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spk09: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Kenan Inc.' 's fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, we will have a question and answer session. Please note that this event is being recorded. Now, I'd like to hand the conference over to your speaker host today, Mr. Clark Susie. investor relations director of the company. Please go ahead, Clark.
spk05: Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our earnings conference call. The company's financial and operating results were released by our Newswire services earlier today and are currently available online. Joining us today are our chairman and CEO, Mr. N.G. Zhang, and our CFO, Mr. Jin Chung-Jing. In addition, Mr. Xiaoming Liu, our SVP, Mr. Leo Wang, IR Senior Director, and Ms. Shi Zhang, IR Manager, will also be available during the question and answer session. Mr. Zhang will start the call by providing an overview of the company and performance highlights for the quarter. Mr. Cheng will then provide details on the company's operating and financial results. for the period before we open the call up for your questions. Before we continue, I would like to refer you to our safe harbor statement in our earnings press release. Today's call will include forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, our outlook for the company and statements that estimate or project future results of operations or the performance of the company. These statements speak only as of the date hereof, and the company assumes no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements that may be made in today's press release, call, or webcast, except as required by law. These statements do not guarantee future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Please refer to the press release and the risk factors and documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent annual report on Form 20M, for information on risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in such statements. In addition, during today's call and webcast, we will discuss both GAAP financial measures and certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of the company's performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from GAAP results. You can find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations with comparable GAAP results in our earnings press release, which is posted on the company's website. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. NG Zhang. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hello everyone. This is NG, CEO and the founder of Canaan. Our CFO James and I are delighted to share our quarterly results from the company's Singapore headquarters. The market environment in the fourth quarter of 2022 became even tougher and probably reached its darkest moment. The Fed raised interest rates by 75 bps in November and 50 bps in December to fight inflection. As such, the recent macro environment has been quite difficult for the Bitcoin mining industry. In November 2022, the crypto exchange FTX and the crypto lender BlockFi both filed for bankruptcy. These unfortunate events further hurt creditors' and investors' confidence in the whole cryptocurrency industry. Due to this series of adverse events, the Bitcoin price decreased to a 52-week low of $16,500 at the end of the year. At the same time, energy prices stayed high because of the regional conflicts. While Bitcoin total network hash rate has increased by more than 20% from the last quarter. As new mining farms began operations and new machines went online around the world, This has made mining more difficult with decreased mining rewards and has even resulted in select mining farms to stop operating. In North America, where mining has been relatively concentrated since 2021, many miners and hosts have high debt ratios and financing costs. These borders have further impacted their cash flows, and some miners and hosts have gone bankrupt or had to reorganize their business. These problems have badly affected miners' operations, income, and demand from purchasing mining machines. We have mixed feelings about this industry downturn. During the fourth quarter of 2022, together with our management team, I visited investors, clients, and partners in North America, the Middle East, and the Southeast Asia. I wanted to understand their business and financial positions and start to weather this hard time with them. Faced with the current industry challenges and thanks to the execution of our flexible sales strategy as well as our mining business, which we have been expanding for some time now, we generated a total revenues of 392 million RMB this quarter, exceeding our guidance of 310 million RMB. Today, I want to take this opportunity to discuss three key topics. First, our continuous investment in R&D and the production capacity. Second, the ongoing development and the progress of our mining business. Finally, our understanding of and thoughts on the downturn in the Bitcoin price and the general public currency industry. First, we made substantial investments in R&D and continued to secure future production capacity in the fourth quarter. Our CFO will share more details on this later. I would like to address that during an industry downturn, it is a tough decision to maintain these investments. This decision showcased our long-term confidence in global Bitcoin adoption. In late October of last year, we launched the new generation A13 mining machines after the takeout on the advanced process node. The A13 achieves new highlights in computing power and energy efficiency. After the release of our new generation mining machine, we have been strengthening our cooperation with foundry partners. This will help us to secure the limited surplus production capacity of wafers on the most advanced nodes. Accordingly, we are moving on to mass production and upgrading our products to the new generation with better computing power and energy efficiency. Second, our mining business is bearing fruits. Our mining operations installed computing power in Central Asia and North America increased slightly to 3.3 xhs in the fourth quarter from 3.2 xhs. in Q3 of 2022. The power supply in Kazakhstan has been improving, but it is still unstable. Under these conditions, we generated mining revenue of 72.2 million RMB in the fourth quarter, up 16.3% sequentially. Despite the Bitcoin price decreasing during Q4, At the 2022 year end, we have 757 Bitcoins in total. Going into the first quarter of 2023, the Bitcoin price is showing an upward trend, and we are making further strides in our mining business. As of the end of February, our total installed mining computing power reached 3.8 XH per second. With additional hash rate continued being installed, we expect our installed hash rate to reach 5x hash per second to 5.5x hash per second by the end of Q1 of 2023. Our nearly 10-year industry experience enables us to explore diverse ways to collaborate with our partners under varied business conditions. We are proud to have become an international and agile Bitcoin miner in our mining business. We expect to deploy more mining projects in multiple regions in the future. Finally, as Rotarin went through four major Bitcoin bear markets, I want to share my view on the low point of this Bitcoin cycle. The fourth quarter of 2022, in my view, was the darkest time for Bitcoin and the entire cryptocurrency industry during the past two years. When Bitcoin price dropped down to a cycle bottom, some unexpected events also happened in the industry. This fraud seriously hurt the confidence of industry players and caught regulators' attention. But I don't believe this should make us lose face. We should see this as an opportunity for the industry to separate good companies from cheaters. This process will drive the industry to become more sustainable in the future. There have been a lot of negative headlines recently, but I want to point out the positive. Looking back at the 14 years since the birth of Bitcoin, we can see that today is quite different from the past. Even if we only look over the last two years, there were great developments. Now the number of Bitcoin miners and the total computing power of the network are at a much higher level compared to the low point of the 2020 crypto cycle. In addition, Bitcoin mining now happens all over the world. This situation formed a highly decentralized trading network. We can see that many miners are seeking and adopting low-cost, sustainable energy across the globe. These miners have monetized many power plants' stranded capacity and have many undevelopment regions develop their green power infrastructure. Bitcoin has emerged as an outsider from traditional finance. It is now facing increasing regulatory focus in many places around the world. We should be aware that the trend will well show the growing user base of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has formed a strong consensus and has a significant influence that cannot be ignored. Bitcoin has gone from a niche asset that few people understood to having tens of millions of users. We could even say that it has become mainstream. A new industry that has been around for only 14 years will observantly go through cycles of recession and despair to achieve progressive evolutions. During the industry's development, we want illegal and ethical behaviors to be exposed. Industry players are learning, improving, and matching. So companies who comply with regulations and act with responsibility will stand out. This takes us back to our original aspiration to found the company 10 years ago. At the time, our goal was to create a compliant company that supports the landmark invention of Bitcoin system with superior computing technology. To meet this goal and along with the global decentralization of Bitcoin, we are continuing to globalize our company. By the end of 2022, We have already established an overseas supply chain that can quickly fulfill orders from international markets and expand our services capabilities with 13 after-sales service stations worldwide. We also developed a headquarters with a multifunctional team in Singapore, insisting on producing best-of-class products. We have continuously integrated our technology and improved chip fabrication. By maximizing our product computing power and energy efficiency, we aim to provide a superior experience of Bitcoin miners and work with them to build a stronger Bitcoin network. Since the second half of 2021, we have started to explore the mining business and have further evolved our business model. With the growing experience of our team and the carry out of our mining operations, we installed mining hashrate has shown an emerging scale as of today. With that, we successfully expanded our business to the industry downstream, which helped us better understand our customers' need and understand Bitcoin itself. Overall, we remain bullish on the future of Bitcoin and the super computing technology behind it. Moving into the first quarter of 2023, with Bitcoin price showing some improvement, we believe the most difficult part of Bitcoin cycle is approaching the end. Now we are looking forward to the market recovery. We have recently received many orders and purchase inquiries. At the same time, we have also noticed that many miners are unable to place orders due to financial problems. Generally, computing power demand is gradually recovering, but recovery has just started. Therefore, we expect our total revenue in the first quarter of 2023 to be approximately 450 million RMB, or We expect our total installed hash rate for mining to be 5 to 4.5x hash per second by the end of the first quarter of 2023. With our new strategy of building our proprietary mining machine in conjunction with our mining operations, we already have two reinforce business segments focusing on Bitcoin. Going forward, we will continue to iterate our products and provide great services to our mining clients as we support the growth of Bitcoin ecosystem. Along with miners around the world, we will join in and contribute to Bitcoin's globalization. We will continue to adopt ourselves to researching and finding favorable mining sites. With agile operation and efficient execution, we endeavor to explore and design opportunities during the age of discovery of global Bitcoin mining. This concludes my prepared remarks. Thanks, everyone. I will now turn the call over to our CFO James.
spk04: Thank you, Mr. Zhang, and good day, everyone. This is James. I'm with our CEO in our Singapore office. Broadly speaking, in the fourth quarter, as our CEO has already stated, the market situation was very tough for both Canaan and our customers, as well as the whole industry. At the same time, we also faced our own challenges in executing on our product upgrade from the A12 series to the A13 series. As a result, we must make upfront payments for new wafers while sales are impacted due to the low Bitcoin price. However, we did make some good progress in developing the scale of our mining operations in quarter four, and it contributed more revenue than ever. Despite all the difficulties, for total revenues, we achieved 392 million RMB, beating our previous guidance by more than 80 million RMB. Regarding machine sales, in this challenging time, we endured the market conditions and continued to decisively execute on our strategy. Considering a very limited demand, we further lowered the selling price for our legacy A12 series models to spur our sales. As a result, we delivered 1.9 million terahash per second in a quarter, contributing to approximately 318 million RMB in mining machine sales, which is better than we expected. I would like to share a few points about our mining business. During the market downturn, we have been actively exploring and developing our mining business. Because these mining resource assets are undervalued in the current bear market, we believe it is the ideal time for us to invest and deploy valuable assets for the long run. At the same time, it is also a method to allocate our machines in inventory to generate Bitcoin. With further improved power supply, our revenue from the mining business reached 72 million RMB, up 16.3% sequentially. The growth is impressive given the decreasing Bitcoin prices during the quarter. This marks the first time our mining revenue made a 10 million US dollar milestone in a single quarter. Please note revenue from mining is recorded according to the Bitcoin price when a Bitcoin is generated from mining. After paying a certain power fee using Bitcoin, we had 757 Bitcoins as of the end of 2022. This Bitcoin balance was up 41% quarter over quarter, compared with 535 in the third quarter, reaching a new historical high. By the end of 2022, we had installed a mining hash rate of 3.3 exahash per second collectively in Central Asia and North America. By the end of February, we had a total installed hash rate of 3.8 exahash per second. With these positive developments in our mining collaborations recently, the company's total online mining machines are expected to reach a hash rate of 5 to 5.5 exahash per second by the end of the first quarter of 2023. Please note that the installment progress may be subject to unexpected issues and thus may influence the final installed hash rate by the end of the first quarter of 2023. The total energized hash rate is also subject to the local power supply. Let's talk more about the profit and loss. We incurred a gross loss of 230.9 million RMB for the fourth quarter of 2022 due to the lower top line revenue amongst an unfavorable market and higher costs. Specifically, for our mining machine sales, The gross loss of 136.7 million RMB for the quarter was mainly due to an inventory write-down of RMB 205.3 million. This write-down was a result of lower than cost average selling price for the previous generation machines, which suffered from the declining Bitcoin price. The inventory write down decreased by 7% sequentially as we strived to sell out our inventory to the market during the fourth quarter. If the inventory write down were excluded, we would have a gross profit for our mining machine sales of 68.7 million RMB. The decreased ASP of selling machines also narrowed the profit compared to the third quarter of 2022. Regarding our mining business, we recorded a gross loss of 77.0 million RMB during the quarter. Our costs of energy and hosting amounted to 74.2 million RMB, which was mainly due to increased energy prices. In addition, we incurred depreciation costs of 74.9 million RMB in the fourth quarter from our growing number of deployed mining machines. Excluding depreciation, our mining profit or loss, defined as mining revenues deducting costs for energy and hosting, was a loss of RMB 2.1 million for the fourth quarter. The loss was primarily due to the lower revenue per Bitcoin mined, resulting from the decreased Bitcoin prices during the fourth quarter. We recorded 223.5 million RMB for R&D expenses during the quarter. This includes about 96 million RMB for a one-off expenditure for our new generation chips. The remaining 127.5 million RMB resulted from our ongoing research and development inputs, which grew steadily sequentially and year over year. As most of our sales contracts were denominated in US dollars, we recorded a foreign exchange gain of 26.6 million RMB in the fourth quarter. due to the depreciation of the RMB against the US dollar. As the company continues to internationalize and drive global sales, we are considering adjusting our reporting currency, which may impact our foreign exchange gains going forward. As a result of higher depreciation, inventory write-downs and relatively higher expenses in R&D, we recorded a net loss of 438.3 million RMB. As our growing mining scale will continue to record higher depreciation and considering the modest selling price in the near term and the potential inventory write-downs as a result, we are not expecting substantial profits in the next one or two quarters. But from a longer-term perspective, the depreciation will not last longer than the useful life of the machines, and the selling price of the machines could be readjusted upward along with the market demand once the Bitcoin price increases. Despite these near-term headwinds, we are still optimistic about our capacity to generate substantial profits in the longer term. Turning to our balance sheet, first let's discuss our cash status. As our CEO stated, we invested a lot during quarter four of 2022 to secure our supply capacity as well as R&D and our mining business. As of December 31, 2022, our cash and cash equivalent decreased to RMB 707 million. The decrease in cash amounted to 1,295 million RMB, mainly including 848 million RMB for prepayment to secure wafer supply and production. as well as 205 million RMB for payment of value added tax and income tax expenses. Our operating expenditures used 149 million RMB in cash. We also paid upfront deposits of 21 million RMB to secure mining farm resources for expanding our mining business. Our investments in the supply front have prepared us with adequate production resources to manufacture our next generation mining machine and allocate increased computing power for mining. We made such strategic investments during this bear market, preparing us with adequate inventory for sales and capitalizing on the coming bull market. When the Bitcoin price increases, we have confidence the aforementioned investments will bring us notable returns. Also, cash is used to deliver value to our shareholders. During the fourth quarter of 2022, we used approximately 72 million RMB, which is equivalent to 10.5 million US dollars, to repurchase 3.5 million ABSs under our current stock repurchase program approved in March 2022, with an average repurchase price of $3 per ABS. In late November, we filed our prospectus supplement on form 424B5 to officially set up the ATM facility for future financing. We have not commenced using the ATM as of today and will continue to consider appropriate financing opportunities to fuel our future business growth. We continue to believe in the resilience of Bitcoin in its most challenging time. and have seen a civil lining as the Bitcoin price moderately improved since the beginning of 2023, which was consistent with our outlook. I'm pleased to report that in February, we obtained more than 200 orders from customers. Although the average contract amount is not particularly sizable, we can sense the customers are in a more positive mood compared to quarter four of 2022. In this recovery cycle, we will utilize our cash on the most critical aspects, such as the wafer supply to seize market opportunities and deploy ahead of time so as to expand the scale when the market picks up. Now I would like to briefly walk you through our financial results for the quarter. Total revenues in the fourth quarter were 391.9 million RMB compared to 2,184.6 million RMB in the same period of 2021 and 978.2 million RMB in the third quarter of 2022. Growth loss was RMB 230.9 million. Total operating expenses in the fourth quarter of 2022 was 393.5 million RMB, compared to 273.7 million RMB in the same period of 2021, and 275 million RMB in the third quarter of 2022. Loss from operations was 624.4 million RMB. Net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders was 438.3 million RMB. Non-GAAP adjusted net loss was 341.8 million RMB. Basic and diluted net loss per ABS for the quarter or 2.61 RMB. As of December 31, 2022, the company had a cash and cash equivalents of 707.3 million RMB. This concludes our prepared remarks. We are now open for questions.
spk09: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. As a courtesy to other investors and analysts who may wish to ask a question, please limit yourself to two questions at a time. If you have any follow-up questions after the Q&A session, the investor relations team will be available after the call. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask a question to management in Chinese, please immediately repeat your question in English. To ask a question, please press dial 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press dial 11 again. Our first question comes from the line of Michael Donovan from HC Wainwright. Please go ahead, Michael.
spk08: Thank you, James. So Kevin is on the road right now traveling, so I'm filling in for him. And first question, what is machine demand like with the depressed pricing and how is Canaan balancing between developing self-mining versus selling machines?
spk07: Hello, thank you. For this question, on the positive side, Bitcoin price has started to increase slightly since the beginning of this year. So the overall demand of computing power has shown some recovery. We have received more purchasing queries and small orders. For instance, in the past month, we received over 200 new orders with total amounts of about 35 million US dollars. Because the situation has just started to improve, the total amount isn't that large. So far, demand from Asia has recovered most quickly. We haven't seen much recovery from North America yet. On the negative side, inventory in the market has still not been completely adjusted. Because of this, the selling price of the machines didn't increase in line with the rise in the Bitcoin price and the number of mining machine orders delivered. So our selling price is still limited by the state of the industry. And for quite a long time, we have been preparing for low Bitcoin price and lower demand. Our current strategy is to grow our mining skills by enhancing partnerships with mining farms and reasonable power prices. This will allow us to utilize our mining machines inventories for mining rewards. I think by investing when Bitcoin price is low, we will see good returns when the price recovers. We expected Bitcoin price will not be continuously restricted in the next one or two years. And we will probably experience increase. So we are willing to invest in RMB and lock in wafer production capacity in advance. This will ensure we have enough machines with higher performance for both sales and self-mining. Thank you.
spk08: Thank you, NG. And for my second question, it's specifically about Bitcoin price. So you've been quite good at predicting the price of Bitcoin. From your perspective, how do you see Bitcoin price correlation with risk on assets? And do you see there being a decoupling from risk on asset prices?
spk07: I think now the Bitcoin price is mostly linked with high-risk assets. Yeah, this is my opinion. And so I think when the risk assets goes up, the Bitcoin price will recover. This is my personal view. Thank you.
spk08: Great. Thank you so much.
spk09: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jiaer Zhu from China Renaissance. Please ask your question, Jiaer.
spk10: Hi, Andrea. My first question is about pricing strategy and inventory digesting data. And how much computing power do you plan to allocate for a self-mining business?
spk04: Thank you. Maybe I take this one. I think it's about pricing strategy. We are seeing that the Bitcoin price has only slightly recovered and the whole mining demand is gradually recovering. So it looks like there is still a lot of inventories of the machines in the market. The current conditions are not very favorable for a rapid increase in sales prices. In the extreme case that the Bitcoin price falls again, we may have to lower the sales price again. So from our perspective, I think we will closely monitor the market demand and implement flexible price strategies to quickly sell inventory and collect the cashback And we will also take the advantage of market opportunities when they arise. In terms of the inventory, at the end of February, we have sold most of the limited amount of A13 new models that were in stock. and we are currently producing a new batch. We also shipped many older generation models in the fourth quarter of 2022 and recently in quarter one, 2023. Currently, our overall inventory level is sufficient In an environment of slow market recovery, I think we will actively explore mining projects and use more inventory for our mining business to generate Bitcoin rewards. And we expect our installed computing power to be in the range of 5 to 5.5 exahash per second by the end of the first quarter of 2023. So we are also actively exploring market demands for mining machine sales and negotiating with large customers to see sales opportunities as the Bitcoin price recovers. So overall speaking, we expect the Bitcoin price will not continuously be restricted in the coming one to two years. So we'll probably experience an increase in the ongoing quarters, leading to increased demand for computing power and mining equipment. Therefore, we have already locked in waiver production capacity in preparation for the upcoming possible bull market. Thank you.
spk10: Thanks Jun. And my second question is that do you have any stock incentive plan and dividend distribution plan?
spk04: Thank you for the question. Before the company went public, we established a program to incentivize our employees with our stock. This program has been operating smoothly since going public and is one of our key strategies to attract talented employees and research teams, especially research teams. We will keep discussing and planning together with our board of directors regarding the employee incentive plan. For dividends, currently we do not have a plan to distribute dividends to shareholders. Instead, we aim to invest more in research and development as well as production deployments in order to create a long-term shareholder value. As the company continues to grow and accumulate assets, we will keep focusing on research and development operations in order to expand our business. We will discuss the possibility of distributing dividends when the timing is more appropriate. Thank you.
spk10: Okay, got it. Thank you.
spk09: Thank you. Our next question comes from Mike Lake from The Benchmark Company. Please ask your question, Mike.
spk03: Thank you. Good morning. You mentioned that you have 200 new orders, roughly $35 million on the books now. Can you talk with Bitcoin moving up to $22,000 currently, what you're seeing for the demand, how it's changed from the fourth quarter to current, and the related margin pressure on that? And then mention whether there's new entrants inquiring about the machines or if it's just the traditional players increasing, upgrading their fleets. Thanks.
spk04: I will take this one. I think regarding the sales part, we have collected a number of small orders recently, but the overall demand has just started to recover, and the total volume is not that significant yet. Some traditional miners are unable to place orders due to their financial constraints. And high industry inventory levels have also limited our sales volume and prices. I think recently we are prioritizing some of our efforts on dispensing our inventory of old models and parts to quickly collect cash back. If the fluctuations in Bitcoin price lead to slower sales of older models in inventory, we may need to further adjust prices to make concessions. If under such conditions, our gross profit will probably be undermined. Regarding our mining business, We expect our mining revenue in the first quarter to further grow, assuming we increase the number of mining machines installed and online quarter over quarter while the Bitcoin price rebounds during the first quarter. However, as energy prices remain high, we expect the gross profit of our mining business to improve only slightly in the first quarter. Additionally, as we deploy more computing power, mining machine depreciation will also increase in line with the deployment progress. So this will also have an impact on the gross profit. Thank you.
spk03: Thanks. And then just one more question. Can you talk a little bit about how the operating environment in China is right now, and then also discuss the build-out in Singapore and the U.S., please? Thanks.
spk07: Okay, thank you. At the end of 2022, China adjusted its COVID control policies. Currently, it seems that the control measures in transportation and logistics have largely returned to the level before the pandemic. Our employees are now able to work more efficiently in areas such as operations, finance, and R&D through various forms of online and in-person collaboration. At the same time, we can go global business. So we can in-person meeting with our overseas customers. The size of our teams in our headquarters in Singapore, including R&D operations, has been steadily increasing and is playing an increasingly important role in our overall operations. We have also formed teams in North America for many operations. warehousing, logistics, and after-sales maintenance, providing more support for local market development and after-sales services. Additionally, we have set up 13 after-sales services centers worldwide, enabling us to provide fast and convenient operational and maintenance service for our overseas customers. Thank you.
spk03: Great. Thank you.
spk09: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Xuan Sun from Guoshan Securities. Please ask your question, Xuan.
spk02: Yeah, yeah, yeah. My first question is will you have additional inventory right now in the next quarter?
spk04: Thank you for this question. In response to the continuous decrease in Bitcoin price in the fourth quarter, we lowered the selling price of some old models down, which led to the expected cash inflow from selling these models below cost. As a result, we have recorded a provision for inventory write-down of over 200 million RMB. which is recognized as a cost for this quarter. In addition, the depreciation cost of mining machines has increased due to the increase in our equipment deployed for mining. These factors have led to a negative gross profit of this quarter. In 2023, the Bitcoin price has only moderately rebounded and recently declined, If we further adjust down the price for the higher hash rate A12 models, then we would incur additional inventory write-down in the first quarter of 2023. However, if we are able to sell this inventory at a price higher than the cost, the provision for inventory write-down that we have recorded can be used to offset the sales cost, thereby increasing our gross profit margin. I think I have tried to answer your question, Sean.
spk02: OK. OK. Thank you. So the next question is, what's the recent development in the audit risk?
spk04: I think you are talking about the previous PCAOB issue. Regarding the audit issue, Yeah, faced by the Chinese stocks and the consequent risk of delisting, I think we have happily noticed that China and the US are working towards a solution, and there has been positive progress recently. On December 15, 2022, The PCAOB announced that it was able to fully inspect, investigate PCAOB registered public accounting firms headquartered in mainland China and Hong Kong. So given the solid progress so far, the market is more optimistic towards reaching a solution for the audit issue. And from company perspective, we have been actively exploring possible solutions since the emergence of the delisting risk caused by auditing issues. Our goal is to protect the interest of stakeholders, especially our shareholders, and maintain the status and compliance advantages as a listed company. and to develop the longer term of Canaan. In the process of our globalization, we have also extended our operations and supply chain overseas. As a listed company, our majority of revenues are generated overseas. So we will continue to maintain and strengthen our government's capabilities for compliance and legal operations in different countries and different regions and maintain active communications with the capital markets. I think that's my answer.
spk09: Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Brantler from DA Davidson. Please ask your question, Chris.
spk06: Hi, thanks. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. My first question is, just given all the excitement around ChatGPT and AI, can you give us an update on your AI business? Thanks.
spk07: Thank you for your question. Our current line up of our AI chips primarily focus on CV or like analyzing and processing images like sounds through machine vision and machine hearing. I think it's different from the currently chat GPT large language models. But we are amazed and excited by the progress of technology. The remarkable advancements in AI technology have given us hope in addressing some of the problems that have popped in the industry, such as, as I mentioned before, poor user experience underlying intelligence levels. We believe that this is the direction we should go. So, of course, these new AI technologies have completely different hardware requirements compared to the past. And we need some time to explore and research in these areas. So I think in the short term to mid-term, we will continue to work in the area of edge AI chips that we are familiar with and we continuously iterate and improve our products. These products are still valuable and can provide users with better experience. But I think we have benefits because we have access to the high-end technology. So I hope in the long term, we will evolve this kind of AI shifts.
spk06: Okay, great. And then a different question, maybe this is more for James, is just help me think about the share buyback and then I'll throw the... The ATM, is the ATM more for growth initiatives where the share buyback is more for near-term uses of excess cash? Help me balance those two things.
spk04: Yeah, I think just now we have mentioned that we did execute based on our share repurchase. program in quarter four and we have not commenced using our ATM facility yet. In late November we filed this 424B5 and completed the setup of this ATM facility. I think that this will enable us to quickly execute financing activities when the timing is appropriate in the future. We will consider our own performance and wait for the market conditions to improve. I think currently the valuation needs to recover to a certain extent. After fully considering the interests of our shareholders, I think we will flexibly and prudently carry out financing activities. So due to the specific financial needs of our industry, it is necessary for us to have a long-term plan in the capital market. I think this will help us mitigate potential operational risks and seize fleeting business opportunities. Thank you.
spk06: That's great. Thanks so much.
spk09: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Braun from Rosenblatt Securities. Please ask your question, Andrew.
spk01: Thanks. Can you guys discuss your growing focus and plans for business growth in the U.S. and how that market's progressing?
spk07: Thank you. We highly value the North American market because it has a large concentration of miners. So we have established a multi-functional team in the local area that handles warehousing, logistics, sales, and after-sales services. We also set up several maintenance service centers or spare parts warehouses to provide more convenient after-sales support for our customers in North and even South America. I think even so, even through the current inventory level in the U.S., especially for used mining machines, it remains high. The inventories remain high. We believe that buying our new machines is valuable for customers. They can enjoy one year free warranty services which are very valuable for miners and can provide them with a better mining experience. This is that used mining machines cannot compete with. Besides, the natural environment and the resources in North American mining sites varies a lot. These sites are often located in different geography areas such as costs or high latitude regions with extreme cold temperatures or extreme high temperatures. So this environment conditions is very challenging. We work with our customers to provide customized cooling and mining solutions based on the conditions of their mining sites. At the same time, our mining business in North America keeps expanding. As of now, we already have multiple projects under contract or already in operation. We expect our mining scale in North America to be over 40% of our total computing power installed by the end of the first quarter of 2023. Thank you.
spk01: Great. Thank you.
spk09: Thank you. There are no further questions now. I'd like to turn the call back to the company for any closing remarks.
spk05: Yeah. Hi, everyone. We really appreciate you all taking the time to join the call with us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to our team through the contact information. on our website and we look forward to further discussion with you next time. Thank you.
spk09: Thank you. That concludes the call today. Thank you for attending everyone. You may now disconnect.
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