Nazar Khan: Hey, good evening, Lucas. Nazar here. To echo Patrick’s comment, infrastructure is the key. And as we look at M&A activity and consolidation, we are very focused on looking at infrastructure that is at the same cost structure that we have on direct costs or lower. And so, to the extent that it would dilute our direct mining costs, it’s not of interest to us. And as Patrick said, we believe we can organically grow. At a site like Mariner, we think over time that site can get up to 500 megawatts of total capacity. And so, it’s at that site, that’s kind of our benchmark in analyzing any M&A or consolidation type of activity.
Patrick Fleury: Yeah, Lucas, I would just add too, I think Paul is going to jump in too, but, as you know, I think you’ve been to the site, but we are blessed there with temperate conditions, right? A lot of our competitors based in the South are not. We’re not mining with immersion there, right, we’re mining air-cooled because of those temperate conditions. And not only that, but we’re 30, 35 miles east of Niagara Falls. So, there’s a lot of abundant excess cheap power, and I think you can see that. I mean our results thus far this year are proving that.
Paul Prager: The only thing I’d want to add to that is, Josh who had asked earlier, given the winter is coming, winter is coming but we’re at the place where it’s the source of generation for power, not the end user. So, our facility is very well located up North. The other thing is, I think strategic activity has to be mindful of an important element to everything we do, which is we’re environmentally correct. We’re focused on zero-carbon Bitcoin mining. So, one should assume that to the extent we’re growing, we’re growing consistent with that goal and also we’re going to be acquiring things that are keep us the focus of everybody who’s interested in zero Bitcoin mining. I think this is important because when the ETFs are approved and you see more and more institutions come to the space, this is a big focus for institutions, if it’s not a binary determination of who they can invest in.
And so, we could look at opportunities from acquisition of exahash, but it has to be consistent with how we’re built as a company, which is very much focused on Bitcoin mining from a zero-carbon perspective.
Lucas Pipes: That’s very helpful. Thank you. And I’ll try to squeeze one last one in. Patrick, you mentioned additional cost savings opportunities. And I wondered if you could maybe share a little bit of where you’re looking to squeeze out additional savings here. Thank you so much.
Patrick Fleury: Yeah. I mean, I’ll give you an example, Lucas, and, like this is an example of low-hanging fruit in an industry that’s maturing. But, our Directors’ and Officers’ insurance our first year was over $6 million of premiums, okay? I, like, won’t even get into the specific details of what that covered, but last year, we were able to reduce that down to around $4 million to $5 million, and this year, we’re going to get another really material reduction in that, right? And that policy renews in December. So, there’s like — those things, right, where again, there’s public company costs, right? And as we sort of have more experience and more track record, there’s a lot of juice still to squeeze out of those grapes. And that’s — those are I think examples of what we’re focused on.
And right, that’s obviously not in the numbers you’re seeing today, because like I said, that matures — or renews, sorry, in December. The other thing is we’ve looked at whether it’s candidly like the debt amendments in the past. We’ve also looked at some strategic transactions. Our third-party legal fees are definitely decreasing. And that again comes with just getting our sea legs on us on things like SEC filings and other things. And then, also workforce efficiencies, I mean as we get more experience operating, our teams are getting more experience operating, we’re able to just kind of squeeze more out of the existing folks that we have. So, I think it’s all of those things, but, like, there’s some really big ticket items like the D&O, which is a good example, that are going to allow us to keep cutting costs that I can see in the future and I’m pretty confident, which is why I said that in my remarks.
Lucas Pipes: Thank you so much, Patrick, Paul, Nazar, team. Continue, best of luck.
Paul Prager: Lucas, before I let you go, I’ve been led to believe that you’ve just recently had another child, a son, so congratulations.
Lucas Pipes: Thank you so much.
Paul Prager: A girl.
Lucas Pipes: A girl, yeah. Three girls now. Thank you, Paul.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Grondahl with Northland Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Mike Grondahl: Hey guys, thanks. Two questions. One, my takeaway on the operations at Lake Mariner and Nautilus was that it was a pretty clean quarter. Was there anything to call out operationally? And then, secondly for Patrick, it sounds like SG&A and especially interest expense in 4Q kind of revert back closer to the 2Q levels. Just those were a little bit cleaner quarters. Any directional comment on that would be helpful.
Patrick Fleury: Yeah, sure, Mike. So, I think the quarter was pretty clean. I’m looking at Nazar. We did have an outage…
Unidentified Company Representative: First week of October.
Patrick Fleury: Okay, yeah. Well, that’s for fourth quarter. We had an outage in October, but then in August, we were down. And I think we had a lightning strike or something.
