管理層發言
Hello, and welcome to the BIT Digital Second Quarter 26 Earnings Conference Call. We will begin shortly. Following management's remarks, we will open the line for questions. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Daniel Kelly Kennedy, head of investor relations at BitDigital. Daniel? Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning. Joining me today are Samir Tabar, Chief Executive, and Erke Huang, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements. These statements reflect management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For a discussion of these risks, please refer to our annual report on Form 10-Ks and our quarterly reports. We assume no obligation to update these statements. Certain matters discussed today, including potential capital allocation initiatives, remain subject to board and shareholder approval in accordance with Cayman Islands law where applicable. Throughout the call, we may also refer to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings materials available on our website. Unless otherwise indicated, figures discussed during these remarks are rounded for readability. With that, I will turn the call over to Samir.
Thank you, Daniel, and good morning. This quarter was about capital allocation. Every decision started with the same question: how do we create the most long-term value from the assets already on our balance sheet? BitDigital is positioned to secure what we believe are the two most important sectors in economic history: digital assets which will settle on Ethereum, and artificial intelligence, which is powered by data centers. Ethereum is our position in the first, and WhiteFiber is our position in the second. Two distinct assets connected by one capital allocation model. Few companies offer meaningful exposure to both sides of that build-out, and fewer still actively allocate capital between them. Our conviction on Ethereum has not changed. The price did. Ethereum spent most of the quarter below $2,000, and I am not going to pretend that was comfortable. BitDigital is one of the largest public corporate holders of Ethereum. That does not make us a digital asset treasury, and it is not what we are trying to be. The goal has never been to hold the most ETH. It is to get the most out of ETH that we hold. Neither purely AI infrastructure nor a digital asset treasury. Neither, and yet, both. What we are building towards is the convergence of the two: assets positioned for where the economy is going rather than where it is today. Our Ethereum treasury is managed the way a company manages cash-like reserves. It earns while we hold it, and it becomes capital that can be put to work when the right opportunity appears. Unlike a traditional reserve, it generates a protocol-native return and also serves as a source of liquidity. That is exactly what happened early in the quarter. WhiteFiber sought additional capital to bridge its investment in its flagship facility in North Carolina to permanent project financing and to support broader growth initiatives. Together, the companies evaluated a range of financing alternatives. They ultimately pursued a related-party bridge facility. This provided WhiteFiber with efficient access to capital while preserving strategic flexibility and avoiding near-term dilution. Against a portion of our Ethereum, we raised $50 million of liquidity and then used our own balance sheet to originate a delayed-draw term facility for WhiteFiber, with commitments of up to $150 million guaranteed by the WhiteFiber parent. The transaction preserved our Ethereum position, avoided issuing equity at either company, and allowed us to maintain our ownership interest in WhiteFiber. Independent committees at both companies reviewed it, and Needham and Seaport delivered fairness opinions to their respective boards. We chose to provide the facility because it offered an efficient way to support our investments in WhiteFiber while generating an attractive return above the staking yield available on Ethereum. The principal risk in a structure like this is, of course, margin call. That was considered as well, so an additional buffer of Ethereum is held against its size to withstand market moves well beyond what we consider reasonable. The facility was designed as a temporary bridge to permanent financing for the initial 40-megawatt build-out in our flagship facility in North Carolina. That facility is anchored by Enovum and its investment-grade off-taker. Upon permanent financing, our collateral is released and the guarantee terminates. The facility is repaid with interest more than the staking income that we gave up and without giving up any upside. One decision in one quarter, but it contains the essence of the strategy. We approach our assets differently than a buy-and-hold treasury because every dollar, every ETH, and every share should be maximally productive. And that is what we mean by a strategic asset company. The assets themselves are not the differentiator; it is how we deploy them. Eric will now take you through the details of the quarter.
Thank you, Sam. Good morning, everyone. Our results consolidate WhiteFiber in full, with a portion attributable to noncontrolling interests. Second quarter revenue was $32.1 million, up 15% from $27.9 million in the first quarter. For the six months, revenue was $60 million, up 18% year over year. Gross profit for the second quarter was $18.6 million, a gross margin of 57.9%. Operating cash flow for the six months was $46.8 million, up 33% from $35.1 million in the same period last year. Net loss attributable to BitDigital shareholders was $107 million, or $0.31 per share. Taken together, the digital asset items, the derivative revaluation, and interest expense account for approximately $86 million of the loss. I will take each in turn. Turning to our operating segments: cloud services revenue was $23.8 million, up 42% sequentially, driven by new contracts entering service and expansion of existing agreements. For the six months, cloud services revenue increased 29% year over year at a gross margin of 58%. Colocation services revenue for the second quarter was $4.7 million, essentially flat sequentially, with a 63% gross margin. For the first half, colocation revenue increased 182% year over year. NC1 is not yet reflected in those results and is expected to begin contributing in the third quarter. Ethereum staking revenue was $0.9 million compared to $2.3 million in the first quarter, though for the six months staking revenue increased 246% year over year. We earned $0.44 million in stake rewards during the quarter against $0.949 million in the first. The sequential decline reflects a decision to stake a portion of Ethereum to collateralize the facility Samir described, as well as the decline in Ethereum price during this quarter. Digital assets mining revenue was $2.4 million on 32.3 Bitcoin mined compared to 48.1 Bitcoin in the first quarter. For the six months, mining revenue declined 58% year over year as expected as we continue to wind down that business. It remains solid today, gross-margin positive at 26% for the second quarter. Turning to the items that do not reflect operating performance: we recorded $28.8 million of loss on digital assets carried at fair value, reflecting mark-to-market movement on our Ethereum and Bitcoin holdings. We also recorded a $46 million noncash impairment on liquid-staked fees used in the WYFI over-financing transaction. That reflects the accounting treatment of the position and does not represent a realized loss. Separately, there was a $14 million loss from the change in fair value of the derivative liability associated with our convertible notes, and $8.1 million of interest expense; neither reflects operating performance. Turning to the balance sheet and treasury: on May 11, we purchased 8.57 thousand ETH for $20 million at an average cost of $2.33 thousand per ETH, and sold out during the quarter. Now to break down the positions as of June 30: we held 75.8 thousand ETH directly, carrying a fair value of $118.9 million. That includes ETH made staked through our validator partner. In April, we liquid-staked 73.2 thousand ETH and received 66.2 thousand LST tokens in exchange. We also saw the ETH exposure through an externally managed bond carried at $47.9 million within investment securities. Liquid-staked ETH is a separate asset from ETH for accounting purposes, which is why it sits on its own line under a different measurement basis. Our underlying economic exposure remains unchanged. Cash and cash equivalents were approximately $83.6 million on a consolidated basis, of which approximately $27.5 million was held at BitDigital and $56.1 million in WhiteFiber. Contract liabilities nearly doubled to $143.1 million from $79.6 million at year-end. That represents revenue already contracted and cash already collected for services we have yet to deliver. Finally, remaining performance obligations were approximately $1 billion at quarter-end. We expect to recognize approximately $57.7 million across the balance of 2026, $136.7 million in 2027, and $105.1 million in 2028 with the remainder thereafter. To put that in context, the 2027 figure alone is more than we earned in all of 2025. None of it appeared in the revenue line today. With that, I will turn the call back to Samir.
Thank you, Eric. We own Ethereum because we believe that it will appreciate over time and generate attractive long-term returns for our shareholders. That has always been part of our investment thesis. The second quarter was the third consecutive quarter Ethereum closed lower, but volatility is not new to us. We operated through multiple market cycles and our approach has remained consistent throughout all of them. We also share the belief that the market price of ETH has yet to reflect the value of the network. In our view, it is undervalued relative to what it is becoming. The fundamentals moved in one direction this quarter; the price moved in the other. That disconnect has not gone unnoticed. Across the Ethereum ecosystem, there is growing recognition that the success of the network and the performance of the asset are closely linked. Economics matter. The bull case for ETH is not standing still. Robinhood launched its own layer 2 on Ethereum, supporting a platform with roughly 28 million customers and $370 billion in assets, with fees paid in ETH. BlackRock launched two tokenized money market products this month, and JPMorgan continues to expand its own tokenization footprint. Tokenized real-world assets on public blockchains now surpass $31 billion with roughly two-thirds settling on Ethereum. And the institutional layer around the network keeps building: Ethereum Institutional, which launched with more than 500 institutional relationships, alongside ETH Labs, ETH Systems, and Etherealize. These are not isolated announcements. Financial activity is migrating onto programmable settlement rails, and as that activity grows, so does the demand for Ethereum's block space, its security, and its native asset. We remain confident the value of the asset will ultimately converge with its growing utility and adoption. That conviction shaped one of our most important decisions this quarter. Rather than selling Ethereum or issuing equity, we used our balance sheet to finance WhiteFiber while preserving our long-term exposure to the ETH asset. The next phase is execution. We expect the third quarter to begin reflecting what we have been building. Turning briefly to WhiteFiber, our other major strategic asset: our conviction in its long-term potential remains very strong, and as previously stated, we do not intend to sell WhiteFiber shares this year. But the same standard applies here as everywhere else: we look for ways to make a position productive without reducing it. One approach under evaluation is writing out-of-the-money covered calls against a limited portion of our holdings to generate premium income. That would require registering those shares. Registration creates flexibility. It is not a step towards exiting. Any such program would be modest in scope and subject to Board approval, and we would retain substantial long-term exposure. We have no interest in a transaction that impairs an asset that we own the majority of. We had WhiteFiber's quarterly call yesterday, and I strongly recommend that you listen to it; it is posted on X. But I will mention a few words here. WhiteFiber is entering an important growth phase across both colocation and cloud services. At WhiteFiber's flagship facility, initial capacity has been delivered, customer deployment and testing is underway, and billing has commenced. WhiteFiber expects to reach the full contracted run-rate billing later this month under its 10-year agreement with Enovum, representing approximately $865 million of contracted revenue. WhiteFiber is also expanding a substantial development pipeline and focusing its resources on the opportunities best positioned to move forward. As NC1, our flagship facility, reaches full contracted operations, WhiteFiber is pursuing permanent project financing that, if completed, would allow us to recycle the capital that we invested in North Carolina into the next data center. That is how the flywheel begins to turn: develop infrastructure, secure long-term customers, finance stabilized assets, and redeploy capital into the next opportunity. Momentum in cloud services has also accelerated since our last earnings call. WhiteFiber has signed new contracts representing more than $500 million of aggregate contract value, including the next-generation GPU deployments and a capital-efficient managed services agreement. So for BitDigital, for BitDigital shareholders, that means an increasingly valuable operating asset with greater revenue visibility, stronger cash flow potential, and the ability to fund its own growth. That is the model at both levels. Our strategy has never been to passively accumulate ETH. It is to build a productive balance sheet: assets that earn while they appreciate, assets that finance operating businesses, businesses that generate recurring cash flow, and cash flow that gets reinvested into productive assets. That is our strategic asset flywheel, and we believe we are early: early to running a company where the treasury itself is productive capital rather than a static position. We expect that to become a more common model, and we intend to be further along when it does. The transition in our business is already visible. Infrastructure and staking now represent 89% of our revenue, against 70% a year ago. Capital is moving out of our mining business with limited terminal value and into assets that produce. Our operating results improved through the quarter. Our valuation did not. Today, the market tends to value BitDigital primarily as a digital asset treasury. A treasury strategy is fundamentally passive: you buy the asset, you hold it, you wait for the next cycle. That is not what happened here. We allocated capital. We financed an asset we already own. We preserved our Ethereum position, and we avoided dilution at both companies. Those are growth-company decisions. Yet our valuation continues to reflect a passive treasury. That is a fundamental disconnect. Using observable market values for the assets that we own, we believe that BitDigital continues to trade at a significant discount to its intrinsic value. We monitor that discount closely—daily. It has been persistent and at times has exceeded 40% by our calculations. At this discount, buying our own equity is one of the highest-return uses of capital available, and the wider the gap, the more accretive it becomes. We intend to take an active role in closing that gap. The board is evaluating those opportunities in real time alongside our liquidity needs and other priorities. Addressing the discount also expands what we can do next. We continue to look for opportunities to deploy capital into revenue-generating businesses. And based on our current analysis, one conclusion stands out: the best investment available to BitDigital may be ultimately BitDigital itself. To our long-term shareholders, the reason to own BitDigital is to gain exposure to the settlement layer of digital finance combined with the high-performance computing infrastructure that will run on top of it. This is all supported by a productive balance sheet that allocates the capital it generates into additional strategic assets. That is the strategic asset company model. Markets can take time to recognize a differentiated model, but when the underlying assets begin producing visible cash flow and management demonstrates that we will actively defend value per share, that recognition can happen quickly. We believe BitDigital is soon approaching that point. And if the market will not close the gap between what we own and how it is valued, we are considering closing it ourselves. We will now open the line for questions.
分析師問答
Thank you. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, press star 1 for questions. We will go first to Nick Giles with B. Riley Securities.
Hi, guys. Appreciate the update. Samir, it was really interesting to hear you speak to the prospect of a buyback. I was hoping for more details on potential timing: when the board might ultimately make a decision on something like that, and should we assume it would be using the wind-down of the WYFI stake? I heard you kind of recommit to maintaining that ownership position in 2026. So should we think about this as more of a 2027-type event?
Thanks, Nick. I cannot give details on the exact timing of that. The board is still considering how and when to do that. But I can tell you that it is a very vigorous discussion that we are having. We think the 40%, or sometimes even 43%, discount to NAV is unacceptable and makes no sense, so the way to close that, obviously, is considering a buyback. You are right that we recommitted today to not selling our shares in WhiteFiber, and the reason for that is frankly greed: we believe that WhiteFiber is going to do extraordinarily well, and we just do not want to sell down that position prematurely. That would be shooting ourselves in the foot. We are very excited by WhiteFiber's progress. We believe that the market can continue to be favorable in terms of size and growth, and we are very excited by WhiteFiber's future. And, of course, as WhiteFiber becomes larger, when we start selling down that position, it will be even more proceeds that come to BitDigital, which is very positive for the BitDigital shareholder. So time is our friend there, and I cannot give you the exact timing, but we are talking about it quite often.
We look forward to future announcements once we get clearer visibility on how and when. That is very good to hear. I appreciate that perspective, Samir. My next question: you spoke to the different ways you are using the balance sheet and getting creative. I heard you mentioned covered calls. Just curious on potential timing around that opportunity and how you would frame up returns on doing that.
Eric, do you want to take that question?
Sure. In terms of timing, I think we are coordinating with WhiteFiber for registration statements potentially later this quarter, and we are working with a few banks for execution. Currently, we do not have exact pricing yet, but we should be able to talk about it once the registration is done and we have more proposals and execution on our desk.
Understood. Okay. Well, thanks again for the update. I will turn it over.
Thank you. We will take our next question from George Sutton with Craig Hallum. Hi, George.
Thank you. Hey, Samir. I am confident that you will soon have a facility on NC1. Can you walk through the scenario of that happening? Let's hypothetically assume that has happened. You will then get an inflow of cash. I assume that would be part of the fuel for a significant buyback. Am I thinking about that the right way?
I will let Eric talk about it, but just high level: the buyback can come from multiple sources of liquidity. Of course, one source is that facility being repaid, but there is also selling down our WhiteFiber shares in the future. So there are different sources of liquidity, not just this facility being paid back. I'll hand it over to Eric so he can double-click on that.
For the bridge facility we had with WhiteFiber, it is relatively short term—90 days to about half a year toward the end of this year. So once the NC1 permanent financing is done, WhiteFiber will obviously pay back our bridge and we will use the proceeds we received to unwind our collateral borrowing with DAX in this scenario. So not necessarily using it to do a buyback. But this is generating additional revenue for the digital side in a meaningful way compared to native staking. We are still trying to figure out what source of liquidity we will use to consider a buyback. It has not been decided yet, but I do want to highlight that the return we got on the bridge facility is higher than what we would have received on staking.
Understand. And sorry to get geeky on Ethereum, but a couple of things I am curious about: your thoughts on EIP-7,700 which would reduce issuance relative to staking, and also on the Pectra hard fork coming up later this year. What do you think that does for ETH and your stake?
I have been looking at the Ethereum ecosystem and the moves being taken to promote the price of Ethereum. As mentioned, there have been companies that launched recently—Ethereum Institutional, Etherealize, ETH Labs, and ETH Systems—and those companies are focused on accelerating institutional adoption and protecting and promoting the price. That is where my focus has been, and I have not been focused on the engineering aspect of Ethereum block space, so I am not informed enough to give you a good answer on those engineering questions.
Thank you. We will take our next question from Brian Dobson with Clear Street LLC.
Hey. How are you doing? In the press release, you mentioned that WhiteFiber is a core holding. Would you consider selling just a portion of it in order to finance repurchasing and take advantage of the valuation discrepancy between the two stocks? And on that subject, is there anything in your portfolio of potential investments that in your view might generate a greater return than repurchasing the BitDigital shares?
We think that repurchasing could be a pretty good investment, but that is a discussion happening at the board. Going back to your question about whether we would use proceeds from selling down WhiteFiber to buy back shares: that is something we are considering. But we have already committed to the markets that we will not be selling down our WhiteFiber shares this year. If we were to do a buyback program this year, it will not be with the proceeds of WhiteFiber. We are just considering it; it is on our menu, and it is a very attractive option for obvious reasons, but in terms of whether we do it and the timing, that is still up in the air.
Yesterday's WhiteFiber call was very positive and the tone of forward business was encouraging. As that company continues to gain traction, do you think that will help to erode the NAV discount BitDigital is experiencing?
I think so. If you compare BitDigital to its peers, we are performing and outperforming on a relative basis in many respects, and a lot of that has to do with the WhiteFiber holding. So WhiteFiber very much helps the share price. I cannot talk too much about the share price, but I think it is a positive thing toward the share price. It does sometimes create a larger disconnect on the NAV, and that is why we think there is a capital markets disconnect on BTBT, and we are thinking about correcting it by considering a buyback program because of that disconnection.
We will take our next question from Raymond Jones with B. Riley Securities.
Thanks for the call today. It looks like share count went up about 25 million shares in the last quarter. I know you said you did not issue shares for the WhiteFiber allocation or to fund Ethereum purchases. Can you talk about what shares were issued for this quarter?
We would strongly hesitate to issue equity at these levels today. There would be strong hesitation. Our capital priorities changed as the discount widened through the quarter, and that change is exactly why the board is now evaluating a buyback program. The Ethereum purchase and equity issuance were separate decisions. We bought Ethereum to lower our average cost while the ATM provided cash for construction spending. Each decision made sense based on the circumstances at the time. I think what changed is the gap between our market value and the value of our assets. That is the allocation test working, and it now points somewhere other than it did in the spring.
Okay. What was the approximate at-the-market sales pricing?
I do not have that exact data point on hand. There is no certain number in mind for issuing or repurchasing—it will depend on the purposes. If a purpose provides a better return than where the discount is, then obviously we will consider it. But there is no specific threshold number in mind.
Could you repeat your question again?
I am sorry. For technical and legal reasons, we do not want to provide specific trading or timing information about our own stock. All decisions are made based on circumstances, working capital allocation, and long-term considerations. We try to make decisions that are as long-term focused as possible and would not justify short-term commitments.
That is right.
Okay. So the dilution this quarter — all right. Sorry. Thanks, guys, for your time today.
With no additional questions in queue at this time, I would like to turn the call back over to Samir for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your continued interest and support. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. This officially concludes our call, and have a great day.
That will conclude today's call. We appreciate your participation.