TAAL Files 2021 Year-End Financial Results and Provides Operational Guidance for 2022
TORONTO, May 2, 2022 /CNW/ - TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc. (CSE: TAAL) (FWB: 9SQ1) (OTC: TAALF) ("TAAL" or the "Company"), a vertically integrated blockchain infrastructure and service provider for enterprise, announces its financial results and management discussion and analysis for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 ("FY 2021"). These filings are available for review on the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com and on the Company's website at www.taal.com/investors. All financial information in this press release is reported in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated.
- Gross revenue from hashing operations was $34,664,905 versus $7,993,449 in the prior year, representing a year over year increase of $26,671,456 or 334%.
- Adjusted EBITDA was $3.3 million, up from the $9.6 million loss in the previous year.
- Cost of revenue for the year was $15,801,267 (including depreciation and amortization of $2,264,892), compared to $6,878,128 (including amortization of $891,178) in the prior year.
- During FY 2021, the Company mined over 162,000 coins on the BSV network and 4,200 coins on the BCH network.
- Future growth secured with deposits for plant and equipment of $20.7 million.
- TAAL processed over 172 million transactions on the BSV network for the year, earning almost $1 million in additional rewards from transaction processing or 3% of total revenue.
- As of December 31, 2021, TAAL held approximately 77,000 BSV coins in treasury, compared to the 70,000 BSV in the issued guidance; this increase was due to additional rented hash remaining online in the fourth quarter.
Fiscal 2021 was a year of growth and execution for TAAL. We progressed as a vertically integrated blockchain technology company growing hashing operations to increasing subsidy revenues which, in turn, support our product development of value-added services to support blockchain-based enterprise clients.
While TAAL endured challenges with its hosting providers in Alberta during the year, the Company reached its FY 2021 target of 400 petahash (PH/s). This supports and maintains the subsidy and transaction processing business lines through an exclusive cloud computing agreement with a third party, deploying its fleet of blockchain computers into new locations and utilizing alternative sources of hashing power through rental agreements.
In 2021, TAAL acquired Chief Fuels Inc. ("Chief Fuels") as its flagship, clean-energy facility in New Brunswick. Through the recently announced transaction with an established professional property fund, TAAL has secured a commitment for up to US $20 million of capital expenditures to install heavy plant and infrastructure at the facility. The commitment also sees long-term development and operating the site as a bitcoin data center exclusively for TAAL. The new data center supports our operational growth strategy to increase TAAL's hashing capacity for 2022 and beyond.
Also in 2021, TAAL expanded its enterprise blockchain infrastructure and software services with its public beta launch of the STAS token protocol, the TAAL Console, and additional services like UTXO management and nodes management to remove the complexities and overhead of running blockchain applications at scale.
The STAS digital asset tokenization is an on-chain, native, Bitcoin, script-based solution. The Company intends to license this technology to companies, individuals, and organizations who are looking to build custom token solutions for any number of use cases, across many industries. TAAL released the STAS Whitepaper and a Software Development Kit (SDK) and has seen positive adoption during the beta phase (a number of use cases are highlighted on TAAL.com).
TAAL Console is the new home and primary portal for customers to manage their accounts, submit transactions, provision API keys, access reports and analytics, talk to support and access documentation. TAAL Console will be the long-term home for a host of new services and features scheduled for release in 2022, enabling technology innovators, builders, and decision makers across all industries to access the power, scalability and world beating economic utility of the BSV blockchain.
The launch of this platform and API Transaction processing service is part of TAAL's corporate vision which reflects an anticipated paradigm shift in the blockchain industry, marked by a transition from a block rewards subsidy model to a transaction fee-based model as the prevailing profit model.
For examples of 30+ businesses building with TAAL, please visit our blog - https://www.taal.com/blog/category/use-cases/
TAAL continued to grow its team globally and remotely, hiring in product management, engineering, service and operational roles. In addition, the Company saw the appointment of David Allen as Chief Financial Officer and Daniel Diemers as a new independent Director. Subsequent to year end, Mr. Stefan Matthews, the Chairman of the Company's board of directors, transitioned away from the Chief Executive Officer position and is now serving as Executive Chairman. Richard Baker was appointed Chief Executive Officer and transitioned the Lead Independent Director role to Deborah Rosati.
Chris Naprawa stepped down as President of the Company effective April 30, 2022. During his time with the business, the Company has transformed financially and operationally as well as established solid foundations with an experienced leadership team, strong board of directors and clear strategic vision. Chris will continue to provide consulting services to the Company after April 30, 2022.
"I am proud to have played a critical part in the evolution of TAAL and look forward to working closely with Richard Baker for the growth next phase," said Mr. Naprawa. "The opportunity for TAAL remains immense, especially as it applies to utility-based transaction exchanges and Web 3.0. I am excited to strategically assist the Company to reach its potential."
Stefan Matthews, Chairman would like to acknowledge and thank Mr. Naprawa for his leadership and his contributions to the Company's growth throughout his term and looks forward to continuing to work with him in his capacity as consultant.
TAAL is deeply concerned about the ongoing developments in Ukraine and has been closely monitoring the conflict in Europe. A material portion of the Company's blockchain computing equipment, mining operations, and operations are in Siberia, Russia. A combination of TAAL-owned and managed equipment is hosted with an enterprise scale service provider that offers competitive rates for power primarily produced from clean energy sources. At the present time, TAAL's operations in Russia are compliant with all international sanctions and remain subject to ongoing risk management assessment. The Company has decided to discontinue the deployment of new mining equipment in this operation and will limit its dependency on this facility through a network rebalancing programme that is underway.
To reduce our exposure to geopolitical risks, the Company is actively engaged in negotiations with several service providers within North America to host TAAL's existing and future machine deployments. These deployments are part of our network rebalancing and hash power expansion plans this year. In addition, the Company has recently secured alternative sources of hashing power in North America for business continuity assuredness. These alternate sources are to mitigate any impact on TAAL's subsidy and transaction processing business should operations in Russia be discontinued or interrupted in the future.
The Company continues to monitor and assess the global situation and will update shareholders in the event of any significant developments.
"We are a modern network service provider whereby the BSV blockchain is utilised daily for millions of transactions for enterprises small and large," said TAAL CEO Richard Baker. "It is our duty to provide network assurance and resilience for our customers and shareholders. However, as a global citizen, we take our social responsibility very seriously and have acted promptly to manage and mitigate risks."
We believe in a future beyond block subsidy rewards where fees and new revenue streams come from utility-based transaction exchanges, P2P, B2C, B2B and IoT. Our focus is to make the tools and services available to builders and businesses, to remove the complexities and barriers for greater adoption.
"2021 was a strong year financially for TAAL," said CEO Richard Baker. "While Q1 will be a weaker quarter due to the macro global market conditions and the decrease in coin prices, we remain focused on driving growth across the business in 2022. Our opportunity in both our infrastructure and software services business remains strong, and I look forward to updating the market as we execute against our growth strategy throughout the year."
Hashing Operations
Pending market conditions and risk factors outlined in our AIF:
- Petahash growth targets for end of 2022 to be 600 PH/s of computing power.
- Achieve geographic diversity of hosting locations though partner data centre hosting agreements.
- Committed to a carbon offset program with a goal to source 90% of our power from renewable energy by 2023.
- Future growth secured with deposits for plant and equipment of $20.7 million.
- Continued improvements to TAAL Orchestrator for mining pool management, fast economic switching (30 seconds) across Bitcoin protocols (BSV, BCH & BTC) and service operations, accounting and reporting integrations.
Software services for 2022
- TAAL Console upgrades to the customer experience, including improved and customizable dashboards, self-service pricing packages, credit card billing and the market leading "blockchain search" capability integrated to enable "internet style search" of the public files stored on chain.
- Value added services or "Boost Your Build" commercial packages such as UXTO (micro-payment) services and customer "node-as-a-service" management and monitoring services.
Headcount
- We will continue to grow our global team in sales, marketing, and engineering to support and drive growth.
TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc. delivers value-added blockchain services, providing professional-grade, highly scalable blockchain infrastructure and transactional platforms to support businesses building solutions and applications upon the BitcoinSV platform, and developing, operating, and managing distributed computing systems for enterprise users.
Visit TAAL online at www.taal.com/investors
The CSE, nor its Regulation Services Provider, accepts no responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Certain statements included in this news release constitute "forward-looking information" as defined under applicable Canadian securities legislation. The words "will", "intends", "expects" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking information, although not all forward-looking information will contain these identifying words. Specific forward-looking information contained in this news release includes but is not limited to statements regarding: the growth of TAAL's treasury through, among other things, BSV hashing activities; TAAL's future computing power and capacity; development plans for the New Brunswick facility, geopolitical risks to operations and TAAL's business and strategic plans. These statements are based on factors and assumptions related to historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments. Since forward-looking information relates to future events and conditions, by its very nature it requires making assumptions and involves inherent risks and uncertainties. TAAL cautions that although it is believed that the assumptions are reasonable in the circumstances, these risks and uncertainties give rise to the possibility that actual results may differ materially from expectations. Material risk factors include the future acceptance of Bitcoin SV and other digital assets and risks related to information processing using those platforms, the ability for TAAL to leverage intellectual property into viable income streams and other risks set out in TAAL's Annual Information Form dated April 30, 2021 under the heading "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in TAAL's continuous disclosure filings available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Given these risks, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information contained herein. Other than as required by law, TAAL undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking information to reflect new information, subsequent or otherwise.
SOURCE Taal Distributed Information Technologies Inc.
Richard Baker, Chief Executive Officer, [email protected]
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