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

Matt Smith: Yes. So we are going to run Scrubgrass. I would say more or less the base cases as a peaker or more than that, depending on carbon. I mean, as we start to monetize carbon potentially and perfect our design, carbon could be a step-change in the Scrubgrass cost of power. But right now as we’re looking at it the peak price for power, the rest of the years in July at 50 bucks-ish and so in that case, if you can buy power well below your marginal fuel cost. You will do it. This is Scrubgrass has probably runs as a peaker and Panther Creek is likely to run as a baseload — continue to run as a baseload plant throughout the year aside from some potential plant outage time that we’re not — is not yet in the calendar.

Kevin Dede: Okay. Any immediate plans to, drive the carbon lifts at Panther. Given that you’ll have continuous supply of ash?

Matt Smith: You would say we’re still — Scrubgrass is nearest term, due to the really high limestone, calcium element of the CFb process there. Once we perfect Scrubgrass where we started and where we’re starting it, we will move over to Panther. We don’t really see any reasons why — why Panther can’t scale as well. But we need to go over and further test the ash, the byproduct beneficial at this ash. And then ultimately we can potentially scale both plants. So that I would say Scrubgrass’s near-term focus because it’s already started and we have 600 plus acres and there are a lot of benefits including a very calcium rich nature of the ash. And so we’re going to scale as Scrubgrass first probably and then move over to Panther.

Kevin Dede: Yeah. I understand the Agri and grand demand on capital that’s the hinge. But have you considered other sites? Any change in your thinking on that? And if so, what type of timeline might you consider?

Greg Beard: Yeah. I think we’re on it. We’re always looking at other sites and comparing what we have today does it make sense to us to high-grade our fleet at our current sites or should we look at a — at new sites. We’re constantly sent opportunities review on new sites, but I think the cost of our power is lower than what most of us think that you’ll be seeing could achieve. So I think there we have no pending or announce on a new sites at this point. But we are constantly reviewing.

Kevin Dede: Okay. Fair enough. I’ll hop back in the queue Greg.

Greg Beard: Thanks Kevin.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We have a follow-up question from the line of Lucas Pipes with B. Riley. Your line is open.

Lucas Pipes: Thank you very much, operator, and thanks for taking my follow-up question. Greg, there’s a lot of talk about shortages of power, given demands not only from Bitcoin mining, but also AI applications. To what extent are you receiving inbound given your direct access to power and land package? Thank you very much.

Greg Beard: Yeah, I would say we do have interest from inbound enough, but I would say the recent run-up in Bitcoin price and hash price. It’s an attractive business to run right now. We’ll see what happens post having to hash price and Bitcoin price. But I think if Bitcoin were to be outlawed from the earth there is — there are multiple purposes for — you have 40,000 fully built-out plugs that have a computing capacity available given what’s happening in the world of AI as well. So that we’re confident that the all of the infrastructure that we’re running that we built with access to the power and that redundancy is a valuable infrastructure assets.

Lucas Pipes: Thank you Matt, a quick, quick question on the Whiskey, Tango slide. You’ve been in public markets for a long time, how do you explain these discrepancies? We’d be keen to get your take on this. Thanks.

Matt Smith: Yeah. So I want to avoid speculating, but I think what is — what’s interesting is that it’s a business where it’s an industry and the stock market where people can buy ourselves every day, and that can happen in any sort of way. And when you think about the reasons and past potential execution issues or our leverage, which we’re we’ve shipped some away some and are optimistic about really about escape velocity with cash flow related deleveraging against that debt. There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic and there’s hard asset value here that is absolutely in our view not recognized by the market in terms of our plants and the carbon opportunity. And so I can start to step through the different attributes of Stronghold compared to other peers and there’s some scale related things or some kind of daily trading volume and size related matters.