Iris Energy founders Will and Daniel Roberts will have $430m stake in $2bn float on NASDAQ

Sydney young guns Will and Daniel Roberts are taking their $2bn Iris Energy bitcoin miner public, just as cryptocurrency surges.

Will and Daniel Roberts are floating their Iris Energy bitcoin miner on the NASDAQ. Picture: Britta Campion

The two 30-something brothers behind Australian bitcoin miners Iris Energy will emerge with a stake worth more than $430m should their proposed $2bn Nasdaq float eventuate next week.

Will and Daniel Roberts, 32 and 37 respectively, will each have a 10 per cent shareholding in Iris, which the pair founded in 2018 after previously working at Macquarie and in other investment and digital asset roles.

Iris announced on Wednesday it would pursue a Nasdaq listing as early as next week, lodging a prospectus revealing it is planning to raise about $US215m ($290m) from investors by offering 8.3 million shares priced between $US25 to $US27 each.

It would list with market capitalisation of about $US1.5bn ($2.02bn) at that range.

The Roberts brothers have attracted a group of high-profile pre-IPO backers to Iris, including billionaire investor Alex Waislitz, Kerr Neilson’s Platinum Asset Management and Geoff Wilson’s Wilson Asset Management, which owns its stake via the WAM Micro and WAM Capital listed investment companies.

Iris raised more than $175m from investors alone earlier this year.

Philip King’s Regal Funds Management is also a major shareholder and will emerge with a 5.3 pre cent stake in the initial public offering, according to the Iris prospectus lodged with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr Waislitz said he was attracted to Iris because of its green credentials, having invested via his Thorney Technologies.

“It uses hydro electrically generated power … and as such is seen as a more environmentally acceptable alternative to those bitcoin mining companies which use fossil fuel power sources,” he said.

He also said he looked forward to the Nasdaq listing given that the IPO valuation “will be considerably in excess of Thorney Technologies’ entry cost and we will continue to keenly follow Iris’s progress”.

Will and Daniel Roberts, 32 and 37 respectively, will each have a 10 per cent shareholding in Iris. Picture: Britta Campion

The bitcoin price surged to a record high this week, and cryptocurrency assets have started entering the mainstream in Australia with deals such as Commonwealth Bank becoming the first retail bank to offer customers the ability to buy, sell and hold bitcoin via its app.

Iris owns its own data centre infrastructure and mines bitcoins using renewable energy.

It then converts those bitcoins into cash and has a bitcoin data centre project in British Columbia, Canada, and also has plans for other assets in renewable energy regions in Texas and Asia-Pacific.

The Canadian data centre is connected to the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority electricity network on which electricity was 98 per cent sourced from clean or renewable sources. The site has about 30 megawatts of capacity.

Iris sells all the bitcoin that it mines.

It had $US10.4m revenue in the three months to September 30, up from $US800,000 in the same period last year.

The company’s after tax loss for the September quarter was $US490m, though it claimed earnings before interest and tax, depreciation and amortisation of $US6.02m.

Iris said it will use the float proceeds to buy bitcoin mining hardware equipment and buy and build data centres, among other growth initiatives.

“Not everyone understands bitcoin and I guess they are still coming to grips with why bitcoin has value,” Daniel Roberts told The Australian earlier this year.

“It’s the history of the blockchain that grounds it in stone that can never be tampered with. And that is the whole innovation: to create this digital scarce asset that is out of control of any individual or central authority.”

Iris had previously considered an ASX listing, as well as the potential of going public via the Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) route in the US, before deciding on pursuing the Nasdaq listing.

JPMorgan, Canaccord Genuity and Citigroup are acting as lead book-running managers for the proposed offering. Macquarie Capital, Cantor Fitzgerald, CLSA and Cowen are acting as book-running managers. Compass Point is acting as co-manager for the offering and Galaxy Digital Partners is digital asset adviser.