SUMMARY OF SIGNIFICANT ACCOUNTING POLICIES

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2024

SUMMARY OF SIGNIFICANT ACCOUNTING POLICIES

Basis of presentation and principles of consolidation

The Company prepares its unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the U.S. (“GAAP”) as determined by the FASB and pursuant to the accounting and disclosure rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”).

The unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements include the accounts of the Company and its controlled subsidiaries, including Cipher Mining Technologies Inc. (“CMTI”). All intercompany transactions and balances have been eliminated.

Certain prior year amounts have been reclassified for consistency with the current period presentation. Effective for the quarter ended March 31, 2024, the Company changed the presentation of its condensed consolidated income statement to separately disclose Compensation and benefits from General and administrative. The Company believes this presentation provides increased transparency on the nature of the respective financial statement line items. As a result, the Company reported $17.1 million, and $41.7 million as Compensation and benefits for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2023, respectively, which was previously reported in General and administrative.

Emerging Growth Company

The Company is an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 (the “JOBS Act”). Under the JOBS Act, emerging growth companies can delay adopting new or revised accounting standards issued subsequent to the enactment of the JOBS Act until such time as those standards apply to private companies. The Company has elected to use this extended transition period to enable it to comply with new or revised accounting standards that have different effective dates for public and private companies until the earlier of the date it (i) is no longer an emerging growth company or (ii) affirmatively and irrevocably opt out of the extended transition period provided in the JOBS Act. As a result, the Company’s unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements may not be comparable to companies that comply with new or revised accounting pronouncements as of public company effective dates.

On the last business day of the second quarter in 2024, the aggregate market value of the Company’s shares of common stock held by non-affiliate stockholders exceeded $700 million. As a result, as of December 31, 2024, it will be considered a “large accelerated filer” as defined in Rule 12b-2 under the Exchange Act, and will cease to be an emerging growth company. Due to loss of emerging growth company status, the Company will no longer be exempt from the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and its independent registered public accounting firm will evaluate and report on the effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting.

Commencing with the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ending December 31, 2024, it will adopt any accounting pronouncements deferred under the extended transition period election on or before December 31, 2024.

Use of estimates

The preparation of financial statements in conformity with GAAP requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the financial statements and the reported amounts of expenses during the reporting period. The most significant estimates inherent in the preparation of the Company’s financial statements include, but are not limited to, those related to equity instruments issued in share-based compensation arrangements, valuation of its derivative asset and warrant liability under Level 3 of the fair value hierarchy, useful lives of property and equipment, the asset retirement obligation and the valuation allowance associated with the Company’s deferred tax assets, among others. Making estimates requires management to exercise significant judgment. It is at least reasonably possible that the estimate of the effect of a condition, situation or set of circumstances that existed at the date of the financial statements, which management considered in formulating its estimate, could change in the near term due to one or more future confirming events. Accordingly, the actual results could differ significantly from those estimates.

Unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements

The accompanying unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements have been prepared in accordance with GAAP for interim financial information and the instructions to Form 10-Q and Article 10 of Regulation S-X. Accordingly, they do not include all of the information and notes required by GAAP for complete financial statements. In the opinion of the Company’s management, these unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements reflect all adjustments, which consist of only normal recurring adjustments necessary for the fair presentation of the balances and results for the periods presented. These unaudited condensed consolidated financial statement results are not necessarily indicative of results to be expected for the full fiscal year or any future period.

A description of the Company’s significant accounting policies is included in the Company’s 2023 Form 10-K. You should read the unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements in conjunction with the Company’s audited consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes in the Company’s 2023 Form 10-K. Except as disclosed herein, there has been no material change in the information disclosed in the notes to the Company’s audited consolidated financial statements included in the Company’s 2023 Form 10-K.

Segment information

Operating segments are defined as components of an enterprise about which separate discrete information is available for evaluation by the chief operating decision maker, or decision-making group, in deciding how to allocate resources and in assessing performance. The Company’s chief operating decision maker is comprised of several members of its executive management team. The Company views its operations and manages its business in one segment.

Restricted cash

Restricted cash represents amounts pledged as collateral to Luminant ET Services Company LLC (“Luminant”, and Vistra Operations Company, LLC (“Vistra”), a Luminant affiliate, primarily related to the Luminant Power Agreement (defined below in Note 4, Derivative Asset). Previously these amounts were held by each respective counterparty, and classified in the Company's financials as Security deposits. In September 2024, the Company moved the collateral to a money market account in the Company's name with a bank letter of credit. The collateral restrictions related to the Luminant Power Agreement will lapse upon termination of the agreement.

Asset acquisition

In September 2024, the Company purchased a site to develop another wholly-owned data center in Colorado City, TX (“Barber Lake” or the “Barber Lake Facility”) for up to 300 MW. The Company accounted for the transaction as an asset acquisition in accordance with ASC 805, Business Combinations. Refer to Note 5 Property and equipment, Note 8. Intangible assets, Note 9. Security deposits, and Note 10. Supplementary financial information for details on the Company’s preliminary allocation of the purchase consideration consisting of $68.0 million of cash paid, and an assumed liability of $8.3 million, based on relative fair value to the balances acquired as part of this transaction.

Earnings per share

Basic earnings (loss) per share is computed by dividing net income (loss) allocated to common shareholders by the weighted average number of common shares outstanding during the period. Diluted earnings (loss) per common share

adjusts net income (loss) and net income (loss) per common share for the effect of all potentially dilutive shares of Common Stock. Potentially dilutive common shares consist of the Company’s outstanding warrants to purchase Common Stock, as well as unvested restricted stock units (“RSUs”).

The dilutive effect of RSUs was calculated using the treasury stock method. For warrants that are liability-classified, during periods when the impact is dilutive, the Company assumes share settlement of the instruments as of the beginning of the reporting period and adjusts the numerator to remove the change in fair value of the warrant liability and adjusts the denominator to include the dilutive shares calculated using the treasury stock method.

The Company’s potentially dilutive common shares have been excluded from the computation of diluted net loss per common share when the effect would be to reduce the net loss per common share, or increase the net income per common share.

The following is a reconciliation of the numerator and denominator of the diluted earnings (loss) per share computations for the periods indicated below:


	Three Months Ended September 30,				Nine Months Ended September 30,
	2024		2023		2024		2023
Basic and diluted loss per share:
Net loss	$	(86,754)	$	(18,621)	$	(62,145)	$	(36,372)

Weighted average shares outstanding - basic	332,680,037		251,789,350		314,820,110		249,858,033
Add:
RSUs	-		-		-		-
Weighted average shares outstanding - diluted	332,680,037		251,789,350		314,820,110		249,858,033

Net loss per share - basic	$	(0.26)	$	(0.07)	$	(0.20)	$	(0.15)
Net loss per share - diluted	$	(0.26)	$	(0.07)	$	(0.20)	$	(0.15)

The following table presents the common share equivalents that are excluded from the computation of diluted earnings (loss) per common share at September 30, 2024 and 2023, because including them would have been antidilutive.


	September 30,
	2024	2023
Public warrants	8,613,980	8,499,980
Private placement warrants	—	114,000
Unvested RSUs	21,479,801	21,234,610
	30,093,781	29,848,590

Recently issued and adopted accounting pronouncements

In December 2023, the FASB issued ASU 2023-08, Intangibles-Goodwill and Other-Crypto Assets (Subtopic 350-60): Accounting for and Disclosure of Crypto Assets (“ASU 2023-08”). The Company adopted ASU 2023-08 effective January 1, 2023, as reflected in the Company’s Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023. The adoption resulted in a $0.2 million adjustment to opening Retained earnings on January 1, 2023, as well as an increase of Operating loss, and Net loss of $0.9 million as reported for the three months ended September 30, 2023, and a reduction of Operating loss, and Net loss of $0.6 million as reported for the nine months ended September 30, 2023.

The Company continually assesses any new accounting pronouncements to determine their applicability. When it is determined that a new accounting pronouncement affects the Company’s financial reporting, the Company undertakes to determine the consequences of the change to its financial statements and assures that there are proper controls in place to ascertain that the Company’s financial statements properly reflect the change. The Company reviewed all other recently issued accounting pronouncements and concluded that they were either not applicable or not expected to have a significant impact on its condensed consolidated financial statements.