, certainly, we'll -- I believe, and this is just my view, we'll certainly be announcing the head of revenue, hopefully, soon. And I would prefer to get that answer from the question you just asked from our head of revenue because he or she will have to look at the landscape of all the inquiries we have and where the status quo is with these clients. But it's still -- it remains a pregnant pipeline. It's just, again, we need somebody to own that process to accelerate the sales cycle. It doesn't work for management to be running the business and also owning the sales cycle, as you can imagine. This is a sales business, and we need that sales team. And that's one of the reasons why hiring a sales team will help unleash and accelerate all these leads that we have right now.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

Got it. Got it. And then just lastly, on the last call, you guys talked about getting a credit facility put in place to kind of help finance GPU purchases. Where does that stand? Is there a time line for getting that done?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Yes. I mean, in the past, we never took on debt because taking on debt and borrowing money for a Bitcoin mining equipment is a fool's errand, you can't predict the cash flows because you don't know where Bitcoin is going to be. But of course, we remain very open-minded to looking at credit facilities with respect to the AI business because it's very predictable cash flow. Every month, we're drawing cash from the client. So that makes a lot of sense.We have been looking -- there's a menu of options we've been looking at. There are certain terms that we want, and we just want to optimize the very best financing term. But until that is signed, we have to look at all our options. But for now, we're just -- we're speaking very aggressively with investors and counterparties who are enthusiastic to get involved in this business from a financing perspective, but we just want to make sure we optimize the best terms.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll move to our next question from Joe Gomes with Noble Capital Partners (sic) [ Noble Capital Markets ].

[Joseph Gomes, analyst]

I wanted to start off on the HPC adjusted gross margin there. I think you said it was about 72.5%. Should we expect that similar type of a margin going forward? Or do you think that margin could possibly even increase from there?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Erke, do you want to take that? It's more of a finance question.

[Erke Huang, executive]

Yes. So for the first batch, it's going to be the same margin. But for going forward, we do see some pricing compressing as well for H100 cards per hour pricing. So I would say the margin would be decreased. But yes, it's going to be until the contract is being finalized in the market.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

And yes, margins remain great.

[William Schnier, executive]

The gross margin that we report does include the lease expense for this first batch. So the second batch, whenever those terms are finalized, the gross margin will also be dictated whether there is some extent of a lease expense in that as well.

[Joseph Gomes, analyst]

Okay. And then professional and consulting expenses increased to $2.6 million from $1 million. Just maybe you could just give us a little more color on what was driving those costs.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Yes, I can take that. So those costs were related to the sales process for placing the deal. And professional services related to installation of the equipment.

[Joseph Gomes, analyst]

Okay. And then I was wondering maybe just, Sam, if you could give us a little more color on what you've been seeing as kind of the overall environment sense to halving, kind of maybe give us a little more color or detail on what you're seeing out there today.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

With respect to how it relates to the HPC business or the Bitcoin mining business or just generally?

[Joseph Gomes, analyst]

The mining business. The mining business.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Well, I mean, everything is dictated by the hash price. And I think that the sector is sometimes myopic and that they only have one lever. There's an old saying, if all you have is a hammer, everything you see are nails. And so with respect to our sector, they only have one lever, and that lever is growth at all costs. And that is dangerous. And we've been able to avoid that because we have a real related -- we have a real business on the HPC side that we're able to leverage our existing know-how with respect to procurement of specialized machines and identifying data centers. And so we were able to establish that business line.And I just want to emphasize, it's a -- only a business that you have the following 3 things. If you have access to these machines, which are difficult to get. If you have access to a data center to park those machines. And lastly, you have clients. If you don't have all those 3, it's just an aspiration. So we have all those 3. We have a real business. We're drawing revenue every month, and that is really important with respect to the Bitcoin mining business because we're able to allocate at the right time and not overpay for things. Bit Digital historically has always ran a countercyclical growth strategy. And that has worked out very well so that we're not overpaying just to get sexy headlines. So we're really comfortable with our position. We have levers and hopefully, the market will understand that and begin to normalize our price.

[Joseph Gomes, analyst]

Okay. And then one more for me, and I'll jump back in queue. I'm assuming with the agreement so close for the second batch on the HPC side, you already have the hosting capacity. But once that is done, if you were to get customer 2, 3, 4, do you need additional hosting capacity? Or do you already have under contract enough hosting capacity to add on a customer 2 or a customer 3 on the HPC side?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Yes. We have enough capacity for sure to accommodate that client demand. And I will add that we are in the market to potentially even acquire and get vertically integrated on the HPC side. The reason why that's interesting for us is basically the margins on the business, it's basically -- you require just basically 90% less energy to produce the same amount of revenue on the HPC side than the Bitcoin mining side. So it's an interesting vertical integration that we're seriously considering and we are talking to various counterparties to potentially get vertically integrated on that side of the business. But to answer your question directly, once again, we definitely have enough capacity to meet client demand. That is something we already have. But we are looking to vertically integrate on that side of the business.

[Operator]

We'll move to our next question from Kevin Dede with H.C. Wainwright.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

Sam, Erke, Cam. Sam, just to go back to your last touch, which was on my question list about building or acquiring your own infrastructure. Can you kind of just go through your rationalization of that given your commentary regarding investments and timing? I guess you're just more comfortable there because you can see return, right, regardless of hash price. But...

[Samir Tabar, executive]

That's right.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

Maybe...

[Samir Tabar, executive]

For example, 4 megawatts on the HPC side produces the same amount of revenue as 40 megawatts on the Bitcoin mining side. So the math is nice.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

So can you give us some insight on the expertise that you think you'd need to do that? The -- what you have to do on the management team side to be able to accommodate that expertise and what kind of timing you had in mind?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Sure. Well, with respect to the expertise in the way we're doing it now, which is pretty successful, we have a track record already. We have -- we've contracted with that data center in Iceland and things are going very well. If things were not going very well, the client would not be asking to grow the fleet. So things are going pretty well there, and our expertise is pretty good on that front. But if we were to acquire a data center to accommodate and vertically integrate this business, of course, there's going to be a management team attached to that particular infrastructure, and we'll be leveraging that management team very, very deeply in order to expand the margins on this business once we're vertically integrated, if and when we become vertically integrated on that side of the business.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

Do I understand everything correctly...

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Yes, sorry, go ahead.

[William Schnier, executive]

I mean that's sort of the attractive component of M&A on that side is that we would be able to acquire an existing team in place to run the operation and also just acquiring an existing book of business and an existing pipeline of new leads.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

So the idea then, Cam, I should think about your expansion there as buy versus build?

[William Schnier, executive]

That's correct.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

Okay. Do I understand everything correctly, Sam, in that the next tranche for your existing customer, GPU side. Is that all super micro equipment? Have you had any issues with gaining that? And are you okay on the InfiniBand side, too?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

We are indeed. And that's a great question because a lot of people think the press -- I mean, of course, the H100s are precious, but the InfiniBand is actually even more precious. So a lot of people got caught with their pants down just getting H100s, not realizing that they also need the InfiniBand, Otherwise, they have very expensive paper weights. So yes, we have that covered. We had that covered when we executed on the first tranche. So we'll have that -- we already have that very well covered on the second tranche.

[William Schnier, executive]

And we...

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

Would you mind...

[William Schnier, executive]

So I mean that will be finalized in the terms when we announce it, but we're not necessarily [ bold ] into a single vendor?

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

Okay. Would you gents mind walking me through the lease versus buy decision on the next tranche?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

I guess it will basically be the math I just mentioned. The -- you need much less megawatts to produce the same amount of revenue. So...

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

No, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Sam. I just mean in terms of, right, the next set of 2,000 H100s and how you intend to finance it?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

We are looking at different things. We may use part of our balance sheet. We're looking at different financing options. There are some credit options we're looking at. We want to make sure that we get the best terms. It's much easier to get credit financing on the AI side versus Bitcoin mining side. There aren't that many counterparties who want to borrow money anymore for a Bitcoin mining equipment, very understandably because that got a lot of people in trouble in the past couple of years. But on the HPC side, because it's so predictable on the free cash flow per month, we have a much better menu of options, but we want to just optimize that. So we haven't signed anything yet with respect to that kind of facility. But we're at very much deeply -- deep discussions with various counterparties to see where that goes. Of course, we'll be announcing that if we move forward with that.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

Right, right, right. Can you remind me on how you handle the first tranche in terms of Bit Digital owned versus leased?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Yes. I'll leave that to Erke.

[Erke Huang, executive]

Yes, we -- for the first tranche, we have 256 servers deployed and 96 of them were through a lease financing arrangement. And we own 156.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

156 owned and 96 leased, right, Erke? Okay.

[Erke Huang, executive]

Yes.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

Erke, you mentioned the $0.05 per kilowatt hour power cost and potential changes to rev share. Can you maybe elaborate on that, given you're still hunting around for 40 more megawatts? Is there a chance that we could see those prices go down?

[Erke Huang, executive]

So $0.05 are the pass-through we got from our hosts and majority of our agreements were through a profit share arrangement and the rest were what we paid on top of -- besides the electricity, we pay directly as a pass-through. As of power pricing, I think in summer, the price will be higher, but we should be able to see the pricing coming down going forward because compared to last year, the gas price has come down quite a lot. So some of our portfolio hosts are giving us some better quotes as forward-looking.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

Okay. Then the -- okay. Yes, yes, I guess you offered -- Sam, thank you. You offered a great explanation for Mike on the -- on following customers on the GPU side. So I'll cede the floor at this point.

[Operator]

For our next question, we'll return to Mike Grondahl with Northland Securities.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

Just a quick question. You reported $58.5 million of adjusted EBITDA. If I back out the revaluation of digital assets, $45.7 million, I get to $12.8 million. Would you guys kind of think of that $12.8 million is kind of core for the quarter, kind of what the operations produced ex revaluing those digital assets. I don't know, can you help me with that a little bit?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Can you repeat the question, Mike, just so that we understand clearly.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

Yes. You guys reported adjusted EBITDA of $58.5 million.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Yes.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

And as I was reading through the financials, in the P&L, there's a line, gains on digital assets. It's $45.7 million. And so if I just take the $58.5 million minus the $45.7 million digital asset gain, I get $12.8 million. You guys running the business, does that $12.8 million feel right to you as sort of core EBITDA if you didn't write up the BTC and the Ethereum essentially?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Yes. I think that's in the ballpark, certainly in terms of what we define as core. It certainly depends on how you calculate EBITDA and what the reconciliations you make there are, but I think that is in the ballpark.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

Got it. I just want to figure out if that's how you guys think about it going forward? And then secondly, any updated thoughts on selling Bitcoin or Ethereum to fund some of this growth?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

I mean we definitely will use our balance sheet every now and again, but we do it judiciously. We don't have a formula. We don't have a preset formula, but we're strong believers in HODL'ing our digital assets, otherwise why be in this space. But we -- and we always liquidate some to fund our operations, but there is now an expansion into this lucrative business line. So we're looking at different options that could be liquidating our digital assets, using our balance sheet, looking at these financing terms of these counterparties that we've been negotiating with. So we're looking at various things, various ways of pools of capital in which we could expand that business line.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

Got it. And then just last question for me to you, Sam. Throughout this call, you've kind of described the HPC business. You're pretty excited about it. And you've referenced some of the challenges and the volatility in the mining -- BTC mining business. Is it fair to assume that the bar on the mining side is pretty high for incremental capital and things you're looking at over the next year or 2 to invest on the Bitcoin mining side?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Well, look, as mentioned, we run a countercyclical growth strategy. And so we prefer to expand on the Bitcoin mining side when the prices for equipment and the deals that we get with our contracted partners are good. We just make decisions based on economics. And fortunately, we're in a very unique position in our sector to have capital allocation decisions. We - -it's not just one lever going forward, just expound on exahash regardless of the price. And we are in a very lucky position to have that option. But at the same time, the markets have not given us credit for being able to run this business judiciously and profitably. We have a profitable Bitcoin mining business. We have a very profitable HPC business, and we have the ability to be dynamic on the capital allocation towards both. And so we just look at the returns profile. And if it makes sense, we move forward on one of those 2 things.

[Mike Grondahl, analyst]

Got it. Helpful. And I think you pointed out it takes 4 megawatts on the HPC side to run the same amount of revenue versus 40. So that's probably a helpful way to think about it going forward, too.

[Operator]

For our next question, we'll return to Kevin Dede with H.C. Wainwright.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

Sam, the April production update included a reference to unaudited $4.1 million in HPC-related revenue. Just wondering if that's a fair proxy for your consistent -- I guess, consistent production for that business going forward, at least until that second tranche is finalized.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

That's right. And that second tranche is going to be finalized any week now. But that number is going to change quite materially in a very wonderful way.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

You also referenced hoping to improve fleet efficiency. And I'm wondering on the Bitcoin mining side. I'm just wondering how you're thinking about that time-wise? I mean, from what I've seen, hash -- machine costs on a per hash basis seemed to be fairly low relative relatively compared to other points in previous cycles. So maybe you can give us some insight on that.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Yes, and we've been in the market to buy the latest gens of our fleet to upgrade our fleet. That's going to be an announcement in the medium term, perhaps the short term. But yes, of course, we're looking at the pricing very, very closely, and we have noticed that the market is softening up, which is what we like. That's what we want. But look, we've been, as mentioned during the call, we've been more judicious on growing the fleet because we would just want to see how things would shake out post-halving. Nobody has an accurate crystal ball on that. You have to kind of wait and see, and we just wanted to be judicious on that. And now that the markets are softening for the equipment, this is kind of a good time to start doing some buys on that.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

Are you thinking about staying on the air-cooled side or considering using hydros or immersion? How are you thinking about technology choices as you evaluate equipment and hosting partners?

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Well, look, we're not in Texas. So it's kind of -- it's nice to be in Iceland. It's nice to be in Canada. We have our machines parked in cold, crisp places that doesn't have too much stuff. So the air cooling works pretty well for us. Iceland is a very cool place.

[Kevin Dede, analyst]

Great. Okay. Appreciate it. Congrats on the quarter.

[Operator]

It appears there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back over for any additional or closing remarks.

[Samir Tabar, executive]

Well, if there are no more further remarks, thanks very much for joining us today, and we welcome your participation and we value our shareholders. Thank you very much for today, and I conclude the call.

[Operator]

Again, this concludes today's call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect, and have a great day.