TeraWulf Inc. (NASDAQ:WULF) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And as Patrick said, from a payback perspective, you look at I think the cost of the kind of the 30 joule per terahash machines, particularly as we’re kind of getting closer and closer to halving, as trending, it’s kind of been in that, low double-digit, high single-digit range. And we expect that to kind of continue to trend downwards the closer we get to the halving. And the big, part of that is just, again, just, it’s almost a 40% to 50% difference on the efficiency and coming into halving, that’s going to be extremely valuable. So, as we’ve thought about where the market is today, and again, I think Paul said earlier, we don’t have a crystal ball and trying to think through, where exactly the market will be next year is tricky, but if, kind of the price of Bitcoin remains in the same range it’s been, and we go through halving, we’re expecting, somewhere in that, 12-month to 18-month period payback with XPs with that pricing.

And so, to the extent that the market does better than that, that window should be shortened, but as we think about it, we’re in a kind of a 12-month to 18-month payback period, rocking through the halving on that new equipment.

Josh Siegler: Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate the color. I’m looking forward to more updates as we start plugging in these rigs. For my follow-up, I’d actually like to switch gears, talk a little bit about the energy demand response programs that you’ve been testing to provide load relief moving forward. I was curious if you can give us an update in terms of how that’s progressing and potentially what the upside to your energy costs could be.

Sandy Harrison: Nazir, do you want to talk about those programs?

Nazar Khan: So, we’re currently participating in two principal programs, and both of those programs depend upon a total capacity of megawatts that we bid into them. And so, this has been the first summer that we’ve been able to bid in a meaningful amount of capacity into those programs and there’s two revenue streams that we get. One is effectively a right to be called. So, it’s kind of a fixed capacity payment and the second is, we earn effectively an energy payment when we are curtailed and so, the bulk of the revenue comes from those fixed capacity payments. In this year, we’re going to recognize, I would say kind of, the way we think about is an offset to a total energy cost. And that will probably come in somewhere in the low kind of single-digit per dollar per megawatt hour level.

So, as we think about, there’s energy cost plus our transmission distribution cost less the revenue that we earn from the demand response and so, from this summer, we think there will be an offset kind of in that low kind of single-digit figure in terms of when we think about it on a dollar per megawatt hour basis. As we kind of get into next summer and we’re able to bid the entire capacity of the facility, as we’ve been ramping this summer, that number should be in the kind of in that mid to high single digits in terms of a dollar per megawatt hour offset to our total energy cost.

Josh Siegler: Great. Thank you very much for the color. I appreciate it.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Papanastasiou with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Bill Papanastasiou: Two questions. My first question is just hoping to gain a little bit more color on the quality of the infrastructure assets held within the TeraWulf portfolio, hoping to be able to compare, the New York and Pennsylvania kind of location with other areas, other key mining areas in the United States with respect to cost and uptime. We’ve seen a lot of curtailment in Texas. Hoping to get some more color to that end.