HIVE Digital Technologies (TSX-V:HIVE, NASDAQ:HIVE)' finance chief Darcy Daubaras joined Proactive to discuss the company’s latest achievements and strategic plans.
He highlighted a 2% increase in Bitcoin holdings with 116 Bitcoin produced in July. The CFO also spoke about the company’s expansion plans in Paraguay.
Proactive: From your July production stats it looks like another successful month for HIVE.
Darcy Daubaras: It has been. Once again, we've increased our HODL position by 2% and we had 116 Bitcoin produced in the month of July. One of the things that we feel is really important as part of our strategy is continuing to hold on to as many coins as we can. So, increasing it, even in these difficult times after the halving is really important. The whole team is very, very happy about what we've been able to achieve.
But we'll get to the halving in just a moment, but just talk about your average mining capacity. So, over 4.7 exahash per second in July. How does that compare with previous months?
It's been consistent. What we've had within some of our facilities is some challenges with keeping our exahash up just because of high electricity prices. We've got the majority of our electricity hedged in some of our facilities in Sweden, but some of the ones that we've got in Canada are exposed to spot prices. So, when those spot prices are announced and are a lot higher, we do some internal curtailing to make sure that we're as efficient and as profitable as possible. But keeping that exahash up is very important to us.
And at the end of July it was at 4.9 exahash. Do you see any improvement going forward?
We’ll see what we're going to be able to do. We have a facility in Sweden, a smaller one that we've been retrofitting and going to be bringing online shortly. So, that will increase our exahash and as we are adding more machines, as we've been doing over the last couple of months strategically, it's almost like a monthly purchasing. We're upgrading a lot of our older machines to make them more efficient, and that will increase our exahash. And we're always continuing to look for new opportunities to increase our footprint within the global community that we're in.
You mentioned the halving event. So, you've been bringing in new machines, more machines, more efficient machines. And that's helped you through the halving event, hasn't it?
It absolutely has. One of the things that we need to do is be very careful through the halving. And this is the time when a lot of the miners, if they're not keeping an eye on their costs, are going to run into some problems. So, we have been doing a very strategic purchasing program to try to reduce the operating costs and make our machines more efficient and upgrading those machines that we've got in our facilities to make them more efficient because, as we know, there's a huge volatility in the price of Bitcoin. And you want to make sure you're the most efficient miner out there, which will attract the attention of investors and continue to make HIVE profitable moving forward.
At the same time, you're also expanding your footprint and you have plans for Paraguay. Could you tell us about that?
This is something that we've been looking at. It’s been challenging for HIVE because since day one we have stuck with a plan of being green and clean. So, that's only using clean energy in all of our facilities right now. It's either hydroelectric or geothermal. There's some geothermal that we're using in Iceland. So, finding opportunities that fit into that mantra that we've got and that we've stuck with since we started it as the first publicly traded miner in 2017, has been challenging at times. There's been a lot of, I'll call it dirty energy opportunities that we've had.
But we have found this opportunity down in Paraguay. It is looking at about 100MW. So that would increase our global footprint from currently around 135MW worldwide to 235MW. So that's where we really get some huge advantages in steps. So, instead of just upgrading the existing equipment, we're going to be putting massive amounts of infrastructure investment into Paraguay and working with the locals there to build something that we think can be very, very successful for HIVE moving forward.
How soon do you expect to get going on that?
We're continuing to go through the due diligence at the current time. We think that if things run smoothly, we could have this up and running in 9 to 12 months. But as the markets change, and supply chains, we're hoping the supply chain will stay as smooth as it is now, and we don't run into any hiccups. This is something that we think we can get done in that 9 to 12 month time frame. We are working with the experienced builders down in Paraguay that have done this before. So, we're very hopeful that we'll be able to stay on track and bring this online very quickly.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and style