Jim MacCallum: Yes. Thanks, Kevin. In July, you’ll recall, we raised around $7 million of net proceeds, and immediately, 25% of that went to reduce the debt. Plus, we had another three amortization payments of roughly $1.1 million each, and that came out of our operating cash flow and cash on hand. So that’s the three plus the $1.7 billion is $4.8 million or approximately $5 million there.
Tom Divine: Thanks, Jim. Our next question comes from Chase White at Compass Point. Seif, now that all your machines are installed and operations are going well, do you have any visibility into future growth options? Is there a time frame for making any decisions?
Seif El-Bakly: Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Chase. Look, we’re continuing our discussions with some key strategic partners and hope to share some updates with you on our next call. Right now, we’re — in parallel to that, we’re focused on reducing our debt and cost structure. So it’s really going to allow us to be opportunistic when we’re thinking about the halving. So I think we’re going to see a lot of opportunities in the market as a lot of unprofitable miners come offline, and we’re basically just going to be ready to take advantage of that be it from an operational perspective, financial perspective or a strategic partnership perspective.
Tom Divine: Our next question was submitted in the chat. How were the non-mining expenses reduced by 11%? And is that reduction stable going forward?
Jim MacCallum: Yes, I can take that. As I mentioned earlier, we were able to reduce our recurring non-mining OpEx by around 11% from the prior quarter. This was primarily driven by lower insurance costs, lower professional fees and lower salaries as a result of reduced head count. And so yes, we believe this is going to be an ongoing reduction going forward.
Tom Divine: Thanks. Our next question for Seif from Kevin Dede again from H.C. Wainwright. Can you speak a little bit about how the ePIC BlockMiner machines are performing in Quebec?
Seif El-Bakly: Yes. Thanks, Kevin. Performance is just better than expected. We’re seeing really good results, especially when we overclock them to about 130 terahash per unit. Currently, they’re averaging about 114 terahash through the fleet. So they’re representing about 11% of our overall hashrate capacity right now. Efficiencies on par with the S19J Pros. They’re capable of achieving good efficiency when we down clock them. So down clocking them brings them to about 27 joules per terahash. Uptime is outstanding, thanks to Quebec’s reliable power. We’re entering our curtailment season in Quebec, so minimal downtime still despite that is to be expected. Firmware-wise, it’s stable. It’s performing as expected. ePIC has been providing us with all the right updates and then the installation process was amazing thanks to our tech.
I got to — kudos to our operations team here. I think the rigs were deployed within 48 hours once they got to the data centers. So all in all, Kevin, I would say that they’re performing better than expected.
Tom Divine: Thanks, Seif. Our next question is for Jim. This comes from [Jason F.] in the chat. Can you comment on Argo’s capital structure and how you plan to continue addressing debt?
Jim MacCallum: Yes. Thanks, [Jason]. Yes, we continue to focus on paying down our debt. We’ve made significant progress in paying down our Galaxy debt especially, and we are continuing to look for other ways to strengthen the balance sheet. Some of the avenues we’re exploring include noncore asset sales and potential refinancing of our existing debt. We have seen, with the improvement in Bitcoin mining economics over the past month, more appetite for debt and equity financing from the capital markets. So we’re having lots of conversations on that front as well.
Tom Divine: Another question that we’ve received several times in the chat, how do you plan on — or do you plan on expanding the mining capabilities in Canada? And do we plan on renewing our contract with Galaxy and continue to mine at Helios once the two-year contract expires?
Seif El-Bakly: Yes, I’ll take that. So good question. I think having our history or Argo’s history beginning in Canada, I mean we know it. We understand it. We love the reliability of the power here. But we’re also nimble. We’re flexible, and most importantly, we’re mobile. So which really makes those geographically agnostic. When we’re thinking about growth and opportunity, we’re really looking at anywhere from hydropower in Quebec or Texas or the deserts of Oman. So we’re really open and having these discussions accordingly and remain opportunistic and again, geographically agnostic.
Tom Divine: Thanks, Seif. Another question that we’ve received several times, including from [Sabir B.], [Sagar S] and [Satish P], when should we expect to hear more about the discussions mentioned on the asset sales?
Seif El-Bakly: Yes. Thanks, [Savir, Sagar] and everybody else. I mean I appreciate everybody’s patience on this. As Jim mentioned, we’re still in advanced discussions with partners. We’re genuinely making good progress here, and we anticipate sharing something hopefully by the end of the year.
Tom Divine: Our next question comes from Bill Papanastasiou. What are your network hashrate forecasts post halving and how will ARBK remain competitive?
