WhiteFiber, Inc.

Please stand by. The conference will begin shortly. Hello and welcome to the White Fiber Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. We will begin with prepared remarks from management, followed by a question and answer session. During the Q&A, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Cameron Schneier, Senior Vice President of Capital Markets and Corporate Strategy at White Fiber. Cameron, please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to the White Fiber Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Joining me today are Sam Tabar, our Chief Executive Officer, and Eric Huang, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that some of the statements we make on this call are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. Such risks and certainties include, but are not limited to, those factors described in today's earnings press release, or Form 10-Q for this quarter ended September 30th, 2025, filed today. as well as our other filings we may make with the SEC from time to time. Our remarks today may also include non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our Form 10-Q and in the earnings press release posted on our website. Following our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Sam to discuss our performance. Sam.

Thank you, Cam, and thank you all for joining us. The third quarter marked White Fiber's first reporting period following our IPO in August. and therefore it represents only a partial quarter as a standalone public company. This period reflects the natural lumpiness of a business in transition as we align operations and capital structure for our next stage of growth. Our focus remains on building long-term value by executing on our development pipeline, expanding customer relationships, and advancing our financing initiatives. I will start with an update on NC1, our flagship development project in North Carolina. The site remains our top priority. Design, utility interconnection, and pre-construction work are advancing on schedule. We remain on track for initial deployment in the first quarter of 2026. We expect NC1 to begin generating revenue in May of 2026. Over the past several months, we have seen a significant increase in demand for credible near-term high density capacity. NC1 is one of the very few sites in North America with meaningful availability in early 2026. That scarcity has made it a highly sought after resource. As we expanded commercial engagement around the site, we received more than 10 firm proposals from leading AI labs and enterprise customers. Commercial terms for this delivery window has also improved meaningfully, both in pricing and in overall duration. We are now in the closing stages of negotiations with multiple highly credit worthy counterparties. These are large scale, long duration, billion-dollar commitments for our customers. By enterprise standards, the process has progressed at a rapid pace. We continue to work collaboratively through final diligence tied to project readiness and delivery timing. We remain confident in the path to execution. As a young company operating in a market that has seen its share of unproven entrants, Credibility matters. Customers are making generational infrastructure decisions. Our responsibility is to demonstrate readiness, reliability, and the ability to execute. We focus on delivering what we promise. We will not compromise on counterparty strength or deal structure simply to announce a transaction. Taking a disciplined approach now positions us to secure that partnership that maximizes long-term equity value and provides clear visibility on future cash flows. Excuse me. In parallel, we are working closely with our debt advisors, credit partners, and prospective lenders to structure the agreement that will be ultimately finalized to be readily financeable on cost-effective terms. We expect the facility to target roughly 75% loan to value with the remaining equity portion funded through existing liquidity, operating cash flow, or other available sources. Our goal is to secure financing that supports the full 99 megawatt campus. We also want to maintain balance sheet flexibility and align capital deployment with contracted demand. In short, NC1 remains firmly on track. We believe the discipline that we've shown has strengthened both the commercial and financial profile of the project. We remain focused on execution and on building a cornerstone asset that will drive significant value for years to come. We believe the discipline and the patients that we've shown are now yielding a better result. We expect to finalize and anchor agreements in the very, very, very near term. The depth of demand we saw for NC1 also reinforces how broad the opportunity set is for white fiber. Several of the counterparties that engaged with us on NC1 have expressed interest in capacity in other regions where we do not yet have assets. Based on those conversations, we are narrowing in on a new development site that offers meaningful 2026 power availability and strong expansion potential. Client demand is guiding our site selection process. We are now actively progressing through diligence. Overall, our development pipeline remains very strong. We are currently evaluating more than one gigawatt of projects for the 2026 and 2027 timeframes. Our first priority remains finalizing the NC1 anchor and moving that project through financing and construction. The interest we have seen underscores the scale of opportunity ahead. The actionable portion of our pipeline is growing rapidly. We're driving that growth by identifying and securing high quality sites that others often overlook or can't access through traditional channels. This capability has become a key differentiator for Whitefiber as we build a platform for sustained growth. Turning to Montreal, our Montreal 3 facility is now operational and began recognizing revenue from our contract with Cerebras in October of this year. The retrofit was completed on schedule and within budget. For the fourth quarter, we expect Montreal 3 to contribute slightly more than $2 million of revenue with a full quarter contribution beginning in the first quarter of 2026. Revenue for this site should be approximately $1 million per month, depending on the Canadian USD exchange rate. Completing this complex retrofit in under six months from site control to revenue generation is a testament to the speed and precision of our development and operations team. That level of execution has not gone unnoticed by customers and partners. We are already receiving inbound inquiries to replicate this model at larger scale.

Reliable delivery is often the best form of marketing in our industry.

At Montreal2, we continue to evaluate both co-location and internal cloud use cases. Activation has been deferred while we prioritize NC1. The facility remains a flexible asset that can be deployed quickly once a commercial path is finalized. Turning to cloud. The market narrative has shifted. Early last year, supply was extremely tight. Since then, supply chains have improved. New capital has also funded additional entrants. As a result, the tone has become more skeptical. This change has created pockets of price-led competition. Some providers are treating GPUs as a commodity. Our view is simple. Capacity that competes on price alone without matching performance, reliability, or software capability will struggle to attract long-term financing. Over time, the market will reward operators that deliver real outcomes, not just low sticker prices. In that environment, our approach remains patient and selective. Our growing co-location business supports the broader platform. Because of that, we do not need to chase uneconomic growth. We only expand when contracts meet our return thresholds. That includes multi-year terms, upfront commitments, and take or pay structures.

We are also comfortable wading through periods of market softness when that is the right call. When the economics are attractive, we face a different constraint.

The challenge is often data center space within the customer's delivery window. Larger cluster opportunities appear regularly. The limiting factor is usually the availability of rack space at the required time. Today, we run our GPU cloud business from third-party facilities. We believe our capital is better used developing and owning data centers for co-location. The risk reward profile is stronger there than building data centers solely for our own GPU clusters. Capital is finite, and we are disciplined on how we deploy it. We stay flexible, but we remain strict about returns. We have walked away from deals that did not meet our standards. That discipline has served us well. we continue to evaluate a wide range of opportunities. We are focused on deals with at least a 12-month term and pricing aligned with our target payback period. Recent smaller wins that have met those criteria have consumed much of our previously available inventory. Since quarter ends, we began winding down a customer agreement. It represents a little over $20 million of our annualized cloud run rate. Discussions are ongoing, so we can't share details or identify the counterparty just yet. We expect a mutual termination once the documentation is complete. Even so, we believe redirecting this capacity to larger enterprise and institutional customers is the right long-term strategy. It also helps us avoid potential complications. We have already identified new counterparties to absorb this capacity. The commercial terms are comparable or, frankly, even better. These contracts should begin contributing in early first quarter. Because of this transition, we expect a short term of underutilization in the fourth quarter. We still plan to partially monetize the capacity through on-demand pools. That should limit any temporary revenue impact. Looking ahead, we are exploring more capital light models in cloud. Those include managed services, partnerships, and enterprise private cloud deployments. These approaches use our software and operational strengths. They also expand our adjustable market while offering attractive returns on invested capital. We are also investing in technology that improves the long-term profile of the business. Our recent engineering hires are enhancing our software stack. They are improving deployment flexibility and enabling cluster performance that exceeds standard benchmarks. These investments help us compete on performance and reliability, not price. They support durable growth across the cloud platform. Overall, our cloud platform remains a recurring high margin business. It complements our co-location and development activities. As remarketing progresses and new contracts are signed, we expect to restore ARR and grow to the coming quarters.

And now, I'd like to pass the line to Eric to discuss our financial results. Eric? Thank you, Sam.

Total revenue for third quarter was $20.2 million, up 64% year-over-year from $12.3 million in the same period of 2024. Cloud services generated $18 million revenue, an increase of 48% from $12.2 million a year ago. The growth was driven by the expansion of GPU capacity for new and existing customers, partially offset by a $2 million service credit recognized this quarter under a customer agreement. Co-location services contributed $1.7 million of revenue compared to none in the prior year period following the integration of our ANOVA operations. We also recorded $0.5 million of other revenue from equipment leasing activities, bringing total consolidated revenue to $20.2 million. Total gross profit was $12.7 million, representing a gross margin of approximately 63%. Cloud services accounted for $11.7 million of segment gross profit and co-location services for $1 million. Operating expenses were $34.7 million compared to $13.1 million a year ago. General and administrative expense was $21.3 million, which included approximately $11.3 million of non-cash share-based compensation. The share-based compensation was elevated this quarter due to the runtime and initial grants for both existing employees and key hires. We expect this expense to be significantly lower in the fourth quarter in that low single-digit median range. We estimate our quarterly runway core GNA to be around $6 million on the cash basis. In addition, there's around $1 to $2 million overhead associated with new data center coming online, project level costs tied to closing data center sites or negotiating customer contracts, and certain discretionary items such as events or incremental marketing spend. There were also a number of one-time or non-recurring items in the third quarter, including costs related to public company readiness, deposits on data center sites, recruiting expenses as we expanded headcount and other miscellaneous items. We've expanded our organization to support a significantly higher revenue base, which should drive operating leverage as we scale. Several recent hires will also allow us to replace consulting expenses as those functions transition in-house. Excluding non-recurring items, normalized G&A, cash G&A would have been approximately $8 million for third quarter. We expect the fourth quarter G&A to be around $10 million, including share-based compensation. Operating loss for the quarter was 14.5 million dollars compared to a loss of 0.8 million in the third quarter of 2024. Net loss was 15.8 million dollars or 47 cents per share compared to net loss of 0.4 million dollars or one cent per share in that period, same period last year. On a non-GAAP basis, Adjusted EBITDA was $2.3 million compared to $5.6 million in the third quarter of 2024. Turning to balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $166.5 million of cash and cash equivalents up from $11.7 million at the year end 2024, reflecting the IPO proceeds received in August. Capital expenditures totaled $13 million for the quarter, driven primarily by the completion of Montreal 3 and initial spend for North Carolina 1. We expect 4Q CapEx to increase materially based on budgeted work for the development of NC1 and potential discretionary spend on GPU procurement. Potential GPU spend will be projected on contracts rather than speculative inventory bills. We remain a very strong liquidity position with working capital of approximately $179 million and no draws our existing credit facility with the Royal Bank of Canada. I will now turn the call back to Sam for closing remarks.

Thank you, Eric.

As we close today's call, I wanted to take a step back. Whitefiber is still early in its journey as a standalone public company. This quarter marks our transition from launch to execution. Our current cost base reflects the upfront investments required to operate as a public company. It also reflects the cost of supporting a much larger business. We have built the foundation to scale. As revenue grows, we expect meaningfully operating leverage to follow. Our focus remains exactly where it should be. We are earning the trust of our customers, partners, and shareholders by executing with discipline. We are building a business designed to endure beyond cycles. Our strategy is simple. Develop and own data centers that generate long-lived cash flow. grow a high margin cloud platform that scales responsibly, and finance both in a way that protects shareholder value. NC1 will be the cornerstone of that platform. The commercial process is now in its very final stages. We believe the discipline we have shown will lead to a stronger long-term outcome for our shareholders. At the same time, the level of enterprise demand we continue to see gives us confidence. It tells us we're pursuing the right opportunities. It also confirms that high-quality capacity with near-term availability is increasingly scarce.

Our priorities for the coming quarters are clear.

Finalize the NC anchor, secure financing for the full campus, and continue scaling co-location and cloud in a balanced, capital-efficient way. The opportunity in front of us is significant. We are positioned to execute with credibility and speed. I want to thank our employees for their focus, our partners for their collaboration, and their shareholders for their continued support. With that, operator, please open the line for questions as a note. Ben Lentzen, Head of Revenue, and Billy Krastopoulos, President of White Fiber, will be present for Q&A. Please open the line.

Thank you. And again, if you would like to ask a question, it would be star one on your telephone keypad. And we'll now go to your first question. That will come from the line of Darren Atahi with Ralph.

Yeah. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the progress. I guess as you talk about the developmental power pipeline, I just had a question on that. Are you broadly sticking to kind of this overlooked asset strategy where you can kind of repurpose slash retrofit sites and properties, or is the strategy much broader than that? And then my second question is, I assume you've gotten inbounds and kind of hinted at that at some other sites. Are you taking more of a strategy where you're trying to procure sites in power on behalf of customers, or is this procure the site and then figure out the formal lease with a potential customer after the fact? Thanks.

Yeah, those are great questions, easy to answer. Billy, do you want to take those questions?

Sure. So, Aaron, we're doing both. We've got projects that are retrofits. We've got projects that we're looking at that are greenfields, and it's really customer interest and customer demand that will drive final decisions on those. Second part of your question, again, we're doing both. We've got properties that are specialized for specific situations, specific clients, depending on their timeline. We also have properties that we're looking at that we are taking the build it and they will come approach. But again, very conservative and strategic in making those decisions.

Thanks. Appreciate it.

We'll now go to your next question coming from the line of Nick Gowles with B Rally Securities.

Yeah. Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone. I was hoping you could provide some additional color on why the customer agreement at NC1 is taking a little longer. Is it really driven by additional parties coming to the table, maybe due diligence taking longer than expected, or is it really still down to ongoing negotiations on terms? Just curious at this point, how many parties you remain in discussions with for that initial capacity? Thanks very much.

Yeah, the answer... What was the first part? Because the answer was yes to number one, yes to two, and no to three. Can you remind me of the first question? There were three questions there. Yeah, sorry. Sorry, Sam. There were three permutations. So if you could just remind me of the permutations.

Yeah, maybe just at this stage, how many parties are you in discussions with? Are you really down to one party?

And then, yeah. Yeah. So we had a tsunami of interest. from very high-quality counterparties, counterparties you've heard of. We reduced it to two. There are now two who are competing extremely hard in finalizing this. These agreements, by the way, require multiple steps. They include engineering work, commercial negotiations, internal approvals. You know, these counterparties are giant, so they have to go through their own board approvals. So that naturally extended the timeline a little bit. But we have very firm proposals in hand. I was expecting to sign one today, but now it's just a little bit of due diligence and confirmatory due diligence on both parties. They're both equal in terms of attractiveness. I will be countersigning the one who signs first. But, you know, one factor behind the longer timeline is, you know, There were a lot of parties involved. Additional groups, as you suggested, entered the process during the quarter. The demand continued to build. And by the way, that did put upward pressure on both pricing and term length. So that was great to have. We also worked closely with our debt advisors. We wanted to avoid rushing into a structure that would be harder or more expensive to finance. So we wanted to be disciplined on that there. So that took a little bit longer. given the multiple counterparties we're speaking with. So, yes, we've been patient. We've been deliberate. We believe that's the right approach. We're now very close to the goal line. And, you know, as of this morning, I thought I was going to be signing one of the agreements just before this call. Those very final steps did not align in time for this call. So we'll provide an update as soon as both sides finish their processes.

Tim, I appreciate all that detail. My follow-up would be, you know, how much activity is going on at the site today? It sounds like you've reiterated your timelines for May, for the initial phase. So, are you still continuing with development, or are things really at a stage where you're pausing until you sign that first customer? Thanks.

Yeah, I know the answer to that, but I'd love for Billy to take on that, because he's on the front lines.

Sure. So, as of now, we haven't paused anything. We're still continuing. A lot of the demolition and the cleanup work of the site completed a couple of weeks ago. Municipal permitting and stuff like that is all in process, and nothing to date, nothing has slowed down.

Got it. Well, that's good to hear. Guys, I'll jump back into the queue, but appreciate the update.

Thanks for the question.

Next question will come from the line of Brian Dobson with ClearStreet.

Hi, Brian.

Hey, thanks. Hey, thanks very much for taking my question. And very positive news regarding the imminent contract signing. You know, you mentioned that you were in negotiations with like 10 potential clients at the onset. And then, of course, that winnows down to a few. Are you seeing this similarly, Rob? Yeah, are you seeing similarly robust demand at your other facilities? And are you seeing similarly robust demand for, call it, yet to be contemplated facilities that are being proposed by these clients?

The answer is yes. And Billy, do you want to take that on?

Sure. Our other facilities do not have the volume that North Carolina had. the counterparties, quote unquote, runner ups that we had for this property are looking at our portfolio and asking what kind of availabilities we have for end of 2026, early 2027. So a lot of positive stuff came out from us just analyzing all the demand that we had and not signing with the first party that came to the table.

Is it worth mentioning that a lot of these clients, as we've been speaking with them, are looking to future sites that we've identified?

That's right. They're looking in our portfolio. They're looking at our pipeline and trying to match what fits in their schedules of deployment. So like we said, we've gotten a lot of interest. The runner is up. and the NC deals are looking to do projects with us in late 2026, early 2027.

And then in the past, you've said that you would contemplate both large-scale and smaller-scale facilities. Do you still feel that way, and do you still see, call it, more attractive return on investment at the smaller ones, even if marginally so?

The environment that we're in, The shortage of inventory and capacity that we're currently going through gives priority to both. We've got smaller sites that are 30 megawatts that we can execute much quicker on that are in the pipeline with attached customer demand. We also have 100 plus megawatt sites, again, with attached customer demand that we're looking and currently due diligence in analyzing to execute on.

Very good. Thanks a lot, gentlemen.

Next question will come from the line of George Sutton with Craig Catlin.

Thank you. First, just a quick question on North Carolina. So I think you're suggesting that either of the two customers would take the full site. Is that correct?

Billy, do you want to take that since you're interacting directly with them?

That is correct.

Okay. On the GPU as a service market.

Probably worth mentioning the deal. I know I mentioned this already, but I'll say it again. The deal did upgrade as the negotiations went on. So time was our friend. And so we've upgraded it in terms of, profit and duration. So it's been a good problem to have. But of course, the negotiations went on a little bit longer as the deal upgraded.

I understand. So relative to the GPU as a service market, Ben, I wondered if you could just talk more broadly about the pricing you're seeing, the contract durations you're seeing, the demand by the NVIDIA generations. What is... different about that market today than perhaps a quarter ago? And then separately, can you just give us any details in terms of the timing of the wind down of the customer agreement you mentioned?

Yeah, so to address your first couple, there's a few things to unpack there, so I'm going to make sure I touch on all of it. Still extremely strong demand for H-200s, even H-100s. In fact, I just had an inquiry for H-100s come through today. So, still really strong demand for hopper generation, B200s, you know, B300s are starting to get delivered. I think what we're seeing, you know, across the market is there's some of our peers are taking large deals at, you know, price points that we just don't feel make sense and we feel that they're irresponsible. And to us, we feel that, you know, some of our peers are taking these deals to just to be able to announce, you know, a logo when in reality it's not financially responsible. And we're, on the other hand, we're practicing, you know, pretty extreme financial discipline. And I think that's going to help us weather any upcoming storm. So, yes, there's pricing pressure in the industry, but I think it's predominantly driven by some, you know, what we call irresponsible decisions that we're not going to participate in. We're focused on longer-term agreements with healthy margins where we are competing on performance and reliability, not competing on price. And in the long run, we're pretty confident that that's going to pay off. Did I unpack? Was there anything else I missed in that kind of first half?

No, I think that's good. I am curious if you're getting any benefit from some of the kind of first-to-market technologies that you're offering. Is that yet in market, and is that part of your discussions?

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yes, we absolutely are getting some benefit there. Not yet in market, but it has generated – quite a bit of buzz and partnership inquiries. And we think once we get this white paper out early next year in Q1, it's going to open a lot of doors. I mean, there's already a lot of conversations happening behind the scenes right now that are early, far, far too early to talk about, but we're certainly really excited and optimistic for what, you know, things like the cross-data center workload are going to open up for us. Yeah, hope that answers your question.

That does, can you address the timing of the contract that is getting wound down just so we have some sense of the impacts?

Yeah, that's still ongoing. That hasn't been completely finalized. So I don't have details that I can share on this call at this time.

Yeah, we're still in the process of discussing the neutral termination. Okay, thanks, guys. Yep.

Next question will come from the line of Paul Golding with Macquarie Capital.

Paul Golding Thanks so much for taking the question and congrats on the progress. I wanted to ask, Sam, just to clarify, you were referencing that these deals are for anchoring NC1. Is that specific to the first 24 megawatts in Phase 1? Does it extend to phase two? I guess how far into the 99 initial megawatts are these conversations or your expectation in terms of this deal being signed? And then I have a follow-up. Thank you. Billy, do you want to take that?

Yeah. So all of the conversations we're having extend to the phase two of delivery, which is just a little north of 15 gross megawatts. So it's essentially doubled from what we were looking at last. And that is pretty much all that Duke Energy will be able to supply us in 2026. The remainder of the 99 comes online in 2027. And it attests to the strength and the types of customers that we're seeing. So the deal basically upsized and doubled within the last couple of weeks slash months.

That's great.

Congratulations on that. I guess as we think about the potential for 27 to get to that 99, is that second phase something that's already being marketed and that you're getting inbound interest on beyond the counterparty that you've been in discussions with on phase one? Or is Is that something you're holding back for now to see how pricing and availability contribute to those negotiations?

So we call that the third phase of the project. And all the parties that we're talking to right now would like rights of first refusal on it. So we're just holding that back right now in anticipation of closing this deal.

Got it. Thanks so much for the call. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

Next question will come from the line of John Todaro with Needham and Company.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I just want to go back to NC1 and understand the lease process a little bit better. Were you saying that the customer that you could have initially signed, that you could have got that done but kind of held out for – for higher pricing or better pricing. What, I guess, happened to that initial customer? Did they have to bow out or are they still one of the two now? Because I thought pricing was already kind of negotiated.

We got even better pricing and even better duration. Go ahead, Billy.

During that process, John, there was a couple of other horses that entered the race, to say, with longer terms and better pricing. So we naturally had to entertain those. That customer specifically was for a lower capacity, and they eventually ended up losing their offtaker. So think about a neocloud that had an offtaker for the capacity, and that's what happened there. But in the meantime, the deal pretty much, our lease process pretty much doubled to 40 megawatts of IT load. and a longer deal term than what we initially had on the table. So having to process that and go through all the due diligence and commercial negotiations, internal approvals on both sides is what's really extended the timeline here. Got it.

Understood. That's very helpful, very clear now. And then just as we do think about the site potentially coming online and generating revenue in May, It does seem soon, and you've got some peers out there where there's been some delays in execution. This is just kind of, can you frame up the confidence in that, especially because it still might take, I guess, a little bit here to get the lease signed and some of those pieces?

Yeah. So, I mean, essentially, the train had already left the station a couple of months ago on design and equipment procurement. There's a lot of equipment procurement that's site agnostic that we had already placed on order. There's a couple of minor stuff that really depend on the end user. We're still confident in our dates. Like you said in one of the earlier questions, demolition site cleanup, early construction work had already started. Applications for permits, construction permits with the local county had already gone through. So the process is moving forward. The timing is tight.

But we're still on track for everything that has been forecasted. Great. Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Your next question will be coming from the line of Kevin Dede with HC Wainwright.

Hi, Sam Bowie. Thanks for having me on. Sam, would you mind sort of characterizing your position on the GPU business and cloud versus co-location under complete understanding that NC1 remains your top priority? But it looks like, and it looks like it'll, I mean, the first two phases, right, is a $400 million proposition at least. But I got the sense that you're still interested in supporting the GPU business, and just help me understand your priorities a little bit better, please.

Can you rephrase your question, Kevin? I just want to make sure I understood that.

Yeah, sure. No, I understand NC1 and that development is a priority, but at least through next year, it seems to be a $400 million development proposition. So I'm wondering, with that as the backdrop, how do How should we think about your prioritization of supporting your own GPU business?

Just to be clear, we're prioritizing the co-location business. That NC1 for us is our North Star in securing the anchor, which is imminent. And And then to execute our financing strategy, which is very straightforward. We plan to finance about 75% of that full project with long-dated asset-backed credit matched to the duration and stability to the underlying customer contract. That's very important for us. And we've been working very closely with our advisors to ensure that the structure we pursue is correct. And so that's something that we've been all very much focused on. With respect to the cloud business, we remain very disciplined. There's actually been deals that we could have announced with extremely well-known names, the hottest names in the market. But the economics didn't make complete sense for us. And we didn't want to just announce a sexy headline and have crappy economics when you open the hood. So that's something we've steered away from.

So the financing for the first two phases of NC1 are predicated on your counterparty. Is that fair to assume?

There's lots of elements, but yes, certainly the quality of the counterparty is important. It's one factor for getting good terms on the financing, absolutely. And that's why the counterparty needs to be creditworthy.

So a small site like MTL2 is high on your priority list. Would it be worth maybe selling it or somehow leveraging its value and its undeveloped?

I mean, we got a really great deal for it. And if we were to sell it, we probably would be able to sell it at a profit. frankly. And we've even received interest soft bids for it that were higher than the amount that we purchased it for. But we want to keep it for now. There is still some path towards monetizing that, including some cloud use cases that we'd like to test that site on. We've invested a lot of money on tech, and we'd like to use that particular site for R&D on the cross data center workloads. So that's something that we do not wish to sell just yet. Although if we did, we would very likely get quite a handsome profit off selling it.

All right.

So regarding the cross data center workload technology, understand that there are other tools in your tool belt. And I was wondering how, you see them potentially presenting a competitive differentiation? I mean, there's a big neocloud out there that's been gobbling up other software companies in developing its orchestration stack, and I'm wondering how you see white fiber pair up to that capability.

Well, I mean, good question. Power availability, and Ben, feel free to add to this, but power availability is one of the biggest bottlenecks in the AI infrastructure ecosystem. We're investing in technology that would allow to aggregate and orchestrate geographically through distributed power pools, enabling customers to deploy clusters that exceed the limitations of any single substation or site. This is early stage technology work, but the direction of travel is clear. Customers want larger clusters, faster than traditional power infrastructure can accommodate. We expect to share more on that on the first quarter of next year. Ben, this is, you know, I'm sorry to steal your thunder there. Feel free to add.

No, Sam, I think you said it well. I mean, that's going to be a big, you know, it's a tool. It's a pretty big tool in our tool belt. We are also, you know, we have homegrown solutions for orchestration that we think are pretty powerful and we've gotten really good reviews around. And, you know, going a layer below that, we're highly focused on, you know, pure network performance. And as the first cloud to deploy a DriveNets cluster, I mean, the results of the benchmarks from that cluster are phenomenal and I think unmatched and something we're really proud of. So I think, you know, we are going to continue to develop around performance at the foundational layer of infrastructure and see where that takes us.

So to that point, Ben, is that DriveNet cluster technology something you can develop at MTL1 or would you need to fully develop MTL2 in order to explore it? And with this other contract coming off, what kind of room does that give you to take on a new customer?

Yeah, we've got a lot of room to take on new customers. I mean, we've got a pipeline right now for that capacity. The DriveNets cluster is different than the cross-data center workload, though we are working with DriveNets on that, so I want to make sure that's clear. Those are two different things versus a single cluster versus the cross-data center workload.

Yeah, understood. I was just wondering if you needed MTL2 in order to develop that tech.

No, so we've identified a site. Again, we're keeping the cards close to our chest, but we have identified sites in the U.S. where we have begun deploying the V1 of our cross-data center workload.

Ah, okay. Well, thank you very much for taking my question, gentlemen. Thanks, Kevin.

Next question will come from the line of Nick Giles with B-Rally Securities.

Hi, Nick.

Yeah, thanks so much for taking my follow-up. Maybe just one for Billy. Obviously, a lot of time and energy has gone into the initial lease here, and so once that gets done, beyond really execution at NC1, what are your main priorities or goals as we head into 2026? I mean, should we expect to see a new site announcement in the near term, and how much capacity could be on the line?

Sure, thanks, Nick.

Yeah, just, Billy, be careful on specifics, of course, so that we don't... Yeah.

I mean, obviously, the main focus is North Carolina. These things, it's a process. These things usually take anywhere from four to six months just to close. We thought we were able to get it done a bit sooner, but the closing process, as we mentioned in all the other questions, The closing process taking a little longer than expected. Pipeline, we are continuously looking at and refreshing all the sites in our pipeline, trying to align that with customer demand. So looking at new sites in tandem, in conjunction with our clients, trying to fit sites, projects, timelines. is always a priority, something that we're continuously working on.

Maybe if I could just add to that, just like the way you said, we're evaluating large number of sites. We do it on a rolling basis. And the reason why I don't want to be specific is because the pipeline is really dynamic. Sites move in and then move out as we complete diligence. So it's really hard to maintain a single published figure. But today we are evaluating over one gigawatt of potential development opportunities across the US and Canada. These sites vary in timing. A meaningful subset has power availability in the second half of 2026, while others line up more naturally with 2027 and beyond. The later delivery sites could align very well with our capital deployment cadence, and that depends on how NC1 progresses and where the customer demand is strongest. But like Billy said, our priority is to fully finalize and de-risk NC1 before we stretch the platform across multiple builds. That said, through the NC1 process, we've had customers that have asked us to evaluate specific markets where they want to work with us and be prepared to pre-lease capacity. And these signals, they're more than signals. They're outright instructions almost. shape our search. So we're looking at a healthy mix of off-market retrofits and greenfields. There are a few of them that are especially compelling. Once NC1 is in a fully de-risked position, we expect to shift our attention to selecting and formalizing the next development site. We're not trying to spread capital around until the timing and the commercial visibility is right.

Understood. Sam and Billy, appreciate the update.

I guess just, Nick, I just want to mention one thing related to Nick's question. In terms of the demand for co-location, it's effectively the diametrical opposite of what is playing right now in the capital markets where the sky seems to be falling on companies linked to the AI ecosystem. We see no shortage of demand. In fact, it is greater, far greater than it was just a month or two ago when the sector was viewed in a shining light. We continue to see greater and broader demand for NC1 as awareness of the project grew. And we've seen greater demand from new potential customers asking us about sites in different regions to Billy's point. Many customers came to us for NC1 And then they began asking us about other sites in specific regions. So, you know, the demand isn't just centered around 2026, but also to 2027 and beyond. And we're seeing similar levels of demand also on the cloud side, but the economics have to be right on the cloud side. So I just wanted to give some further color on that, especially in light of the capital markets today. Data center infrastructure will always be in demand and the global shortage in supply

will be for us, I think will be there for the considerable future, frankly.

And it appears there are no additional questions at this time. I'll turn it back to you for your closing remarks.

Well, look, thank you very much for your patience today. I wish we had been able to announce the contract today when we're very close, and it's a We look forward to making that announcement in the very near term future. Thank you, everybody, for your patience. And we'll continue to build up White Fiber to the company that it will be in the future. So thank you very much, everybody.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.