DeFi Technologies Inc. ($DEFI)

I'll just go ahead and do the opening remarks and Henry, the disclaimer, everyone, welcome to the DeFi Technologies First Quarter 2026 Financial Review and Shareholder Call. I'm Curtis Schlaufman, VP of Marketing and Communications. Joining me on the call today are Chief Executive Officer, Johan Wattenstrom; chief Financial Officer; Paul Bozoki, and President, Andrew Forson. We'll begin with opening remarks from Johan followed by a review of our first quarter 2026 financial results from Paul and then an update on growth initiatives and strategic priorities from Andrew. After that, we'll open the line for Q&A. For investors, you can answer questions into the chat. I'll get those -- to those throughout the presentation, and then I'll answer some of those live and then we'll bring on our coverage analysts on to ask questions live. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements made during today's call may constitute forward-looking information under applicable securities laws. These statements include, but are not limited to comments regarding the expected financial performance, business development, strategic initiatives, market expansion, product growth and future opportunities. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. With that, I'll turn it over to Johan.

Thank you, Curtis, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. The first quarter of 2026 reflected a more challenging market environment across digital asset sector with softer market conditions impacting assets under management, staking-related income and 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 what we view as the most challenging quarter of this recent crypto market downturn with asset prices reaching the lowest during the period, DeFi technologies generated revenue of $11.2 million and 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 the resilience of our business model and the discipline of our operating approach. We navigated a difficult market environment while continuing to manage costs carefully, support our product platform and advanced several important long-term growth initiatives. Average AUM during the quarter was approximately $533 million with [indiscernible] levels through the period, reaching approximately $427 million. While lower than prior year 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 DeFi 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 the centralized finance and traditional capital markets. At the center of the group remains Valour. Today, the platform includes 100 [ free-listed ] products across multiple changes 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 Jacob Lindberg as Chief Revenue Officer. Jacob 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 users platform efforts, our hedge fund efforts, which we believe represent an important long-term opportunity to broaden access to regulated digital assets 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, hedging and market making infrastructure embedded across Valour 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 our venture in private portfolio valued at $29.1 million for total cash treasury and venture portfolio value of approximately $156 million. We also ended the quarter with positive working capital of $47.3 million, a significant improvement from year-end 2025. That fortress balance sheet gives us the ability to be proactive rather than a reactionary and to deploy capital deliberately into growth initiatives, strategic infrastructure and potential acquisitions that deepens our capabilities and strengthens long-term earnings power. Overall, while Q1 was a softer quarter from a market standpoint, we believe the business remains well positioned operationally and financially with strong cost discipline, our 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 would create a more favorable backdrop for the AUM growth, stronger ETP demand and revenue acceleration through the remainder of the year. We are already beginning to see early signs of that in the business with AUM now about $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 a Q1 period in which flows were relatively flat. With a proven business model, expanding monetization and 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'll turn it over to Paul to walk through the financial results.

Thank you, Johan, and good morning, everyone. I'll 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 carry lower or no management fees following the sharp decline in alt coin prices. Within Valour, our effective staking yield declined to 2.5% due to the significant price declines in the alt coins, 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 [ unstaked ] during Q1 of previously locked Solana coins that became unlocked and distributed from our equity investments directly to Valour 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 the $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 $100.7 million of cash in USDT USTC on hand at March 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 leverage bull and bear ETPS introduced in late 2025. 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 $0.7 million outflow given the challenging cryptocurrency price environment, which saw Bitcoin reach a low of $60,000 per token. Stilman Digital continued to perform well during the quarter and remains an important diversification component of our broader platform. Stilman generated approximately $2.9 million in revenue during the quarter, an increase of 38% from Q1 2025 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 to 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 2026. With that, I'll turn it over to Andrew.

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 and onboarding efforts across Europe, Latin America and Asia following our launches in markets such as London and Brazil in late 2025. We continue to see these markets as important building blocks and 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 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 CCAB 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 Insight Symposia as the DeFI Technologies Capital Market Series in order to bring targeted visibility to our full range of investment products and OTC prime brokerage services via Stillman Digital to institutional investors globally. The first in our capital market series is our institutional investor event being conducted at the Canadian Embassy in London in collaboration with the Canada U.K. Chamber of Commerce in June. We've also proven our ability to onboard assets into our existing ETPs through our institutional outreach programs. One such institutional allocation into our Valour ETP was highlighted in a press release and is reflected in these Q1 2026 financials. The other tranche of investment will appear in Q2 financials. This shows a resilient flexibility to the underlying DeFi 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 DEFT Valour 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 DVIO Index and the analysis-based visibility it provides was critical to our ability to close the investments into our 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 Valour ETP platform. Other innovations that have made considerable progress in Q1 include the work we've done to restructure our venture capital portfolio to bring more value to DeFi Technology 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'll turn it back over to Curtis for Q&A.

Okay. We'll take some questions initially from the chat. So if you're an investor, and you have questions, please type your question in the chat, and we'll sort it appropriately. And then if you're an analyst, please raise your hand and keep it raised and I'll invite you on one 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?

I think this is, I think, 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 don't buy back normally from our cash at hand, but rather from strong cash flow. And it has no connection to the listing on NASDAQ. There is no risk of us getting delisted from NASDAQ. We have 180 -- plus 180 days to get over $1. If we're over in 10 days, I think, over $1, it resets. Also, obviously, we will do a reverse split if needed, not if we don't 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's uncalled for. The kind of statistics that shows that performance after a reverse split includes all the companies that do reverse splits, most of those are companies in distress. So if you sort those out, there's no actual negative impact. We can also -- obviously, if we do a reverse split, make use of the buyback program to support through those days to make sure there's no negative impact. But yes, I guess in short, there's no risk of us being delisted. We have plenty of runway. And 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's the primary use. We obviously keep that as an option if we need to. So in worst case, we could do it, but it would never be for NASDAQ purpose because that's not simply a real risk. And any information to the contrary is false information.

And I think just to add to that, we also do have a 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're growing more optimistic about coming out of this crypto winter. So if there's additional catalysts to underlying asset prices that should push us in our AUM or AUM much higher than us over $1. And on top of that, we do have growth initiatives coming up that would we hope help the share price. So there's, I would say, nothing imminent right now in terms of risk or even a reverse split, but it's certainly like if everybody -- if you're hearing that we're going to be delisted, that's absolutely not true. Number two, when do you plan to release your annual goals? I think we talk a lot about our institutional fund structures that UCITS, actively managed certificates, fund-to-fund programs, that's our primary focus for this year. I think I can let Andrew and Johan speak on that further. But we've 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 focused.

Yes, absolutely, Curtis, add my 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're being so rigorous, meticulous and doing it the right way to build out a full and complete fund platform. It's also an indication of the moat that there is in this industry. Some time ago, Johan indicated that one of the strategic objectives of DeFI Technologies and our Valour asset is to become one of the world's leading asset managers. In order to do that, we have built an infrastructure for these -- a 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've got to do it right. And this is something that DeFi Technologies and Valour 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 $100 million in revenue on a profitable basis when many in the Web 3 industry either don't generate revenue at all or certainly don't do it profitably. So we're taking the 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.

Next question. Curtis, team, hope you're doing well. If you guys are optimistic of crypto price action, how optimistic will guidance be for next quarter full year? I'll start and then Paul, you can wrap this up. So we've technically issued guidance for Stillman. We're 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 from year-over-year. So hopefully, they can continue to execute at that level. In terms of Valour, we -- from a technical standpoint, we haven't broken out through a bear market trend. I think that comes around a breaking pass to $83,000 for Bitcoin. It's [ 200-day ] daily moving average. We'll see there. I think it's -- we're 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're very optimistic about right now that Q1 was the lows in this bear market, we came out profitable. So at these levels, you can assume that we'll continue to be profitable through the course of this year. Paul, if you want to add any additional color?

Yes. Thank you, Curtis. Okay. So for everybody, let's again, let's start with Stillman because it's easier to get your head around. They did about $10 million in 2025, and we've said $15 million to $20 million. So 20% would be $12 million. [ People ], if you look, they did $2.9 million in Q1. So it is tracking to do $12 million this year. So there's 12 million. Then you look at Valour, and there's valour.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 crypto prices.In general, and we are [ crypto bulls ]. So we're 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've been over $1 billion as people know. Now we're just over [ $530-ish million ]. And you hear about all the initiatives. We've got Andrew, Johan and Jacob working on to bring in new money. In terms of providing guidance, like with those numbers, you can kind of get to a core safe revenue. But we're 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 are a little bit more visibility, we're going to hold off on giving a consolidated kind of fixed number. But that is what I'd suggest people watch for. And that hopefully would really spark up the company once we get those things going.

Thanks, Paul. 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's still ongoing. And it's something we will release updates about when there's 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. So when we have further information on that particular topic, we will release it and it is still currently an ongoing discovery process. 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 can't just -- unfortunately, we can't speak openly and freely about it publicly. Can you speak to your stablecoin strategy? You have small investments in [ Stablecorp and cNGN ], the potential there collaboration integration into your stack, [indiscernible] developed update. Andrew?

Yes. 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 Stablecorp. And we consider these very valuable. And they will be increasingly -- their value will be increasingly accretive to DeFI as our fund structures come online. Now one 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 have -- we sit on the cap table alongside Circle and coin-based 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 payers 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 we'll actually leverage our core fund platform.

Thanks, Andrew. Have you all considered bringing custodial services in-house given the SOC 2 issue? I think one, the answer is yes, but I'll let Johan explain more about our custody plans.

Yes. On the custody, obviously, we have an internal 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 one of the reasons, I believe, is very important to build this and release it is that we don't want to pay any other middleman for these type of services, but also our needs are on a different level than what we can see the offering -- the other offerings are in the market. And it will provide a foundation for other things we're building in DeFi, in Capital Markets infrastructure in the centralized finance. Once we have this productified and launched, we will go after both institutional and retail 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 want to build and be active in building infrastructure in the centralized capital markets, you should have a really robust and innovative offering on the customer side. So that's what we're aiming to do. And I think we probably are aiming to have something ready end of Q3, definitely this year for public release. And the Q3, it would be ready for using with all our internal needs for custody for sure. It's a bit early to say when we have a date for public release. But it's not just about the custody stack, because this is a foundation for other things we think are unique and we can bring to the market for sure.

We'll move on into some analyst questions, it's Allen Klee from Maxim.

Yes, can you expand on your new institutional structures a bit and the feedback that you're hearing from potential customers?

Yes, I'm happy to jump in on that. So basically, historically, as you might know, I think 95% of our AUM has been in the ETPs from retail to 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. EU and Switzerland and U.K., 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 a globally available and more institutionally targeted type of products. Part of this is the UCITS fund, also Valour, the other funds in Valour funds, which constitute quite a few hedge funds we have 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 office, I would say, is also strong driver. So we have got some commitments and we have got some really strong demands from participating in this space. And obviously, the I think the upside in terms of AUM is larger for this area than for the retail side. And obviously, every ticket size is much, much higher. So I think those products are the first to meet this demand. We're 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 yes, you will see innovation both on the fund side, normal hedge funds, [indiscernible] funds, UCIT funds, but also in the asset-backed ETP side, for his purpose. Also, I think mainly a little bit longer time horizon, a few of these will be well suited for tokenization as well.

One last question. It didn't seem like you put too much into staking in 1Q. I'm just wondering how much of the AUM do you think can be put to work in staking and lending?

I'll first -- comment first and maybe let Paul comment on the levels then. But so I think we actually continuously increasing the levels, the percentage of AUM we put into staking. The -- I think, unfortunate thing temporarily in Q1 where we already see improvement is that with the lows of the crypto market, the Bitcoin dominance and also dominant for Bitcoin and Ethereum increased quite a bit. And as you've seen, the fall in prices in Sol, 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 basically, whilst the market pop up back, we've seen a lot of movement already in Sui, in TON and BNB and so forth. So we're quite -- we're confident that, 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's mainly been driven by the relative steep contraction of values in the altcoin market.

Yes. Allen, I want to add that. So Johan gave you why the staking yield is down. It's just alt coins pay more than the Bitcoin and Ethereum. But we staked 59%. It's a little bit on the lower side. and it's because of -- there's a lot of volatility. There was -- in February, there were some very sharp sell-offs. There is on bonding periods to get coins released, so you can sell them. 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 70s would probably be more realistic in terms of if you were modeling it. But that's my view. So in a volatile market, it's in the high 50s, low 60s and normal market 70s and then an ideal times up to maybe 80.

We're seeing that come up now both with the market volatility, but also structurally, as we're pushing how much we can stake safely without being in danger and not being able to hedge 100%.

Okay. And then Mike from Northland.

First question, I was just curious, you are sitting on this slightly over $100 million of cash. How much cash do you need to run your business with all the trading with new products, if you look out in '26 and '27, 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 of years?

Yes, for sure. I can start with 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's now kind of hidden in the realized and unrealized P&L. For our own market making, I think the demand has been between $20 million and $35 million in that range. And there's obviously a scenario where we could go down to 0. We do have external market makers in all areas, but we think it's strategically very important to all 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's around, yes, say, $25 million, $35 million or so that we need to have. Then obviously, we have a few other needs for capital right now. That's our -- that will go down with time, whether we're launching our funds other structures. We will use some of the cash to see these funds to make it easier to go out on the road shows and sell it because we do need a substantial AUM to get big tickets in the beginning. It will be easier to accelerate that phase early on, we've seen 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 won't see a lot of that, but there will probably be some good opportunities, and we -- in this market still, it's some push against consolidation and we are good positioned to take advantage of that. So we do not want to opt out of that opportunity to act quickly if there's a really great opportunity out there.

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 second half of '26, first half of '27? When should we expect to see some of that?

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 don't see a significant contribution. Something I don't think we commented on, but something we're very excited about in our venture into alpha-type products with our funds and actively managed certificates is that those will have at least the first fund, and I think the second and third one as well, we'll have the 1.5% management fee plus 15% performance fee structure. So besides our Valour 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's totally uncorrelated to market levels or activity whilst being significant even from not huge AUMs because this strategy has a great sharp ratio, very interesting performance dynamics and low maximum drawdowns. So I think from how that, that return profile looks, it will actually give us a third uncorrelated way of earning potentially a lot of money for a lot of months. So I'm really excited about that. Obviously, it depends from month to month when we see those returns monthly. But I think anyhow from end of Q3, we should see a significant -- the income start picking up.

Thanks, Mike. [Operator Instructions] then we'll go back to a couple of questions in the chat in the meantime. Just 1 for Andrew, next steps in Brazil to get more Valour traffic on that exchange.

Yes. 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 focused on setting up a very efficient, lean capital markets team. So we were 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 actually created a defitechBrazil. We had a kickoff event there. And then what followed in the next month was we ended up beating our next, I'll call them, an expat competitor in terms of total turnover within that market. But what we want to do is make sure that we're really well positioned, not just for the ETPs because the ETPs wrap are existing products. But we also want to 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 and Investor Relations team. We also have PR and publicity. And we have met -- I actually just returned from there where. I did know 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 at 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're in this for the long term, and we're in this to build a 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's important that people get to know us. And in the process of getting to know us, they get more comfortable with our existing products and our future products. And we'll just be very steady, but I was pleased with our first month results. But obviously, we need to get more. And we have to remember that a lot of the institutions that we're dealing with, they don't 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 don't want to restrict how people decide to spend money on Valour or DeFi technology products. So we're just going to grow the business across the board.

Let's see next question. Paul, I think probably need your help with this. Please elaborate on what the next $150 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 would mean since we are already profitable? And please outline our cash burn for the year.

Okay. Thanks. So for everybody -- that's a great one. We have a ton of operating leverage in this business, okay? So what operating leverage means is just our costs are relatively fixed. Last year, our operating general and fees and commissions were $40 million. We've told you we've targeted $36 million, on an annualized rate, we're at $38.7 million. And if we do $550 million of AUM and Stillman, like we're positive, we're breakeven to positive. So any additional AUM, it all flows to the bottom line. I assume 90%. There's a little bit of slippage on some extra fees and commissions for trading, maybe a little bit of SG&A to go with it. But we don't need to really roll out the team or add more bodies or rent more offices to manage another few hundred million dollars of money. Our existing infrastructure can do it. So put 4.5% monetization on it. And [ 80% ] of it comes to the bottom line.

And I think adding to that, as we -- I think Paul discussed, Bitcoin consisted of a higher allocation of our ETP makeup in Q1 since we don't charge management fees on Bitcoin that did decrease our monetization levels. But if we see alts, which most -- which have much higher yield allocations, that will increase our monetization levels as well. So if we can continue to grow Solana, Cardona, XRP and some of these longer-tail alts, which offer higher yields, that will also help our monetization levels increase, just in case that wasn't clear.

agree, Thank you, Curtis.

Another question, covered monetization. Any plan to accelerate the stock price? Again, I think if you listened to the context that we're 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 alt coin prices as well and some other things that we're -- we haven't talked about at the moment, again, typically in a bear market, crypto equities are hammered. But when we enter into a bull market, then crypto equities have consistently rerated. And we are a crypto equity. Our primary business is a cyclical business as of now. We are working on new fund products and structures that would be market agnostic, meaning they're not significantly impacted by the underlying crypto price movement. 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 currently has about DeFI technologies? I think I have a lot of those. One of them, people think we're going to be delisted. We're not going to people think we're a digital asset treasury company. We're not. We have 2-plus real operating businesses that produce real revenue and will compound earnings year after year. I don't know if anybody from management wants to take a stab at that, maybe Andrew or Johan? What are you hearing about misconceptions about the company if you are?

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 don't 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 happened. 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'll 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 debt, we don't have to pay other people to store digital assets. But from an infrastructure perspective, every time you see a new cycle that talks about an RWA, think Valour custody. Every time you see a news article that talks about tokenization or securitization or stablecoins, think the Valour 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're the best at that. Foundations come to us for that. Other institutional investors come to us knowing that we've 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, yes, there's been macroeconomic volatility in Q1 2026. While we remember that in September 2025, when we were at $1.2 billion in AUM, if we add the infrastructure 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's just increasing. It's getting more and more. And we're going to be there to help it grow and to service that demand.

Thanks, Andrew. Do you all have any offering product plans to integrate into TradFi institutions?

Well, yes, 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 the proprietary trading desks. And then people have to remember, I think People don't 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's based on transaction fees, transaction volumes. And what they do is they enable large institutions, large holders of digital assets or stable coins to take bulk positions in and out with effectively predictable pricing. I leave the rest of Johan to elaborate.

Yes, I can only agree with that, for sure. It's -- I think all the new initiatives we're doing now are intended for institutional and institutional investors, but also for the traditional infrastructure in terms of banks, prime brokers and so forth from Stillman services to these type of companies to our funds or usage funds, which all are instruments that they are used to service and products that they're used to utilizing and to allocate into the new asset class. So I think our whole new, and not to forget the custody side, obviously, that's 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 yes, I think we covered everything you had in mind.

Yes, if I didn't get to your question. Let's see. Thanks, you guys, for the great call. I think it is less of a misunderstanding, but rather a historic change to the financial ecosystem and DeFi Technologies is on inside lane on the shift. [indiscernible] investor who knows that the path the right one. You are beacon to the industry, and I think there's a bright future for DeFi Tech. You've made the right investments to Stillman and Valour. Within the next cycle, we will see it growing in returns in your [indiscernible], no question there. Thanks, Jason. Yes, everything else in the chat has been effectively addressed. If you want something more specifically addressed, please email me [email protected]. And thank you so much for your time today. If there -- again, if there wasn't anything that you want to address, please reach out [email protected] or ir.defi.tech. And with that, we'll wrap up the call today. Thanks again. and see you guys on the next one.

Thank you.

Thanks.