CleanSpark, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLSK) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Zach Bradford: No, that’s a great question. And I think it’s an important question to ask. And as we spoke to in there, we really think that the proprietary mining model provides us with the reliability and efficiency that we really want to see. We have a great hosting partner, but I can tell you that our team is dedicated to the two things that are going to directly benefit us in a way that produces better results. And I think that, that’s just a natural human thing that happens. And the human component of what we do, we think, as Gary said, is the secret sauce. So our growth, we really plan to push directly towards being proprietary mining. We do see being hosted and to have a time and a place, but that should really be when we seek out flexibility or when we have opportunities for miners without a place to give them a home.

But even then, I would say we would look to rotate that into a proprietary mining model on a long-term basis because we truly believe we can produce better results.

Greg Lewis: Okay. And to that point, there was a slide where you kind of had your progression and maybe it was just the optics of the slide, but it looked like the amount of hosting or co-hosting I guess, it looked like in ’24, ’25, that comes down. Is that related to existing contracts you have that potentially roll off?

Zach Bradford: We don’t plan on – right now, we have 50 megawatts of capacity hosted. And we don’t plan on that increasing in the near terms or anything that we put up on the slide. So really, maybe it’s just scale, showing our increase in proprietary mining, but we really plan on holding status quo is really the game plan now. We don’t really plan on changing anything in our current relationship because we’re going to keep those miners running in hashing. We’ll probably keep them there until they’re end of life or until we make a different decision.

Greg Lewis: Okay. And then just realizing it’s still a developing technology, but it seems like it’s gaining traction. As you think about opportunities to continue to build out your infrastructure, any kind of leanings or thoughts around immersion and the potential how you think about maybe deploying that at future sites?

Zach Bradford: Yes. We’ve had a great experience with our immersion facility right now in Norcross. And we are absolutely evaluating that at the Sandersville site, maybe incorporating that into part of it. In our expansion in Washington, we’re not. And I’m going to tell you why it really comes down to capital. It takes more capital to build the infrastructure that supports immersion cooling. Now in the current market that hasn’t been as supportive in the Nexpo market, I think that, that changes a little bit. What we really like, though, about immersion mining is that it does give you flexibility overclocking, underclocking, there’s a lot we can do with it. But we’re also seeing advances in what we can do overclocking, underclocking in an air cooled environment.

So what this ultimately comes down to, and we – there are opportunities we’re evaluating. It’s closing that gap for the capital it takes to build air cooled versus build immersion. And as technologies improve and get better and that gap begins to close, that’s when we’ll likely make bigger moves towards immersion cooling.

Greg Lewis: Perfect. Thank you very much for the time.

Operator: And we’ll go next to Brian Dobson at Chardan Capital Markets.