MARA Holdings, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to MARA's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will turn the conference over to your host today, Robert Samuels, VP of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to MARA's second quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings call. Thanks so much for joining us today. With me on today's call are our chairman and chief executive officer, Fred Thiel, and our chief financial officer, Salman Khan. Today's call includes forward-looking statements, including those about our growth plans, liquidity, and financial performance. These involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. We disclaim any obligation to update these statements except as required by law. For more details, see the risk factors section of our latest 10-K and other SEC filings. We'll also reference non-GAAP financial measures like adjusted EBITDA, which we believe are important indicators of MARA's operating performance because they exclude certain items that we do not believe directly reflect our core operations. Please see our earnings release for reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures. We hope you've had the chance to read our shareholder letter and look forward to your feedback. We'll begin with some prepared remarks from Fenn and Salman. After their comments, we will open the call to Q&A. I'm going to turn the call over to Fred to get things started. Fred?

Thank you, Rob. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us. For much of the past two years, the AI conversation has focused on models, chips, and capital, but underneath all of that is a more basic requirement, power. That is becoming the central infrastructure challenge of the AI era. The market has no shortage of ambition or investment. What it lacks is enough energized, permitted capacity in the right places available on a timeline customers can use. So the question is no longer who can fund the next wave of compute. It's who has the power. That question goes directly to Mara's strengths. We did not arrive at this opportunity by chasing a new trend. We arrived here after more than a decade of solving the same operating problem at global scale, security power, deploying compute, and running infrastructure efficiently around the clock. Through Bitcoin mining, we built one of the world's largest distributed compute platforms, spanning 19 data centers across four continents. Along the way, we accumulated strategic land and power assets, deep technical expertise, and a disciplined framework for deciding where each megawatt can create the most value. Today, Mara is applying that foundation more broadly. We own, develop, and operate digital infrastructure across power, land, and compute. Depending on the opportunity, we can convert electricity into higher value compute ourselves or provide infrastructure to customers who need it. That flexibility matters. Many companies entering this market are still searching for sites, power, and operating capabilities. We have spent years assembling. Our move into AI infrastructure is therefore not a break from Mars history. It is the next use of the platform we created. The second quarter marked another important step in that evolution. We advanced the Long Bridge transaction towards closing, and after quarter end, we announced that we acquired the rights to a strategically located power site in Matagorda County, Texas, with the potential to support approximately 2 gigawatts of future capacity upon aircraft and interconnection approval. On completion of the pending transactions and required approvals, we expect our power portfolio to reach approximately 4.8 gigawatts, which would more than double our current capacity. We believe that would establish one of the largest powered land portfolios in the industry and create a significant platform for long-term shareholder value. As the opportunities become clearer, so has our focus. Mara operates one integrated digital infrastructure platform built around power, land, and compute. Digital infrastructure is our primary growth focus. That is where we are developing campuses and pursuing long-term customer relationships at scale. and our technology initiatives add targeted capabilities around that core. They help us address specialized customer needs, improve the utilization of our infrastructure, and extend the value of the assets we own. We manage all of these capabilities as one platform, and we allocate capital across them using the same filters, expected returns, customer demand, execution risk, and contribution to long-term shareholder value. Let me spend a few minutes on digital infrastructure, our primary growth focus. The demand picture is straightforward. AI infrastructure investment is accelerating while the supply of power-ready sites is not keeping up. Industry estimates suggest that the four largest hyperscalers alone could invest approximately $725 billion in AI infrastructure during 2026, and that annual capital spending could exceed $1 trillion The power requirement is rising just as quickly. U.S. data center electricity demand is expected to grow from about 31 gigawatts in 2025 to 41 gigawatts in 2026 and 66 gigawatts in 2027. New generation and transmission are not coming online at the same pace. That imbalance is increasing the value of infrastructure that's already energized or can be delivered with greater certainty. Our strategy is designed for that environment. Own scarce powered assets and create as much long-term value from them as possible. The Matagorda County site is expected to add approximately two gigawatts in one of the country's largest power markets. Just as important, it's expected to provide enough wholly owned capacity to support our transition away from hosted mining as existing agreements expire. that should increase our operational control, improve unit economics, and give us greater flexibility in allocating capital. The pending Long Ridge acquisition is equally important. We believe it will transform our existing Hannibal campus by adding adjacent land while contributing positive EBITDA at closing. With more than 70% of Long Ridge's power output contracted under long-term agreements, we expect the transaction to enhance earnings Thank you for joining us today. Speed, certainty, and reliability are principles that define how we invest, how we build, and how we aim to serve customers. Speed matters because customers cannot wait years for power. Our portfolio of energized sites can support earlier in-service dates than many competing developments, giving customers access to capacity when they need it. Certainty matters because infrastructure must be delivered on time, on budget, and to specification. We believe our development strategy, our relationships with utilities and equipment providers, and our partnership with Starwood will give customers greater confidence in execution. The Starwood partnership also gives us the ability to scale with proportional capital support. And reliability matters because mission-critical AI workloads require experienced operators. Mara brings years of experience designing, owning, and operating large-scale compute infrastructure. Starwood adds engineering, procurement, construction, and development capabilities backed by more than seven gigawatts of delivered infrastructure for many of the world's leading hyperscalers and frontier AI companies. Together, we offer a combination of operating experience, development expertise, and capital discipline that we believe few competitors can match. Commercial momentum continues to build. Our goal is a diversified customer base across hyperscalers, AI-native cloud providers, silicon vendors, and enterprises with the right balance of credit quality, returns, and long-term portfolio value. Working alongside Starwood, we are progressing lease discussions across multiple sites, and we remain confident in our ability to sign at least two leases before year-end. The objective is not merely to sign tenants. It's to establish durable customer relationships that maximize the value of our infrastructure over decades. Within that integrated platform, Exxon gives us a targeted capability in sovereign AI infrastructure. The customer need is becoming clearer as AI moves from experimentation into day-to-day operations. Once AI becomes mission critical, enterprises care much more They also care about where their data sits, which rules govern the infrastructure, how resilient the service is, and how much control they retain. That is the market Exion was built to serve. As a European company, Exion can provide private cloud infrastructure governed under a European jurisdiction. For enterprises and public sector organizations operating within the EU regulatory framework, that is a meaningful advantage. Customers can deploy advanced AI workloads while keeping control of their infrastructure, data, and operations. For critical infrastructure, regulated industries, and government-adjacent services, that level of sovereignty is moving from a preference to a requirement. The addressable market is also much larger than new AI applications alone. Roughly 80% of enterprise data still fits outside the public cloud. As organizations modernize that data and infrastructure for AI, they will need providers that can meet demanding standards for security, compliance, and operational resilience. Exxon already has credibility in those environments. It operates critical infrastructure supporting EDF's nuclear reactor operations, where reliability is simply non-negotiable. And for those who are not aware, EDF is one of the largest operators of nuclear power in the world. Its selection for the Aon Consortium, an EU-backed initiative targeting approximately three gigawatts of AI-ready data center capacity, provides further validation. We are also advancing opportunities outside Europe, which supports our view that sovereign AI infrastructure is becoming a global requirement, not just a regional trend. Our technology initiatives are another targeted capability within our digital infrastructure platform. It takes operating knowledge developed inside Mara and turns it into technology that can improve our assets and serve outside customers. Running a large distributed compute platform has taught us a great deal about power management, infrastructure optimization, and digital asset management. Some of the tools we built for ourselves now have clear applications beyond our own fleet. Vertebra AI is one example. The platform manages power allocation and infrastructure performance in real time. In our mining operations, it has helped us add computing capacity with the same electrical footprint. In other words, more output without needing more power. As power becomes more valuable, that capability should matter well beyond mining. AI data centers, independent power producers, and other energy intensive businesses face the same need to improve utilization. operate more efficiently and lower costs. The second platform is Hashrate Under Management, or HUM, our blockchain financial infrastructure platform. This is the first time we're discussing HUM publicly. We're doing so from a position of demonstrating commercial traction, not simply future potential. Both HUM and Vertebra AI reflect the same principle. Innovation should increase the value of the infrastructure we own and create value for customers at the same time. That brings me to Bitcoin mining. It remains an important part of Mara, not because it defines the limits of our future, but because it continues to strengthen the broader platform. Mining gave us the foundation, strategic power assets, experience operating large-scale compute, and the capital allocation discipline we use today. In that sense, mining was never the final destination. It was the platform we could build from. It still plays three important roles. First, it generates cash flow that supports investment across the business while we continue to operate with one of the industry's lowest cost structures. Second, it gives us flexibility. We can deploy mining equipment quickly at a newly energized site and begin monetizing the power while an AI facility is being designed, permitted, and built. When customer demand is ready, that same site can transition toward AI or high-performance computing without leaving the infrastructure idle in the meantime. Third, mining is still one of our best sources of operating insight. The work of optimizing power use, improving compute efficiency, and managing mission-critical systems at scale directly informs how we approach AI infrastructure. We will keep improving the mining business through disciplined fleet modernization and intelligent power management. As more efficient machines replace older equipment, we can increase compute within the same electrical footprint and improve the economics of the operation. So we do not see Bitcoin mining and AI infrastructure as competing businesses. They are different applications of the same underlying asset, power. The capital allocation question is therefore simple. Where can each megawatt create the most value? In one market, the answer may be Bitcoin mining, and in another, it may be AI infrastructure, sovereign cloud, or enterprise computing. Our advantage is that we have the assets, expertise, and flexibility to make that decision dynamically as market conditions change. We believe that flexibility is a meaningful competitive strength and an important driver of long-term shareholder value. The first half of 2026 was about expanding and transforming the platform. We grew our portfolio of powered infrastructure, advanced transformational transactions, strengthened the commercial pipeline and continued investing in the initiatives that can drive Mara's next phase of growth. The second half of the year is about execution. Our focus is clear. Convert infrastructure into long-term shareholder value by signing customers, bringing assets online, and demonstrating the earning power of the platform we have spent years assembling. Over the coming months, we expect to complete the Longridge acquisition, advanced lease discussions across the digital infrastructure portfolio, expand Exile's international presence, and continue commercializing our technology initiatives. Most importantly, we expect the investments we have made over the past decade to become increasingly visible in our financial results. The foundation has been built. Our focus now is monetizing it. Later this year, we look forward to hosting our Investor Day. We plan to provide a deeper look at our strategy, showcase our infrastructure portfolio, and demonstrate how the pieces of our business work together to maximize the value of every megawatt we own. So let me come back to the question raised at the start. Who can power, build, and operate the next wave of compute? Mara has spent more than a decade building an answer. We have assembled one of the industry's largest portfolios of power digital infrastructure and developed an operating experience to put those assets to work. The opportunity in front of us is to turn that foundation into a broader platform for the next generation to compute and to do it with the same discipline that built the company. Bitcoin mining provided the foundation, digital infrastructure, and our technology initiatives expand the value we can create from that foundation. Together, they position Mara across multiple layers of the AI infrastructure value chain while maintaining discipline in how we allocate capital. Ultimately, our shareholders should judge us not by our vision, but by our execution. The AI infrastructure market is moving quickly, and credibility will be earned by consistently delivering results. Power is becoming the defining resource of the AI infrastructure market. Our objective is to convert the power, assets, and expertise we have assembled into durable value and to establish Mara amongst the leaders of that market. Thank you for your continued support and confidence in Mara. With that, I will turn the call over to Salman.