Hilbert Group AB (publ) (HILB-B.ST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Thank you for joining us. I am Barnali Biswal, Group CEO of Hilbert Group, and this is our second quarter 2026 presentation. Let me begin with the central message upfront. This was Bitcoin's hardest half since 2022, yet the platform earned through it. Our strategy stayed positive while the market fell. Management fee revenue rose 74% quarter-on-quarter. Fee-paying AUM grew in 5 of the first 6 months. Costs are stable. And after the reported period, 2 new engines went live. That is the quarter in essence. The rest of this presentation is the proof. I will cover 5 areas today: the market we operated in, how the strategies performed, fee revenue and the assets behind it, capital and the platform and then what comes after the period and where we go from there. First, the backdrop because every number today was earned against it. Bitcoin fell 14% in the quarter and 26% over the first half on a month-end basis. June was its worst month since 2022. The price broke below $60,000. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $4.1 billion of outflow in June, their largest month since the launch and institutional flows turned defensive. So every number we show you today was earned in a market that was materially more difficult, more selective and less forgiving. At Q1, I said that "In markets like these, what matters is not narrative, but execution." The second quarter reinforced that belief. The evidence is in the numbers. Through June, Basis+ USD returned 2.36% net year-to-date. Basis+ Bitcoin returned 2.11% net on top of Bitcoin and MultiStrat returned 26.59% net through the first half. Set that against the backdrop, Bitcoin itself lost more than 25% over the same period. That resilience is designed, not luck. It matters because this is not data pretending to be alpha. These are market-neutral strategies. They earn from structure, spreads and discipline rather than from the direction of Bitcoin. In easier markets, many models can look good. A half like this one shows which platforms are built well and our allocator interest strengthened as the proof. And it was not an absolute performance story. The broader industry saw sizable outflows. The Galaxy Digital Crypto Hedge Fund Composite lost more than 11%, quantitative strategies lost more than 10%, fundamental strategies lost 20%. Against that, our strategy stayed positive, and our fee-paying assets grew in 5 out of the first 6 months. We did not simply hold up better than the market. We grew while large parts of the industry were contracting. That is the relative story of the first half. Now the commercial side. Management fee revenue rose 74% quarter-on-quarter in dollar terms. Even in June, which was the worst month for Bitcoin since 2022, management fee revenue ran at nearly double the first quarter's monthly average. Combined management and performance fees came to just over $232,000. Performance fees moderated from a strong first quarter, as you would expect in a weaker market. But the more important point is that the recurring management fee line kept growing. The pattern behind the number matters as much as the number. Performance attracts assets. Assets become management fees. Management fees recur. Each quarter, a larger share of revenue sits on that recurring line, and that is how durability gets built. One point from Q1 bears repeating: the asset management business is cash flow neutral on a stand-alone basis. Through the depressed conditions of the second quarter, it nearly held that line and at current Bitcoin prices, it is comfortably cash flow neutral. That is an important proof point. The core engine carries itself even through a difficult market. Behind the fees sits the fact I would ask you to hold on to. The market gave us credit in the form of AUM. Fee-paying AUM grew in 5 of the first 6 months, up 136% in the first quarter and up another 8.5% in the second, while Bitcoin fell by roughly 1/4 during that period. Contracted hedge fund AUM reached $119.5 million at 30th of June with a further 4,679 Bitcoin in the Byzantine fund. The growth was broad-based: Basis+ mandates scaling with our SMA partners, new allocations into the funds and existing investors adding to their positions. During a period where the industry pulled back and shrunk, allocators continued to commit capital to us. A fair question is how Bitcoin's price affects the fee line. Every $10,000 move in Bitcoin moves management fees by about 6.5% in both directions. So fees participate in recovery in the same way they compress in a fall. And importantly, 47% of management fees come from dollar-denominated funds unaffected by Bitcoin price. Strategy return matters as much. Each half turn of returns up or down moves total fees by about 19% at today's price. The grid shows total first half fees across prices and return levels relative to where we stand today. So the right way to think about the business is not as a one-way expression of the market. It earns through the range with meaningful fixed fee support and clear upside as market conditions improve. During the quarter, we completed the first allocation into Basis+ through a newly developed digital asset yield structure, where a crypto-native institution places altcoin collateral into the strategy without dilution. The passive coin position earns that strategy's yield and the institution keeps full ownership of its coins with their price exposure intact. This matters because such a structure opens a far broader addressable market than just dollar or Bitcoin allocations alone. It allows institutions to come to us with the assets they already hold and in the form they want to hold them. The institutional pipeline behind this type of structure deepened through the period with allocators who apply the highest due diligence standards. Allocators of this caliber finish their homework before they move, engaging deeper through a drawdown period is the strongest signal they can send. We completed the directed share issue of approximately SEK 46 million announced in May with proceeds directed to growth, platform integration and U.S. listing readiness. Net available liquidity at 30th of June stood at roughly $5.5 million, 2.2 million in cash and $4.2 million in receivables against about $850,000 of payables. That compares with $3.1 million at the end of last year. So the capital to execute our plan is in place. Governance strengthened alongside. Fahad Khan, CEO of Plurimi Wealth, joined the Board. The EGM and AGM resolutions passed and Nordark is consolidated in the group's accounts for the first time this quarter. Let me be precise about how the platform fits together. Asset management leads. Hilbert Capital with Basis+, MultiStrat, the fund range and the SMA mandates is the business earning the fee revenue today. Enigma and Hilbert Finance sit in the revenue scale model, fee revenue capabilities held to a strict test of contribution. Syntetika is the platform we back, independent, self-funded and strategically important as a new distribution rail. So this is not a collection of disconnected initiatives. It is one platform with one economic logic. Performance creates credibility, credibility brings capital and the platform broadens how that capital can be monetized and distributed. On costs, we are on target. Group operating costs ran within 4% of plan across the first half with Nordark and Enigma now fully integrated. The engines sit at different stages of the same ladder. Asset management is cash flow neutral through the quarter and is holding at current Bitcoin prices. Syntetika draws no funding from the group. Hilbert Finance and Enigma are through the setup phase with products now live and working towards covering their own cost. So the burn will ease by design. Each engine that moves into net contribution reduces the group's net spend. And what remains is the business that earns. After the quarter ended, 2 engines went live. Hilbert Finance launched hLEND, an over-collateralized lending vault, institutions can borrow against digital asset collateral and professional lenders can deploy into the same loan book. It's the first commercial capability under that division. And Syntetika went live. Deposits are now open for Basis+ Bitcoin on-chain with independent custody and third-party NAV attestation and Syntetika reports more than $10 million deposited to date, which is their round 1 of the deposit intake. Commercially, the 2 launches matter for different reasons. hLEND opens Hilbert Finance's first revenue line. Syntetika opens a distribution rail that reaches investors, traditional fund subscriptions never could. So the job from here is conversion, turning the platform into recurring fee revenue and scalable earnings. There are 3 reasons for confidence. First, the core business is already earning. Costs are on target. Management fee revenue grew 74% in the quarter. And when the market conditions improve, conversion inevitably follows. Second, Syntetika gives us a real scaling route. On-chain, the path from interest to allocation is shorter than in the traditional allocation. $10 million arrived within days, not quarters. And third, the pipeline. To be clear, as I said at Q1, pipeline is not committed capital and should never be read as promised AUM. It measures the depth of client engagement. Ours is institutional in nature. And with many of them, we are in advanced due diligence stage. By type, roughly 40% of the allocators in our pipeline are digital asset foundations and 1/3 are fund of funds. The rest are single-family offices and ultra-high net worth individuals. So why did conversion slow this half? Institutions of this caliber take their time in weak markets. The caution is the price of their quality. The interest never left, the timing moved. A word on how we would like to be judged on delivered economics, live products, growing fee revenue, costs on plan. Announcements are easy. This presentation is built on delivery. You have seen the flywheel across the presentation. Performance, building credibility, credibility brings allocators, allocators bring AUM and AUM turns into fee revenue on a cost base that is already in place. The platform is built. What comes next is conversion. And with that, thank you for your continued support. I look forward to updating you again.