Cango (CANG) Q2 2026 Earnings Call: Mining Reset and Q3 AI Revenue

Key Takeaways

• Cango Inc. reported Q2 2026 revenue of $50.8 million, down approximately 50% from Q1, as the company reduced operational hashrate and shifted some mining capacity to a leasing model.
• Bitcoin mining generated $47.4 million of revenue. Cango mined 656 Bitcoins at an average cash cost of $73,313 per coin, down about 5% sequentially, and an all-in cost of $98,405 per coin.
• Net loss from continuing operations was $81.6 million. The result included $42.9 million of mining-machine impairment charges and an $8.5 million disposal loss, both tied to the restructuring of the mining asset base.
• Operating hashrate stood at 27.58 EH/s as of June 30, comprising 19.84 EH/s of self-mining capacity and 7.74 EH/s of leased capacity.
• After quarter-end, Cango completed infrastructure at its Georgia LN site capable of supporting up to 3 megawatts for AI operations and signed its first AI customer contract. Management expects modest AI-related revenue to begin in Q3 2026.
• Cango began implementing a Bitcoin hedging program during Q2. Management characterized it as a risk-management tool intended to reduce cash-flow sensitivity to Bitcoin price movements, not as speculative positioning.

Key Financial Data

Business and Operating Performance

Cango continued to remove lower-efficiency legacy mining machines and prioritize unit economics over scale. The leasing structure transfers direct operating costs associated with leased hashrate to the lessee, reducing Cango’s exposure to variable expenses.

Lower self-mining capacity and the transfer of some capacity into leasing reduced Bitcoin production sequentially. However, lower electricity and hosting expenses brought cost of revenue down to $50.7 million from $99.6 million in Q1.

Management said most mining machines are hosted at third-party sites. Some hosting contracts include mechanisms that reduce power prices when Bitcoin prices decline, providing a measure of downside cost protection. Cash mining costs also declined on a month-by-month basis during Q2.

Among operational, on-rack self-mining machines, excluding leased capacity, slightly more than one-third were S21-series units. Cango plans to continue phasing out less efficient legacy capacity.

Cango’s AI infrastructure business advanced after June 30 and therefore did not contribute to Q2 revenue. The Georgia LN site’s AI infrastructure was completed in early July with capacity to support up to 3 megawatts. Container installation and phased GPU deliveries were underway at the time of the call.

The company signed its first AI customer contract after quarter-end. Its planned model includes bare-metal GPU hosting and colocation, although no formal colocation contract had been signed. Cango also has test nodes in Texas and on the West Coast and is evaluating additional sites.

Management Outlook

Management expects AI-related revenue recognition to begin in Q3 2026. The initial contribution is expected to be modest, while customer discussions remain ongoing.

Cango expects operational hashrate and the mining-machine balance to remain broadly stable during Q3. However, management noted that regional power curtailment during July and August could affect operations.

For the second half of 2026, management’s priorities are to optimize the mix of self-mining and leased hashrate, execute the AI deployment, add customers and assess further site expansion while maintaining capital discipline.

Risks and Areas to Watch

• Bitcoin price volatility remains a direct risk to mining cash flows. Cango’s hedging program is intended to reduce, rather than eliminate, that exposure.
• Q2 all-in mining cost of $98,405 per Bitcoin remained above the reported cash cost because it included mining-machine depreciation.
• Continued retirement of older machines could lead to additional restructuring effects, while the Q2 impairment and disposal losses already totaled approximately $51 million.
• Summer power curtailments may affect Q3 mining activity even if installed operational hashrate remains stable.
• AI commercialization is at an early stage. Initial contracted revenue is small, and no formal colocation agreement had been completed at the time of the call.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

Management explained that the Bitcoin hedge is structured as a short-term loan denominated in BTC. The quarter-end balance was approximately $8 million, with a roughly equivalent current asset recorded. Cango sells the borrowed Bitcoin at the spot price on the first day and may repay the loan using subsequently mined Bitcoin if prices fall. Position sizing is generally based on one or two months of production.

On Q3 mining operations, management said hashrate and mining-machine holdings should not change significantly, subject to possible summer power curtailments. Hosting-contract negotiations and Bitcoin-linked power-price adjustment mechanisms could provide further cost flexibility.

Regarding AI capacity, management said the near-term focus is the company’s own 50-megawatt Georgia LN site. Small test nodes have also been installed at partner locations, but management did not quantify how much mining infrastructure could be converted to AI use over the next three years.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Cango Inc. Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

Please note today's event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Paul Yu, CEO. Please go ahead.

Peng Yu

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Cango's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Let me start with a quick overview of the quarter. On the mining side, we deliberately scaled back operations as planned. That's reflected our second quarter results. On the AI side, since the end of the second quarter, we have made real progress on infrastructure and signed our first customer contract, moving that business from build-out into commercialization. I will be clear that these AI developments occurred after June 30 and are not reflected in this quarter's reported results.

In terms of the numbers, total revenue for the quarter was approximately $50.8 million with about $47.4 million coming from Bitcoin mining. Net loss was approximately $81.6 million, mainly driven by noncash impairment and disposal losses on our mining machines, a direct result of the deliberate restructuring of our asset base. As of June 30, we held 1,056 Bitcoins. In addition, our cash, cash equivalents and cryptocurrencies totaled approximately $23 million, while long-term debt was approximately $31.2 million.

Now let me walk through the mining business and AI infrastructure business in more detail. This quarter, we continued to actively rightsize our mining operations, disposing of machines with lower marginal efficiency and introduced a leasing model to shift our focus from scale to economics. As of June 30, our self-mining hashrate was 19.84 exahashes per second, and our lease hashrate was 7.74 exahashes per second for a combined operating hashrate of 27.58 exahashes per second. Under the leasing arrangement, the lessee bears the direct operating costs associated with the hashrate, which also reduces our exposure to variable costs. We mined 656 Bitcoins this quarter.

Production was down sequentially, largely reflecting the deliberate reduction in self-mining capacity and shift of some capacity into leasing. We will continue to evaluate the mix between self-mining and leasing based on economics rather than scale. We will keep phasing out less efficient legacy capacity. This quarter, we also began implementing a hedging arrangement to manage our exposure to Bitcoin price volatility, thus enhancing the predictability of our operating cash flows. Our average cash mining cost in Q2 was $73,313 per coin, down about 5% from Q1.

Now let's turn into AI infrastructure. A quick on timing, everything I'm about to cover took place after June 30 since the start of the third quarter. So it isn't reflected in the quarter's financial results, but we want to share it with you. On infrastructure, construction at our Georgia LN site was completed in early July with the site infrastructure able to support up to 3 megawatts, leaving room for future expansion. Container units have arrived on site and are being installed and GPUs are arriving on site in batches. On the customer side, since the start of the third quarter, we've signed a customer contract and discussion with prospective customers are ongoing. That takes our AI business from technical validation into commercial monetization. This is a development since quarter end. Contracted revenue is still small, and we expect to begin recognizing related revenue in the third quarter.

On the business model, we expected to pursue both bare-metal GPU hosting using our existing site and power infrastructure to offer a standardized deployment environment and colocation intended to improve overall infrastructure utilization. We haven't signed a formal colocation contract yet and terms are still being worked out. We also have test nodes in Texas and on the West Coast, mainly to support customers who need deployment closer to their location in the future. We are evaluating several potential new sites as well, and we haven't ruled out building our own. We will continue to run mining and AI as parallel businesses.

Looking into the second half, our priority are managing the mix of self-mining and lease hashrate prudently, executing our AI deployment and continuing to sign new customers and building on the operating experience from Georgia as we evaluate further site expansion. Capital discipline and operating efficiency remain our priorities.

That concludes my remarks. I will now turn it over to our CFO, Simon, for a detailed review of the financials. Thank you.

Ming Yeung Tang

Thanks, Paul. Hi, good morning. Hi, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter 2026 earnings call. Before I start to review our financials, please note that unless otherwise stated, all amounts discussed are in U.S. dollars.

Total revenues were $50.8 million. Revenue during the quarter from the Bitcoin mining business was $47.4 million with a total of 656 Bitcoins mined during the period. The average cost to mine Bitcoin, excluding depreciation of mining machines, was $73,313 per Bitcoin and all-in cost of $98,405 per Bitcoin. Compared to the first quarter of 2026, total revenue decreased by approximately 50%. This decline primarily reflects our proactive reduction in operational hashrate as we continued to selectively phase out older, less efficient S19 series mining machines and temporarily transitioned some capacity to a hosted leasing model. While this adjustment has reduced our top line mining revenue, it has also significantly lowered our operating costs and improved our cash flow profile. And some of these efforts continued throughout the second quarter.

Now let's move on to our cost and expenses. Cost of revenue, exclusive of depreciation was $50.7 million, down from $99.6 million in the first quarter, driven by lower electricity and hosting expenses following the hashrate reduction. Depreciation was $16.9 million, down from $29.4 million in the first quarter. General and administrative expenses, including related party fees, totaled $8.4 million. Impairment loss from mining machines in the second quarter was $42.9 million and loss on disposal of mining machines in the second quarter was $8.5 million. Loss from changes in the fair value of crypto assets was $4.1 million compared with a loss of $151.8 million in the first quarter.

The change was primarily driven by 2 factors: the decrease in Bitcoin prices as of June 30, and this was partially offset by the implementation of our hedging program. As Paul mentioned earlier, we began implementing a Bitcoin hedging program during the second quarter. The purpose of this program is to manage our exposure to Bitcoin price volatility and provide greater predictability to our operating cash flow. We intend to selectively continue to use hedging as a risk management tool, and this is not for speculative purposes. The related short-term positions are reflected on our balance sheet and will be reflected as we continue to execute this program in a disciplined manner.

Operating loss for the quarter was $80.6 million with a net loss from continuing operations of $81.6 million in the second quarter. The net loss was primarily driven by the noncash impairment and disposal losses I just mentioned, which together totaled approximately $51 million. On a non-GAAP basis, adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $10.7 million, including a $4.1 million loss from the changes in the fair value of the receivables for the Bitcoin collateral.

Lastly, moving on to our balance sheet. As of June 30, we had cash and cash equivalents of $10.1 million compared with $7.2 million as of March 31. At the same time, our balance sheet also has Bitcoins in the number of 1,056 Bitcoins held in treasury. In terms of operational assets, we carry our mining machines at a net value of $58.7 million after depreciation. On the liability side, we had $31.2 million in long-term debt compared with $30.6 million as of March 31.

And this concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

And today's first question comes from Pingyue Wu with Citic Securities.

Question-and-Answer Session

Pingyue Wu

I have 3 questions. First, can management provide more color on the Bitcoin hedging program in terms of overall notional size, instrument structure and duration? And additionally, could you clarify whether this is risk mitigating or it involves any directional positioning?

And my second question is regarding the AI infrastructure progress you highlighted such as the Georgia site completion and container deployment. We think it is a milestone occurred towards the second quarter? And what is the rationale for including them now? And more importantly, could we incorporate this development as material increase in our third quarter financial models?

And my third question is regarding the newly signed customer contracts. Could you provide some visibility into the anticipated revenue contribution and time line for top line recognition?

Ming Yeung Tang

Thanks, Pingyue. It's Simon here. Why don't I take the first question and then Paul can address your second and third questions with regards to the AI progress. In terms of the hedging program, it's structured as a short-term loan denominated in BTC. So that is reflected in our balance sheet under short-term debt, which as of quarter end was around USD 8 million. And at the same time, there is a roughly equivalent amount recorded under current asset as well. So this short-term loan in BTC is led to us on day 1 and then which we typically size based on the scale of our Bitcoin mining production. For example, we might want to think about, okay, we'll do 1 month of production or 2 months of production. So that's the way we think about this.

And then this loan in BTC is sold at spot price on day 1. So if in the coming months, if Bitcoin prices fall below that, then we'll choose to repay in the BTC that is mined out of our mining operations. So I hope that illustratively addresses your question with regards to the -- how we think about the sizing and the structure. And again, I would like to emphasize that we purely think of this as a risk management tool and the purpose is really just to reduce the sensitivity of our cash flow to the Bitcoin price ranges. And then with that, I'll pass it to Paul for the second and third question.

Peng Yu

Sure, sure. Thank you. We wanted to give you the most current picture of where the AI business stands. Even though this development fall after June 30 cutoff, we are not reflected in this quarter's revenue and only a small amount of property-related costs have been capitalized in Q2. The amount is immaterial. We expect the related revenue to start showing up in our third quarter numbers, which we will report in the normal course. And that means we expect to begin recognizing AI-related revenue in the third quarter. The initial contribution will be modest, but it provides initial validation of the commercial viability of our AI infrastructure strategy and establishes an operating track record we can build on. Thank you.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

Our next question today comes from Sid Rajeev with Fundamental Research Corp.

Siddharth Rajeev

Should we expect Q3 mining revenue to stabilize at current levels or anticipate further hashrate reductions?

Ming Yeung Tang

Sid, thank you for your question. In terms of the operational hashrate and the mining machines that we have on our balance sheet, in the third quarter, it would not change significantly -- it will not change significantly. But again, given the third quarter includes the summer months of July and August, whereby we may experience some regional power curtailment.

Siddharth Rajeev

Got it. Maybe you could provide some color on roughly how much of the current hashrate is from S19 versus newer generation machines?

Ming Yeung Tang

This percentage is increasing. In terms of the mix between the 19s and the 21s, I would say -- and this is purely the amount that is operational that is on rack and excluding -- let me think about how to address this. Excluding the part that is leased, the split is roughly a little bit above 1/3 in the 21 series.

Siddharth Rajeev

Got it. Are you able to talk about your cash costs? Can you further cut costs? Because I see you did have cost reductions in the quarter. So how about Q3, how should we look at it?

Ming Yeung Tang

Yes. Sid, and I think that is a great question. And the reason that in the second quarter, the cost continued to optimize. There were 2 reasons. One reason was that we were -- we continue to negotiate with our hosted sites because as you remember, most of our sites are externally hosted instead of our self-owned mining sites. Our own self-owned mining site is just a 50-megawatt site in the state of Georgia in LN. And the rest of our mining machines are hosted externally with third parties. So we continue to negotiate contracts with them.

And a lot of these contracts have a power price reduction mechanism, whereby the power prices would decrease in an environment where Bitcoin prices are decreasing as well. So if we were to look at the cash cost on a month-by-month basis between each month of the second quarter, the cash cost was on a downward trend. So this is, in a way, is a price reduction mechanism to give us a little bit more downside protection.

Siddharth Rajeev

Got it. If I may, one more question. This is slightly more long term. How much of your existing, say, mining infrastructure or power capacity could realistically be converted to AI infrastructure over the next 3 years?

Ming Yeung Tang

We're starting in the U.S. at the moment. We're still more focused on our own 50-megawatt site right now, but we have started to install small test nodes in other sites. But these are sites that are not necessarily our own, but they could be with partner sites.

Operator

And that does conclude our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to the management team for any closing remarks.

Ming Yeung Tang

Any other remarks? Thank you very much for dialing for our conference call. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you, sir. That does conclude our conference for today. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.