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Date

Friday, May 15, 2026 at 11 a.m. ET

Call participants

• Chief Executive Officer — Johan Wattenstrom
• Chief Financial Officer — Paul Sandor Bozoki
• Chief Operating Officer — Andrew Forson
• Head of Investor Relations — Curtis Schlaufman

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Takeaways

• Revenue -- $11.2 million, with management attributing results to a challenging market environment and diversified monetization across fees, staking activities, and trading infrastructure.
• Net income -- $4.9 million, described by management as demonstrating profitability despite sector-wide digital asset declines.
• Average AUM -- Approximately $503 million, with a period-end AUM trough at $427 million and year-to-date AUM rebounding above $530 million by April.
• AUM net inflows -- April brought $14.6 million in net inflows, representing the second-highest monthly inflow in the past twelve months.
• Product breadth -- 103 listed products on multiple global exchanges at the group level, with 102 ETPs and structured products at quarter-end.
• Stillman Digital revenue -- $2.9 million, up 38% from $2.1 million a year earlier, with management reaffirming Stillman’s 15%-20% annual revenue growth target.
• Effective management fee yield -- Approximately 1%, down from 1.2% in prior quarters, due to higher Bitcoin product weighting and declining Altcoin values.
• Effective staking yield (Valor segment) -- 2.5%, attributed to Altcoin price declines and “compression in Bitcoin and Ethereum lending rates.”
• Total cash and USDT/USDC -- $103 million as of March 31, 2026, comprising $87.6 million cash and $13.1 million in USDT/USDC.
• Treasury and venture portfolio value -- $52.6 million combined ($23.5 million in treasury holdings and $29.1 million in venture/private portfolio), clarifying that the transcript's "total" figure was misstated.
• Operating general and admin expenses, fees, and commissions -- $9.7 million for the quarter, annualized at $38.7 million versus a $36 million annual target.
• Working capital -- $47.3 million, described as a significant improvement from year-end and supporting growth initiatives and potential acquisitions.
• Staking allocation -- 59% of AUM staked in the quarter, with commentary that in “volatile market” conditions this may range from high 50% to low 60%, and could reach up to 80% in ideal conditions.
• Institutional product initiatives -- Multiple regulated fund structures in development (including UCITS, hedge funds, and actively managed certificates), with management stating these products will enable access to “larger institutional ticket sizes.”
• Geographical expansion -- Cross-listings and new distribution efforts launched in London and Brazil, with dedicated teams and local investor engagement initiated.
• In-house custody platform -- Proprietary custody technology is in development, targeted for private internal use in 2026 and planned for external public release, intended to reduce third-party costs.
• Share buyback and Nasdaq listing -- CEO Wattenstrom stated, “there is no risk of us getting delisted from Nasdaq,” citing runway of “180 plus 180 days” to regain compliance, and outlined a reverse split as a contingency if the share price does not recover.
• Operating leverage -- CFO Bozoki said, “any additional AUM it all flows to the bottom line... our existing infrastructure can do it,” emphasizing low incremental cost for new capital flows.

Risks

• Management reported a challenging market environment across the digital asset sector, with softer market conditions impacting assets under management, staking-related income, and overall investor activity during the period.
• Effective management fee yield decreased from approximately 1.2% to 1% due to the larger relative weighting of Bitcoin-related products, which carried lower or no management fees following the sharp decline in Altcoin prices, reducing monetization potential.
• Effective staking yield declined to 2.5% and staking allocation dropped, as management explained: “the Bitcoin dominance and also dominance of Bitcoin and Ethereum increased quite a bit.”
• Annualized operating expenses reached $38.7 million, slightly exceeding the $36 million target, with no assurance given for return to target levels.

Summary

DeFi Technologies reported positive revenue and net income despite marked declines in digital asset prices, with average AUM dropping but rebounding above $530 million and April producing the second-strongest inflows of the past year. Management emphasized operating leverage, noting a high percentage of incremental AUM would contribute directly to earnings given largely fixed core expenses. Substantive product development continues, notably in the institutional and fund segment pipeline, with expectations for these regulated offerings to materially broaden distribution and increase monetization through higher-margin, performance-based fee structures. Dedicated in-house custody platform development is positioned as both a cost efficiency play and a foundation for future capital markets infrastructure products, with public release planned. Geographical buildouts—including in Brazil and London—advance the company’s strategic goal to access larger pools of global investor demand and move toward more resilient, diversified revenue streams insulated from retail sentiment or cryptocurrency price cycles.

• Management highlighted Stillman Digital’s outperformance, reiterating that it is on track to meet or exceed its planned 15%-20% year-over-year growth.
• The quarter’s near-flat net ETP flows ($700,000 outflow) during historic lows in digital asset prices were cited as demonstrating relative product resilience.
• Company leaders directly addressed the risk of Nasdaq delisting, stating: “There is no risk of us getting delisted from Nasdaq. We have 180 plus [days] and outlined a tested compliance plan if necessary.”
• The business intelligence platform DEFTEVOLURE (DVIO) was described as providing granular real-time analytics for product targeting and competitive positioning, with its rollout linked directly to recent institutional allocations.
• The company’s $103 million liquid reserves and expanded working capital provide a cushion for opportunistic acquisitions and seeding new fund products, with planned strategic deployment of surplus capital.
• Management declined to issue formal company-wide revenue guidance for the year, citing the need for greater visibility in the institutional fund launch pipeline, but provided operational and monetization benchmarks as reference points for investors.

Industry glossary

• ETP (Exchange-Traded Product): Tradable securities that track an underlying asset or group of assets, including single DeFi protocol or multi-asset baskets.
• UCITS: Undertakings for the Collective Investment in Transferable Securities, a European regulatory framework for mutual funds optimized for cross-border distribution to institutional investors.
• USDT/USDC: US dollar-pegged stablecoins, used as digital cash reserves or for operational funding.
• Staking yield: Income derived from participating in proof-of-stake blockchain protocols using company-held crypto assets.
• DVIO (DEFTEVOLURE investment opportunity index): Proprietary business intelligence index developed to provide detailed visibility into product demand, inflows, and competitiveness.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Johan Wattenstrom: Thank you, Curtis, and thank you everyone for joining us today. The 2026 reflected a more challenging market environment across digital asset sector, with softer market conditions impacting assets under management, staking-related income overall investor activity during the period. At the same time, we believe the quarter reinforced the strength and durability of the business we have built. Even in what we view as the most challenging quarter of this recent crypto market downturn, with asset prices reaching their lows during the period. DeFi Technologies generated revenue of $11.2 million positive net income of $4.9 million while further strengthening the balance sheet through a significant improvement in working capital.

More broadly, the quarter demonstrated a resilience of our business model and the discipline of our operating approach. We navigated the difficult market environment while continuing to manage cost carefully support the product platform, and advance several important long term growth initiatives. Average AUM during the quarter was approximately $503 million with AUM levels through the period reaching approximately $427 million While lower than prior periods, these levels were broadly consistent with market conditions, and visible through our publicly reported AUM disclosures. Importantly, our model continues to demonstrate durability even during weaker market conditions.

Our management fee profile remained relatively stable, and our diversified monetization approach across management fees, staking activities, and trading infrastructure, and institutional initiatives continue to differentiate the platform. Across the business, we have demonstrated that DFI Technologies is not reliant on any single product, revenue stream,, or market environment. Our platform continues to benefit from multiple pathways for growth across asset management, trading, and capital markets infrastructure, and we believe the company has never been better positioned to capitalize on the convergence of decentralized finance and traditional capital markets. At the center of the group remains Valor. Today, the platform includes 103 listed products across multiple exchanges globally.

We continue to believe the breadth of the platform combined with our ability to monetize AUM across multiple activities differentiates us in the market. We also strengthened our commercial leadership during the quarter with the appointment of Jakob Lindbergh as chief revenue officer. Jakob is focused on expanding distribution deepening institutional relationships, and accelerating revenue opportunities across our product platform. We believe this addition strengthens our ability to scale institutional engagement globally. In addition, we continue to advance our institutional product initiatives, including our usage platform efforts our hedge fund efforts, which we believe represent an important long term opportunity to broaden access to regulated digital asset investment products across global fund platforms and institutional allocators.

As we move through 2026, we remain focused on expanding institutional product structures and other regulated vehicles. While continuing to invest in the products and rails that support the future of digital asset investing. We also continue to see opportunities to increase monetization across the platform, particularly through the trading, hedge, and market making infrastructure embedded across Valor's issuance stack. Which supports our ability to earn additional income on AUM more efficiently. From a financial standpoint, we ended the quarter with more than $103 million in combined cash and USDT/USDC, approximately 23.5 million in treasury holdings, and a venture and private portfolio valued at 29.1 million. For total cash treasury and venture portfolio value of approximately $10.556 billion.

We also ended the quarter with positive working capital of 47.3 million, a significant improvement from year-end 2025. This fortress balance sheet gives us the ability to be proactive rather than reactionary and to deploy capital deliberately into growth initiatives strategic infrastructure, potential acquisitions that deepens our capabilities and strengthens long term earnings power. Overall, while Q1 was a soft quarter from a market standpoint, we believe the business remains well positioned operationally and financially, with strong cost discipline, a resilient platform, and multiple long term growth initiatives underway. We are increasingly encouraged by improving market conditions as we move through 2026.

Which we believe will create a more favorable backdrop for AUM growth, strong ETP demand, and revenue acceleration through the remainder of the year. Are already beginning to see early signs of that in the business with AUM now above $530 million and April 2026 net inflows of 14.6 million representing the second strongest monthly inflow in the last 12 months. After September 2025, inflows of 22.6 million. Following our Q1 period in which flows were relatively flat. With a proven business model, expanding monetization, the financial flexibility to operate from a position of strength. We believe DeFi Technologies is exceptionally well positioned for the quarters ahead.

With that, I will turn it over to Paul to walk through the financial results.

Paul Sandor Bozoki: Thank you, Johan, and good morning, everyone. I will begin with an overview of assets under management. Average AUM for the period was approximately $533 million At the low point during the quarter, AUM was 427 million. While market conditions were challenging, these levels remained within a manageable range for the business and were consistent with the market environment investors experienced across the broader digital asset sector,. Our effective management fee yield was approximately 1% for the quarter, compared to approximately 1.2% in prior periods, primarily due to the larger relative weighting of Bitcoin related products which carried lower or no management fees following the sharp decline in Altcoin prices.

Within Valor, our effective staking yield declined to 2.5% due to the significant price declines in the altcoins. Which pay higher effective yields to Bitcoin Compression in Bitcoin and Ethereum lending rates combined with lower effective staking of the AUM, given substantial market volatility. And the unstake during Q1 of previously locked Solana coins that became unlocked and distributed from our equity investments directly to Valor on April 3.

Notwithstanding the lower monetization of 3.5% of our AUM, total revenues for Q1 came in at $11.2 million which is greater than 9.7 million in operating general expenses and fees and commissions Our primary cash costs reflecting the cost discipline efforts to maintain positive core operations through the challenging crypto market conditions of Q1. The company continued to maintain its balance sheet strength with $87.6 million in cash, and 13.1 million of USDT/USDC for a total of 101 million of cash in USDT/USDC on hand at 03/31/2026. Turning to product activity, we ended the quarter with 102 ETPs, and structured products across our platform.

During the period, we continued expanding our higher value offerings including the leveraged bull and bear ETPs, introduced in late 25. We also continued expanding geographic distribution through cross listings in markets such as London and Brazil. In terms of ETP flows, they remained relatively resilient during the quarter with a small 700 thousand outflow given the challenging cryptocurrency price environment which saw Bitcoin reach a low of 60 thousand per token. Stillman Digital continued to perform well during the quarter and remains an important diversification component of our broader platform.

Stillman generated approximately $2.9 million in revenue during the quarter, an increase of 38% from Q1 25 actual revenue of 2.1 million and is thus far on track to meet or exceed its planned 15 to 20% year over year growth. Turning to operating expenses, our Q1 actual operating general and admin expenses and fees and commissions came in at 9.7 million. Which on an annualized basis is 38.7 million or slightly in excess of the 36 million target we set for ourselves. Management will continue to strive to keep core operating costs at levels that maintain cash positive core operations.

Based on our current cost structure and monetization profile, we continue to believe the business remains positioned to achieve profitability during fiscal year 26. With that, I will turn it over to Andrew.

Andrew Forson: Thank you, Paul. As we discussed last quarter, our focus remains on building the distribution relationships and operational infrastructure required to support broader institutional adoption of our products across global markets. This process is ongoing. And in Q1, we continued expanding our distribution onboarding efforts across Europe, Latin America, and Asia following our launches in markets such as London and Brazil in late 25. We continue to see these markets as important building blocks in expanding the global reach of the platform and strengthening access to new pools of investor demand. Our capital markets distribution work also continues to be executed with an eye towards supporting future usage distribution.

We believe that UCITS and other innovative fund strategies as provided by our portfolio company, Neuronomics remain an important opportunity to broaden access to our products through traditional fund platforms and institutional allocation channels. The beautiful thing about the UCITS ICAV structures we have been working on are their appeal to and accessibility by large institutional capital allocators worldwide. Progress on that front remains an important strategic priority. And we continue to position the business to meet the operational, regulatory, and distribution requirements needed to support broader institutional participation.

Over time, we have repositioned our global insights symposia as the DeFi Technologies Capital Market Series, in order to bring targeted visibility to our full range of products and OTC prime brokerage services via Stoneman Digital to institutional investors globally. The first in our Capital Markets Series is our Institutional Investor Event being conducted at the Canadian Embassy in London in collaboration with the Canada UK Chamber of Commerce in June. We have also proven our ability to onboard assets into our existing ETPs through our institutional outreach programs. 1 such institutional allocation into our Valor ETP was highlighted in a press release and is reflected in these Q1 26 financials.

The other tranche of investment will appear in Q2 financials. This shows a resilient flexibility to the underlying technologies business model even in poor macroeconomic market conditions. We continue to build out the business intelligence infrastructure first referenced last quarter. Including the launch and continued development of tools such as our DEFTEVOLURE investment opportunity index or DVIO These systems are designed to provide more granular visibility into product consumption regional demand trends, inflows, and competitive positioning across markets. This information helps us improve product targeting, identify areas where institutional demand may be developing, and better position both existing and future products across our distribution network.

The DEF view index and the analysis based visibility it provides was critical to our ability to close the investments into our 2 ETPs. Just this week, we released an improved index calculation engine which updates daily. This lays the groundwork for our ability to create innovative instruments based on our Valor ETP platform. Other innovations that have made considerable progress in Q1 include the work we have done to restructure our venture capital portfolio to bring more value to DeFi Technologies shareholders. As well as the continued development of the in house digital asset custody technology. We spent Q1 researching and building proprietary tech and scaling our sales and distribution networks.

All of this hard work during weak market conditions is designed to help us minimize costs enhance marginality, and deliver new products that have broader accessibility globally and within the world of DeFi. Our results reflect the resilience of our business model and operating approach despite a challenging macro environment. Looking ahead, we will continue to build strong, European and strategic global distribution networks and the necessary operating infrastructure to support wider adoption of our products. At the same time, we continue to believe the work underway today will better position DeFi Technologies to capture institutional demand, improve monetization opportunities, and support long term growth as market conditions improve.

With that, I will turn it back over to Curtis for Q&A.

Curtis Schlaufman: Okay. We will take some questions initially from the chat. So if you are an investor and you have the questions, please, type your question in the chat, and we will sort it appropriately. And then, if you are an analyst, please raise your hand. And keep it raised, and I will invite you on 1 at a time per usual. To answer or to ask questions of management live. First question, are you guys planning to buy back shares? As a retail investor, we are so worried about the Nasdaq listing. Johan?

Johan Wattenstrom: I think this is 2 different subjects. The buyback of shares is something we might do in the future. It depends on our cash flow. If we have-- we do not buy back normally from our cash at hand, but rather from strong cash flow. And this has no connection to delisting on Nasdaq. There is no risk of us getting delisted from Nasdaq. We have 180 plus 180 days to get over $1 If we are over in 10 days, I think, for over $1, it resets. Also, obviously, we will do a reverse split. If needed, not if we do not need to do it. But if needed, we will do it.

I know a lot of people are really scared about reverse splits, but I think that is uncalled for the kind of the statistics that shows bad performance after a bar split includes all the companies that do reverse splits. Most of those are companies in distress. So if you sort those out, there is no actual negative impact. Also, obviously, if we do a reverse split, we will make use of the buyback program to support through those days. To make sure there is no negative impact. But, yeah, I guess, in short, there is no risk of us being delisted We have plenty of runway. In the worst case scenario, we can do a reverse split.

When it comes to the buyback program, we have a lot of really, really high potential investments and usage of funds to actually make more money. And that is the primary use. We obviously keep that as an opportune as an option if we need to. So in worst case, yeah, we could do it, but it is it would never be for Nasdaq's purposes because that is simply not simply a real risk. And any information to the contrary is false information.

Paul Sandor Bozoki: And I think, just to add to that, we also do would qualify for another 180-day extension if needed. So, effectively, that gives us about a year to regain compliance And, hopefully, as we mentioned, we are optimistic, growing more optimistic about coming out of this crypto winter. So if there is additional catalysts to underlying asset prices, that should push us in our AUM or AUM much higher in us over $1. And on top of that, we do have growth initiatives coming up that would you know, we hope help the share price.

So there is, I would say, nothing imminent right now in terms of risk or even a reverse split But it is certainly, like, if anybody, if you are hearing that we are gonna be delisted, that is absolutely not true.

Curtis Schlaufman: Number 2, when do you plan to re release your annual goals? I think, you know, we talk about, our institutional fund structures. The UCITS, actively managed certificates, fund of fund programs, Those are our primary focus for this year. I think I can let Andrew and Johan speak on that further, but we have talked at length over the past few months about what our goal is for this year in terms of diversifying our product sets towards more institutional focus.

Andrew Forson: Yeah. Absolutely, Curtis. I might comment on that. I think people should take comfort, in the work that the company is doing to launch these products. The fact that we are being so rigorous, meticulous, and doing it the right way to build out a full and complete fund platform it is also an indication of the moat that there is in this industry. Some time ago, Johan indicated that 1 of the strategic objectives of DeFi technologies and our Velour asset is to become 1 of the world leading asset managers.

In order to do that, we have built an infrastructure for these broad range of fund products And what makes me particularly excited about these fund products is it actually changes the revenue profile of the business in terms of being able to generate higher returns than a standard hurdle rate and also in terms of being able to distribute our products globally without needing any particular, new type of listing. But the upshot of this is these are very valuable structured instruments in terms of the capital markets and it means you have got to do it right. And this is something that DeFi Technologies and Valor has consistently done.

I mean, in the heart of macroeconomic uncertainty, with a lot of volatility in digital asset prices. I have to remind people that we generated nearly a 100 million in revenue on a profitable basis when many in the Web3 industry either do not generate revenue at all or certainly do not do it profitably. So we are taking this same safe consistent, structured approach to building out a new fund platform that will enable us to scale consistently and quickly and globally with a range of new instruments that will also provide us higher marginality and higher revenue potential.

Curtis Schlaufman: Thanks, Andrew. Next question. Hey, Curtis team. Hope you are doing well. If you guys are optimistic over crypto price, action, how optimistic will guidance be for next quarter full year? I will start, and then, Paul, you can wrap this up. We have technically issued guidance for Stillman. We are guiding for 15% to 20% growth. Last year, they did just around just about $10 million in revenue. 15% to 20% growth puts them at $11 million to $12 million. They had a really great first quarter with over 30% growth year over year. So, hopefully, they can continue to execute at that level.

In terms of Valor, we from a technical standpoint, we have not broken out through, bear market trend. I think that comes around, breaking past $83 thousand for Bitcoin. it is 200 daily 200 day daily moving average. We will see there. I think we are taking a more conservative approach this year in regards to guidance on that level. But if you look at Q1, and if you believe like, we are very optimistic about right now that Q1 represented the lows in this bear market, We came up profitable. So at these levels, you can assume that we will continue to be profitable through the course of this year. Paul, if you wanted to add any additional color.

Paul Sandor Bozoki: Yeah. Thank you, Curtis. Okay. So for everybody, let's, again, let's start with Stoman because it is easier to get your head around. You know, they did about $10 million in 2025, and we have said 15 to 20. So 20% would be 12 million. If you look, they did 2.9 million in Q1. So it is tracking to do 12 million this year. So there is 12. You look at Velour. And there is valor.com has our AUM real time every day. Our monetization in 2025 was 5.2% for the full year. Q1 was low at 3.5%. It was, we think a pretty crazy quarter in Q1 with prices.

And, in general, and we are we are crypto bulls, so we are suggesting 4.5% as a conservative monetization rate for the year. And then put that on an AUM number. For the year. And our AUM has moved around a lot. It does generally move with crypto prices. We have been over 1 billion as people know. You know, now we are we are just over 530 ish. And you hear about all the initiatives. We have got Andrew, Johan, and Jacob working on to bring in new money. In terms of providing guidance, like, with those numbers, you know, you can kind of get to a core safe revenue.

But we are we are declining on putting out a formal guidance for the entire company because we need a little bit more time on UCITS and the fund structures, which we think can really drive big numbers. And until there is a little bit more visibility, we are we are going to hold off on giving a consolidated kind of fixed number. But that is what I would suggest people watch for, and that hopefully would really, spark up the company once we get those things going.

Curtis Schlaufman: Thanks, Paul.

Johan Wattenstrom: The investigation into share price manipulation issue has been around for almost a year. Shareholders need answers. No platitudes. Any meaningful update, please? This is an ongoing process. it is still ongoing. And it is something we will release updates about when there is material information, due to the fact that it could be a legal process at all. We also cannot comment it because if we were to comment on something that is not public, and at privilege to the company, we would lose privilege on that information. We have further information on that particular topic. We will release it and it is still currently an ongoing discovery process.

Curtis Schlaufman: And I think as a public company too, like, we have to be very responsible and mindful of what we put out publicly especially in matters that can be this sensitive. So we cannot just unfortunately, we cannot speak openly and freely about it publicly. Then you speak to your stablecoin strategy. You have small investments in the stablecoin and CNHN. The potential there of collaboration integration into your stack. FireLabs in house development update. Andrew?

Andrew Forson: Yep. Our strongest assets are part of our venture portfolio. And as the questioner correctly identified, we have investments in continental stablecoin, which is the CNGN, and in stable corp. And we consider these very valuable. And they will be increasingly will be increasingly accretive to DeFi as our fund structures come online. Now 1 of the things I alluded to in my remarks is that we are working on innovative ways to generate more actually, revenue based value for the DeFi Technologies group. From our venture portfolio. And you can believe having access to our stablecoins these stablecoin projects on which we sit on the cap table alongside Circle and Coinbase Ventures in both.

The objective is to leverage these partnerships, leverage these companies, explore potential liquidity products, Of course, they are already in the process in both instances of working or onboarding to Stillman. Which is significant being that these stablecoins need access to markets, need trading pairs in order to generate liquidity. And from our perspective, I think these are anchored products to the future of our venture portfolio, which we believe will be quite innovative and will actually leverage our core fund platform Thanks, Andrew.

Curtis Schlaufman: Have you all considered bringing custodial services in house given the SOC 2 issue? Think 1 answer is yes, but I will let Johan explain more. About our custody plans.

Johan Wattenstrom: Yeah. On the custody, obviously, we have an in-house custody technology stack, which we are developing now to productify and release to the public as a service And I think we have a very unique offering in this area. And 1 of the reasons we I believe it is very important to build on this and release it is that we do not want to pay any other middle man for this type of services. But, also, our needs are on a different level than what we can see the offerings the other offerings are in the market. And it would provide a foundation for other things we are building in DeFi capital markets infrastructure in decentralized finance.

Once we have this productified and launched, we will go after both institutional and retail and deposits and money into this tech stack. And we have already quite a lot of infrastructure. We will stack on top of the custody offering. So I think this if you wanna build and be building infrastructure in the centralized capital markets, you should have a really robust and innovative offering on the custody side So that is what we are aiming to do. And I think we probably are aiming to have something ready '3. Definitely this year for public release. '3, it would be ready for using with all our for custody, for sure.

We it is a bit early to say when we have a date for public release. But it is not just about the custody stack. it is it is because this is the foundation for other things we think are unique and we can bring to the market for sure.

Operator: We will move on into some analyst questions. I will get, Allen Klee from Maxim. Your you are on, so go ahead and unmute yourself.

Curtis Schlaufman: Alan? Think you are on mute. Yeah. Okay. Maybe he stepped away for a second.

Analyst (Alan Klee): Oh, I am sorry. I think I was-- can you hear me? Yeah. We can. We hear you all. Sorry. Yeah. Can you expand on your new institutional structures a bit and the feedback that you are hearing from potential customers?

Johan Wattenstrom: I am happy to, be on that. So basically, historically, as you might know, I think 95% of our AUM has been in the ETPs from retail, the retail side. But on the I would say the last 9 months, we have seen and heard a very strong demand from both institutional clients in our core markets, the EU and Switzerland. and UK. But also on a global scale from other types of funds and institutional platforms. And to meet this demand, we have accelerated our efforts to build globally available and more institutionally targeted type of products.

Part of this is to UCITS fund, also Valor the other funds in Valor funds, which constitute quite a few, hedge funds we have in the in the pipeline. That will cover needs both from normal pension funds and, alternative investment funds. But also from fund of funds both in crypto and outside of crypto. And family offices, I would say, is also a strong driver. So we have got some commitments, and we have got some really strong demands from participating in this space. And, obviously, I think the upside in terms of AUM is larger for this area than for the retail side. And, obviously, every ticket's size is much, much higher.

So we I think those products are the first to meet this demand. We are also looking to do a few more actively managed ETPs but also some asset backed ETPs to meet some another part of this demand that would be, volatility targeted, ETPs, for instance, that has been seeked by a lot of asset allocators that do not want to reweight their allocation to crypto continuously. So, yeah, you will see innovation both on the fund side, normal head funds, CCAP funds, usage funds, but also in the asset backed DTP side for that purpose. Also, I think maybe a little bit longer time. A few of these will be will be well suited for tokenization as well.

Analyst (Alan Klee): Thank you. 1 last question. It did not seem like you put too much into staking in 1Q. I am just wondering how much of the AUM do you think can be put to work in staking and lending?

Johan Wattenstrom: I will comment that first and maybe let Paul comment on the level then. But so I think we actually con continuously increase the levels, the percentage of AUM we put into staking. The I think a fortunate thing temporarily in Q1 where we already see improvement, is that with the lows of the crypto market, the Bitcoin dominance and also dominance of Bitcoin and Ethereum increased quite a bit And as you have seen, the falling prices in, Solana, Sui, all the other altcoins has been much deeper. So, obviously, then the overall AUM constitutes a larger proportion of Bitcoin and Ethereum, where our margins are the lowest.

So this basically once the market pops back, yeah, we have seen a lot of movement already in Sui, in Tone, and BNB and so forth. So we are quite confident that market is bouncing back. And with that, you will see a much higher percentage of the AUM being in higher yielding, higher staking yielding assets. So I think it is mainly been driven by the relative steep contraction of values in the Altcoin market.

Paul Sandor Bozoki: Yeah. I want to add to it. So, yeah, that is Johan gave you why the staking yield is down. it is just, you know, altcoins pay more than Bitcoin and Ethereum, but we staked 59%. it is a little bit on the lower side. And it is because of this there is a lot of volatility. There was you know, in February, there was some very sharp sell offs. There are un- bonding periods to get coins released so you can sell them. You know, we do we do try to hedge so the staking was driven a bit lower. In theory, it could get up to about 80%.

I think low seventies would probably be more realistic in terms of if you were modeling it. But that is my view. So in a volatile market, it is in the high fifties, low sixties, and normal market seventies, and then, in ideal times up to maybe 80.

Johan Wattenstrom: We are seeing that come up now both with the market volatility, but also structurally as we pushing how much we can stay safely without being in danger and not being able to hedge a 100%.

Analyst (Alan Klee): Thank you very much.

Operator: And then Mike from Northland.

Analyst (Mike): Hey, guys. First question, I was just curious. You are sitting on this, you know, slightly over a 100 million of cash. How much cash do you need to run your business? You know, with all the trading, with new products, you know, if you look out in 2026 and 2027, what is a minimum level of cash you need to run the business Just trying to think through, how much you truly need the next couple years.

Johan Wattenstrom: Yeah. For sure. I can start with that and leave over to Paul for extra comments afterwards. But the for our own market making where we also, by the way, will try to make it more visible, our profits on our own market making. it is now kind of hidden in the realized and unrealized P&L. For our own market making, I think the demand has been between 20 and $35 million in that range. And there is obviously a scenario where we could go down to zero.

We do have external market makers in all areas, but I think it is strategically very important to hold the control of all the order books so we can have tighter spreads and high quality prices than all our competitors, which we do have. But I would say it is yeah, say, 25 to 40 million or so that we need to have. Then, obviously, we have a few other needs for capital right now. that is-- our that will go down with time.

When we are launching our funds, and other structures, we will use some of the cash to seed these funds to make it easier to go out and do roadshows and sell it because we do need a substantial AVM to get big tickets in the beginning. It will be easier to accelerate that phase early on with seed money in those. And then we are we have been looking, and we are looking at different acquisitions. We are very careful about it. So we do not see a lot of that. But there will probably be some good opportunities.

And we in this market still, it is some push against consolidation, and we are in a good position to take advantage of that. So we do not want to opt out of that opportunity to act quickly if there is a great opportunity out there.

Analyst (Mike): Got it. And then maybe just secondly, where should the market's expectations be on you guys showing a ramp in revenue from new products? Is that 2026, 2027? When should we expect to see some of that?

Johan Wattenstrom: I would say the first half, for sure, maybe towards the end of Q3. But second half, for sure, I would be very surprised if we do not see a significant contribution. Something I do not think we have maybe commented on, but it is something we were excited about in our venture into to alpha type products with our funds and active certificates. Is that those will have at least the first fund and I think the second, and third 1 as well will have the 1.5% management fee plus 15% performance fee structure. So besides our Valor core business and Stillman, this will be a third I would say, very much uncorrelated leg of revenue streams.

As the type of strategies we will launch can have some really great years. And if we look historically, and simulate from that, the 15% performance fee could be something that is totally uncorrelated to market levels or activity. Whilst still being significant even from not huge AUMs. Because this strategy has a great Sharpe ratio, very interesting performance, dynamics and the low withdraw with maximum drawdowns. So I think from how that return profile looks, it will actually will give us a third uncorrelated way of earning potentially a lot of money for a lot of months. So I am really excited about that.

Obviously, it depends from month to month when we see those returns monthly, but I think, anyhow, from '3, we should see significant, yeah, income start picking up. Got it.

Analyst (Mike): Thank you. Thanks, Mike.

Operator: Any other analysts Raise your hand, and I will, invite you on. Okay. Then we will we will go back to a couple questions in the chat in the meantime, This 1 for Andrew.

Andrew Forson: Next steps in Brazil to get more velour traffic on that exchange. Yeah. So the Q1 was a very tricky quarter, in the digital asset space for starters. And what we did for most of Q1 was frankly focus on setting up a very efficient lean capital markets team. So we were not focused on selling in January and February, but I think we had our kickoff event Any of you that follow us on X or LinkedIn will see that we created a DeFi Tech Brazil.

We had our kickoff event there And then what followed in the next month was we ended up beating our next I will call them our next competitor in terms of total turnover within that market. But what we wanna do is make sure that we are really well positioned not just for the ETPs. Because the ETPs wrap our existing products. But we also wanna make sure that they understand what is coming in terms of our institution friendly products on the other fund platform. So right now, we have a team, effectively a capital markets or, I guess, in fund parlance, an investor relations team. We also have PR and publicity.

And we have met I actually just returned from there where I did no fewer than 3 meetings a day. Which were long meetings with institutional investors. To build our brand, make sure people know that we are available, and also make sure people are aware of the services that Stillman. Of course, our 5 ETPs that are listed, and our future fund products coming online. And with each visit that we make with each month we get more traction. But I want to highlight something. We are in this for the long term, and we are in this to build strong distribution.

For not only our existing products, but our future products, which may have higher marginality and higher uniqueness. And Brazil is a market of 200 million people. But they currently have a very high risk free rate of around 15%. And we are a new entrant into the market. So it is important that people get to know us, And in the process of getting to know us, they get more comfortable with existing products, our future products. And we will just be very steady But I was pleased with our first month results. But, obviously, we need to get more.

We have to remember that a lot of the institutions that we are dealing with, they do not necessarily buy exclusively through the B3. So many of them get access to our European ETPs through offshore structured instruments and offshore buying. And so that might not show up on the B3, but we certainly we certainly do not want to restrict how people decide to spend money. On Valor or DeFi Technologies products. We are just gonna grow the business across the board.

Curtis Schlaufman: Thanks, Hunter. Alan, did you have another question?

Analyst (Alan Klee): No. I do not know what happened.

Curtis Schlaufman: Okay. You had your hand raised again. Okay. Let's see. Next question. I Paul, I think, probably need your help with this. Please elaborate on what the next one50 million in AUM growth means to our bottom line. And to our forward valuation of the company. Please also reiterate how swiftly a $150 million bump in AUM mean since we are already profitable. And please outline our cash burn for the year.

Paul Sandor Bozoki: Okay. Thanks. So, yeah, for everybody. that is a great 1. We have a ton of operating leverage in this business. Okay? So what operating leverage means is just our costs are relatively fixed. You know, we last year, our operating general and fees and commissions were 40 million. We have told you we have targeted 36 on an annualized rate. We are at 38 point 7. And if we do 550 million of a of AUM and Stillman, like, we are we are positive. We are we are we are break even to positive. So any additional AUM it all flows to the bottom line. You know?

Assume 90%. there is you know, a little bit of slippage on some extra fees and commissions for trading. Maybe a little bit of s g and a to go with it, but we do not need to really roll out the team or add more bodies or rent more offices to manage another few $100 million of money. Our existing infrastructure can do it. So you know, put a 4.5% monetization on it, And 90% of it comes to the bottom line.

Curtis Schlaufman: Yeah. And I think, adding to that. As, I think, Paul discussed, Bitcoin consisting of the higher allocation of our ETP makeup, in Q1. And since we do not charge management fees on Bitcoin, that did decrease our monetization levels. But if we see alts run, which most which have much higher yield, allocations, that will increase our monetization levels as well. So if we can continue to grow Solana, Cardano, XRP, and some of these longer tail alts which offer higher yields, that will also help our monetization levels increase. Just in case that was not clear.

Paul Sandor Bozoki: Fully agree. Thank you, Curtis. Yeah.

Curtis Schlaufman: Another question. Of monetization. Any plan to accelerate the stock price? Again, I think if you listen to context that we are talking about here, our current business model, looking to increase monetization where we can, new products, hopefully, some help with the macro backdrop and Bitcoin and altcoin prices as well, and some other things that we are we have not talked about at the moment. Again, typically, in a bear market, crypto equities, are hammered. But, when we enter a bull market, then crypto equities have consistently rerated. And we are a crypto equity Our primary business is the cyclical business as of now. We are working on new fund products and structures.

That would be market agnostic, meaning they are not in significantly impacted by the underlying crypto price movements. So that will bring more stability to our AUM. That will bring more stability to our revenue and ultimately more stability to our share price. What do you think the biggest misconception to the market has about DeFi technologies? I think I have a lot of those. 1 of them is that I think we are gonna be delisted. We are not going to. People think we are a digital asset treasury company. We are not. We have 2+ real operating businesses, that produce real revenue. And will compound, earnings year after year.

I do not know if anybody from management wants to take a stab at that. Maybe Andrew or Johan? What are you what are you hearing about misconceptions about the company if you are?

Andrew Forson: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head. I guess I have a slightly different perspective. I think that the actual fundamentals of the platform and the company are quite strong. But the beauty of it is I do not have to just say that being optimistic. I can say it based on the money that we actually make. The reality is there will always be negative soothsayers, but at the end of the day, our focus is on keeping costs down, generating revenue, and being profitable. We had a war. We had spiking oil prices. We had absolutely everything bad happen. There have been currency fluctuations, macroeconomic factors, and we still made money.

This is a platform that is being prepared for the future to be a real infrastructure company in the world of digital finance. I will add something. Johan talked about custody. That custody represents more than just a service line. From an accounting perspective, it helps us minimize our cost. Without a doubt. We do not have to pay other people to store our digital assets. From an infrastructure perspective, every time you see a news article that talks about an RWA, think Valor custody. Every time you see a news article that talks about tokenization or securitization, or stablecoins, think Valor Custody. Because anything that lives on chain is going to need a quality custodian.

And then the next thing is we are the predominant avenue for structuring instruments so that digital assets can get money from traditional capital markets. We are the best at that. Foundations come to us for that. Other, institutional investors come to us knowing that we have done it for a long time. Johan, our CEO, created the world's first Bitcoin ETP back in May 2015. We just have to understand that, yeah, there is been macroeconomic volatility in Q1 26. Well, we remember that in September 2025, when we were at 1.2 billion in AUM, if we add that we have now, our numbers based on the improvements that we made would be that much better.

And we all know that the infrastructure and finance for tokenized assets, digital assets, it is just increasing. Getting more and more, and we are gonna be there to help it grow. And to service that demand. Thanks, Andrew.

Curtis Schlaufman: Do you all have any offering product plans to integrate into TradFi institutions?

Andrew Forson: Well, yes. I mean, our funds I think most of the institutions that would be consumers of our funds, are actually the largest banks. The largest capital allocators that are looking for specific strategies to offer their private wealth management divisions or their propriety trade proprietary trading desks. And then people have to remember, I think people do not understand the power of Stillman Digital. These prime brokerage OTC firms are how these large institutions make bulk buys.

This is why Stillman is growing whether markets are good or not good. it is based on transaction fees, transaction volumes, And what they do is they enable large institutions, large holders, of digital assets or stablecoins to take bulk positions in and out with effectively predictable pricing. I leave the rest to Johan to elaborate.

Johan Wattenstrom: Yeah. I can only agree with that. For sure, it is I think all the new initiatives we are doing now are intended for institutional and tradition traditional investors, but also for the traditional infrastructure in terms of banks, prime brokers, and so forth from Stillman services to these type of companies our funds or UCITS funds. Which all our instruments that they are used to service and products that they are used to utilizing and to allocate into the new asset class of crypto.

So I think our whole new and not to not to forget the custody side, obviously. that is the foundation for building our integration with traditional finance and introducing new types of products from crypto to them in a format they can and will understand in the way we will structure this. So yeah. I think we have covered everything I had in mind.

Curtis Schlaufman: Yeah. If I did not get to your question. Let's see. Thank you guys for the great call. I think it is less of misunderstanding but rather historic change to the financial ecosystem and DeFi technologies as we all know inside playing on the shifts. I am grateful for an investor who knows that the path we want is the right 1. They were a beacon to the industry, and I think there is a bright future for DeFi Tech. You have made the right investments to Stillman and Valor. Within the next cycle, we will see the relevant returns in your NAV. Great job. Oh, no question there. Thanks, Jason. Yeah.

Everything else in the chat has been effectively addressed. If you want some more specifically addressed, please email me [email protected]. And thank you so much for your time today. If there, again, if there was not anything that you wanna address, please reach out. [email protected] or I r dot defi. Dot tech. With that, we will wrap up the call today. Thanks again. And see you guys on the next 1. Thank you.