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

Patrick Fleury: Yeah, we love that question. Yeah, the first thing is I invite you to come visit our sites. I think you will walk away with absolute clarity with respect to the TeraWulf advantage. Clearly, we believe in regional diversity. Separately, we believe in zero carbon because I think that ultimately, you’ve got far greater volatility in fuel resource pricing when you’re dealing with some of the fossil fuels. Third off, Texas is getting kind of crowded. It’s really, really hot. And I think you’ve seen a real extreme range of what happens to the miners when the temperatures become extreme and their inability to really be as responsive to the grid and how that’s driving their efficiency and ultimately their pricing. So, we’re at two cent power at Nautilus and as Patrick mentioned earlier, in the summer for a very short period of time, and I mean, we’re talking about a couple of weeks, we’ll see pricing sensitivities due to climate or temperature, but that’s it and so, we’re steady at it and we’re low cost and we want to continue to be that way.

Bill Papanastasiou: Great, thank you. And then my second question is just hoping to get some more color with respect to the plans of the $200 million ATM. Do you foresee any of the proceeds being used towards paying down the term loan? My understanding is that $40 million will need to be paid down by April next year in order to continue the cash flow sweep any color you can provide there, thanks.

Patrick Fleury: Yeah, great, great question, Bill. So, yes. So, the term loan has to be reduced by $40 million by April of 2024 for us to kind of keep that free cash flow sweep through the maturity. Like I said, I think given, we are now free cash flow positive, you guys will start to see that on a quarterly basis where we sweep that term loan down. So, we feel confident that around current economics today that we will achieve that and we’ll continue to update you every quarter as we kind of progress on that. And with regards to the ATM, I think those that look at our financials will see we did use the ATM a little bit and we hadn’t used it for quite some time before. So, it is a tool that we have, Bill, and we’ll use it when we think it’s accretive and our cost of capital is such, again, that it is accretive but, unlike many of our peers, you will never, ever, ever see us issue, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars on the ATM in a quarter.

That is just not our game and, we’re focused, as Paul mentioned, on profitability, paying down debt, maximizing shareholder value, and then, obviously, returning capital, ultimately, to shareholders, whether that’s in the form of dividends or share buybacks. I think, we’ve all been around the energy power space for a long time, and I’ve seen models succeed, like the MLP model Master Limited Partnership in energy. And so, I think that’s more interesting of a route for us to kind of go down.

Paul Prager: Yeah, and I guess the low hanging fruit of this explanation is insider zone over 55% of this company. I am just not interested in diluting shareholders, unless it is for a very legitimate purpose, like expansion, or an activity that is accretive and so, I think that you can be sure that we will be responsible and judicious with our use of the ATM, as we have been.

Bill Papanastasiou: Great, thank you. And if I could just talk in one more question, how’s the company looking at kind of weighing the option of ramping and scaling the Lake Mariner facility to full capacity, I think you said 500 megawatts, versus being very concentrated in one region would TeraWulf potentially consider other areas in the United States or North America, for that matter?