When cryptocurrency prices were on a tear during the COVID-19 pandemic, with prices peaking in November 2021, a Dallas businessman started looking for a way to benefit from the surge without accepting the high risk.
Wes Cummins started Applied Blockchain, now called Applied Digital, which rents out data center space to crypto miners and other players who need a lot of computing power. The company operates on long-term fixed-rate contracts to add more predictability to the business, he said.
“It takes some risk out,” he said. “If our customers all go bankrupt, eventually there’s a risk to us. But it takes the day-to-day price volatility out. And it takes the technology risk out if someone comes out with a new, really great miner.”
Applied’s first active site in Jamestown, N.D., has created 33 full-time jobs with an average annual salary of $67,000 plus benefits, said Cummins, who sold Dallas-based investment adviser 272 Capital LP to B. Riley Financial Inc. in August 2021.
In the next few months, two more sites are expected to come online, including a 200-megawatt, 16-building site in Garden City that is fully contracted out by five customers and will also include a wind farm. The site, which has been delayed by the regulatory approval process in Texas, will need about 40 full-time employees.
The second upcoming site is a 180-megawatt facility in Ellendale, N.D., that has been contracted out to one large customer, Marathon Digital Holdings, a Las Vegas-based digital asset technology company.
“Our expectation to be at near 500 megawatts of capacity by early 2023 is unchanged,” Cummins said in a call with investors in October.
The company scouts for sites in locations with attractive power prices so it can rent out to customers for a lower cost, Cummins said.
Once these two sites are turned on in early 2023, the company expects to generate roughly $100 million in profit per year, which will equate to revenue in the $300 million to $350 million range, Cummins said. Applied Digital, which trades on the NASDAQ, reported a net loss of $4.5 million and revenue of about $7 million for the June to August period.
Applied Digital is still seeing high demand for space in its facilities, but the customers have shifted a bit, Cummins said. Several of them are companies that provided loans to miners for buying equipment. Now that some of those miners can’t make their payments, the lending companies have repossessed the equipment and are hosting it in an Applied Digital space, Cummins said.
Applied Digital and other competitors benefited from China cracking down on crypto mining in mid-2021, which forced some miners to find space elsewhere. But the company changed its name from Applied Blockchain to Applied Digital in November to reflect its ability to host a broader range of customers than just crypto miners.
“We continue to see strong demand from cryptocurrency customers, but we believe diversifying our customer base and revenue stream will be of long-term benefit to our shareholders,” Cummins told investors.
With the crypto meltdown this year, Applied Digital found another way to profit off the industry by creating a fund to acquire distressed crypto assets like servers that are selling for 90% less than they were a year ago, he said. The fund will buy the distressed equipment to run in an Applied Digital hosting facility. The bitcoin that the machines mine will be returned to fund investors, he said.
“This is a way to let institutional investors like family offices come into a space in a way that looks familiar to them, by investing in a fund,” he said.
Cummins said he’s expecting a few more bankruptcies in the crypto space in 2023, as well as some consolidation. Right now, Applied Digital has no plans to add any more sites for bitcoin mining, he said.
“It has definitely been a struggle for the industry,” Cummins said. “I think if bitcoin goes up in 2023, which I think it will, the one prediction I’m really confident on is that it won’t be without a lot of volatility.”
