Sol Strategies Inc (STKE) 2026 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Please stand by. Your meeting is about to begin.

Good day everyone. Welcome to the Seoul Strategy's fiscal first quarter ended December 30th, 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's prepared remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. On the call today is Mr. Michael Hubbard, interim Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Doug Harris, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Max Kaplan, Chief Technology Officer. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. John Ragozzino with IZR. Mr. Ragozzino, please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon and thanks for joining Seoul Strategy's fiscal first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that certain statements on this call contain forward-looking statements subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from these statements. We refer to our latest press release, MD&A and Cedar plus filings for detailed risk factors and assumptions. All dollar amounts are in CAD unless otherwise noted.

The company assumes no significant events occur outside our normal course of business and that current trends in the digital assets marketplace continue. However, listeners should note that crypto markets are volatile and that our business metrics can fluctuate significantly. With that, let me turn it over to Michael Hubbard, Soul Strategy's interim CEO.

Thanks, John. Good afternoon, everyone.

I want to start with our most significant development. In January, we launched Steak Sol, our liquid staking token, commonly referred to as an LST.

This is a major strategic milestone that fundamentally expands what Sol Strategies offers to the market.

How it works when sole hold a stake through our protocol, they receive stakes so, a receipt token representing a stake position that continues to earn accrued staking rewards. That token can be held, traded, used as collateral in Dfi applications, or deployed for additional yield opportunities, or while the underlying soul continues earning staking rewards.

What is unique about Staako is that when it allocates SO across validators, it uses our own Stakes whiz score which intelligently allocates SO across validators based on performance, security, and decentralization metrics.

This moves us from being a player in the arena with other validators into an aggregator role, advancing decentralization by supporting dozens of vital smaller validators that help keep Solana safe, all while providing a new revenue stream to the company.

LSTs solve several problems in the staking market. First, native Solana token staking locks tokens with roughly 2 day unstaking periods, limiting liquidity. Second, stakers traditionally must choose between earning yield and capital deployment. Our LST eliminates that choice. Holders maintain full exposure to staking economics while preserving liquidity through a tradable receipt token that appreciates to reflect accumulated rewards.

Third, staking to a single validator carries a risk of lost rewards if that valid validator experiences downtime. RLST delegates to dozens of validators, significantly reducing the risk of a single validator's failure.

Lastly, LSTs carry significant tax advantages for holders, as they don't earn new tokens every few days from staking rewards, instead experiencing a gradual increase in their exchange rate back to Seoul, resulting in long-term capital gains rather than short-term income. This is of course jurisdiction dependent and not tax advice.

From a business perspective, this presents a new product line in our staking business. Our staking business now encompass Our white label validators earning revenue based on our commercial agreements with customers, our staking services and reporting business with customers like the Vanex Solana ETF, and now a liquid staking business earning commission on all the soil held within the liquid staking protocol.

By providing superior utility, competitive yields, and through our robust and reputable infrastructure platform, we expect to drive meaningful growth in our assets under delegation.

The LSD becomes both a distribution channel and a differentiation tool in what has largely become a commoditized staking market.

In just a few weeks since launch, we have already seen strong early adoption with over 675,000 souls state.

The market recognizes and respects our commitment to the Solana economy, our compliance infrastructure, and transparent reporting that we are seeing translate into growth.

Now let me provide context on Q1 fiscal '26. We'll set the foundation for this launch and our momentum heading into the remainder of the year.

Our validator network scaled significantly. We recently announced we are now serving over 31,000 unique wallets, up 63% from 19,000 at the end of September.

Assets under delegation grew to over 3.3 million sol, up from 2.8 million just three months prior. Our validators maintained 99.999% uptime while consistently delivering yields above network average.

To drill down on the unique wallets for a second, this is a key point for us. Unique wallets are akin to unique customers.

And they are staking with us epoch after epoch.

In an analogy to the software as a service world, these are equivalent to monthly active users.

The entire Salana network, as of the 10th of this month, has approximately 576,000 unique wallets, with the average validator having just 685.

This means we are punching well above our weight, with 5.5% of all staking users choosing us, more than 46 times the average.

Vanek selected us as the sole staking provider for their US Botswana ETF.

This isn't just another partnership. Vanek is a tier 1 asset manager, and they chose us over every other validator operator in the ecosystem. That's validation of our compliance stack, our technical performance, our reporting product, and our operational excellence at the institutional level.

Turning briefly to our balance sheet, during the quarter we further optimized our balance sheet by restructuring a $25 million credit facility with our largest shareholder, simplifying our capital structure and significantly reducing liabilities.

Additionally, we successfully completed a $30 million life equity offering, further enhancing our financial flexibility and improving liquidity in our stock.

Looking ahead, we remain focused on continually evaluating ways to become more capital efficient.

We were active throughout the quarter, engaging with existing shareholders, potential investors.

And telling our story about being a diversified Solano economy company as we participated in dozens of one on one meetings with new investors at several major institutional investor conferences during the quarter.

We look forward to continue to engage with new and existing investors and will continue to actively tell our story at a variety of conferences and events in 206.

Now let me address the elephant in the room, sales price movement in recent weeks.

Times of such significant volatility don't change our thesis, they reinforce it. Times like these are when the active builders within the ecosystem are separated from the passive participants. When prices are rising, we all look very smart. When they're falling, it becomes clear who's actually building sustainable infrastructure and creating value versus just passively riding market momentum.

We are not a digital asset treasury.

DAs are just one subset of public crypto companies. They're a financial engineering play on token holdings.

We're building operating infrastructure that drive recurring streams of revenue regardless of token price.

We are using this period to build.

When Seo goes down, we look at network activity and see a variety of opportunities because our business is driven by our operating infrastructure, not passive token exposure.

First, we remain highly focused on our validate operations with best in class performance and staking yield metrics. We also continue to actively pursue new staking partnerships on the institutional front. The VANEC agreement announced in November is an important validation on that front.

Our pipeline continues to expand. Our stake sold product launched on schedule, and we're executing regardless of price action because we're building long-term infrastructure, not chasing short-term pumps.

Second, we continue to pursue a dual-pronged growth strategy by complementing our organic pipeline development with an active M&A strategy.

We're currently evaluating several strategic M&A opportunities as recent market conditions have created an increasingly attractive environment for highly strategic bolt-on opportunities.

Businesses with proven track records or significant technology enhancements in the Solana ecosystem, but whose operators may be struggling with balance sheet stress.

Here's the reality. Institutional adoption of blockchain infrastructure doesn't move in lockstep with token prices.

The VANEC mandate didn't happen because Seoul was up or down. It happened because we met their institutional requirements. ETF launches, custody integrations, traditional finance buildout. These trends are multi-year and largely price agnostic.

If anything, lower prices accelerate institutional interest because fiduciaries can deploy at better entry points with reduced downside risk from recent highs.

Even amid broader macroeconomic corrections across crypto and global markets, and ongoing shifts in fiscal policy and interest rates, we continue to see strong evidence that blockchain technology remains well positioned for long-term adoption within the global financial system.

So yes, Solana token pricing is down, but we will continue to execute our strategy and be an integral part of the Solana ecosystem. And when Seoul recovers, which it will because Solana's technical advantages and ecosystem growth haven't changed, we will have more tokens staked, more institutional relationships secured, and more operational leverage built.

This is exactly when you want to be aggressive, not defensive. We have the capital and the team to execute, so when others falter, we accelerate.

The Solana economy is still in the early innings, and we are continuing to see the building continue. Most traditional finance institutions haven't started evaluating on-chain applications yet. When they do, and they will, they need operators who meet multiple needs. That's us. Now let me turn it over to Max to talk about developments in our staking and infrastructure business.

Thanks, Michael. As Michael said, Q1 marked an exciting quarter for us with the launch of Steakoul, one of our flagship new staking products. Steakoul is a liquid staking token, giving users more optionality into how they want to stake with us. In just a short period of time, Steakoul has grown to 661,000 sol in TBL. Total value locked. And integrated into every blue chip salon and Defi protocol. One of the most unique parts of stakeso is our algorithmic delegation strategy, which picks which validator the pool stakes with based on a number of key metrics and also spreads downtime risks across 75 validators. With native staking, if a validator goes down, the staker loses out on potential. Rewards by staking across 75 validators. If any single validator goes down, the risk is greatly minimized, providing stakers more assurances about their returns. For managing and developing the infrastructure for the pool, Soul Strategies takes 5% of the rewards the pool generates, marking a new revenue stream for the company, which is quite exciting. We have a lot more planned for the future that I'm excited to launch. With that, I'll hand it over to Doug to discuss our financials.

Thank you, Max. Good afternoon, everyone.

I'd like to walk you through the financial results for the three months ended December 31, 2025 and provide some important context around the numbers.

Keep in mind that the following discussion includes non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our MD&A for more information.

The key takeaway from our results is that our staking income grew 69% year over year, 120% on a sole basis.

Our sole treasury expanded to approximately 529,000 tokens.

Our reported loss is dominated by non-cash items.

And our capital structure was strengthened through the post quarter retirement of the unsecured credit facility.

Total staking and validation income reached 2.1 million, up 69% from 1.2 million in Q1 fiscal 2025.

Consisting of $1.6 million in sta rewards on our sole holdings and $471,000 in net validation service income from third-party delegators.

On a sole basis, rewards were up 120% year over year.

With the difference from the fiat figure attributable to the decline in the average soul price and the strengthening Canadian dollar.

Reported net loss was 11.9 million compared to net income of 3.2 million in the prior year's period.

Adding back non-cash and non-recurring items, amortization of 2.4 million, share-based compensation of 1.3 million, non-cash interest and accretion of 1.2 million, realized cryptocurrency transaction losses of 6 million. Note that these are primarily related to coin to coin swaps that are required to be recognized as a disposition by IFRS accounting standards.

And non-recurring legal expenses of 475,000 produced total add-backs of approximately $10.9 million and an adjusted loss of approximately 500,000.

Below the net loss line, other comprehensive loss included a $53.5 million unrealized markdown on our cryptocurrency holdings, reflecting the decline in sole price from approximately $290 Canadian at September 30 to $2174 Canadian at December 31.

This markdown fluctuates with the sole price from quarter to quarter and has no impact on our operating cash flow.

Total operating expenses were 7.7 million versus 1.3 million in the prior period.

Four line items, amortization, share-based compensation, professional fees, and interest expense account for approximately 6 million of that total, Three of which are non-cash or capital structure related. The remaining net operating expenses were 1.8 million, including G&A of 668,000 and consulting fees of 692,000.

On the balance sheet, total assets were 132 million at December 31, down from 169.6 million at year end. This is driven entirely by unrealized sole markdowns.

Cryptocurrency holdings were carried at 92.2 million at quarter end.

Total debt of 52.3 million was comprised of $14.9 million in credit facilities and $34.9 million in convertibledimensions.

Subsequent to the quarter end, we fully retired the unsecured credit facility provided by a significant shareholder through the issuance of 2.3 million shares and cash payments totaling 4.9 million.

Cash at quarter end was 223,000 consistent with our Treasury strategy of holding the majority of our assets in Seoul.

We also have access to the Camino decentralized credit facility, providing stable coin liquidity against our sole collateral without requiring us to liquidate our cryptocurrency holdings.

During the quarter we completed a life offering, raising $30 million in gross proceeds, $27.9 million net.

Through the issuance of 4.38 million units at $6.85 per unit.

ATW conversions of $1.26 million Canadian reduced that facility to $9.5 million US dollars, and shares outstanding grew from $23 million to $28.6 million.

In summary, our sole holdings grew over 90,000 sold to approximately 529,000 sold at quarter end. Our staking net income grew 69% year over year, 120% on a sold basis. Our reported loss is dominated by non-cash and non-recurring items, and subsequent to year end.

Our capital structure was strengthened through the retirement of the unsecured credit facility. With that, I'll turn it back over to Michael.

Thanks team. Let me wrap up with where we're headed.

Q1 proved institutional Solana adoption isn't slowing down.

Vanek was the validation. 105% growth in unique wallets was the proof. The stakes or launch opened the next chapter, but here's what matters most. We're still early. Most institutional capital hasn't moved on chain yet. Most traditional finance firms are still evaluating whether blockchain infrastructure is real.

When they decide it is, and they will, they need partners who deliver institutional grade compliance, performance, and reliability. That's us. That's our position. That's where we're building.

We're not a passive treasury vehicle hoping for token appreciation. We're an operating company generating recurring revenue from critical infrastructure while holding strategic exposure to the asset powering that infrastructure.

The next 12 months will see more ETF launches, more institutional custody integrations, more traditional finance firms building on Solala. We intend to capture our share.

PR shareholders, Q1 was about execution. The remainder of fiscal '26 will be about acceleration. We have the right strategy, the right team, and the right positioning. We look forward to sharing some of our M&A developments in the near future.

With that operator, let's open it up for questions.

Certainly, Mr. Hubbard.

(Operator Instructions)

John Roy with Water Tower Research.

Thank you. So Michael, I'm curious if you can give us any more color on your M&A thoughts, maybe the type of acquisitions you're looking at. I mean, we're trying to get an idea of what you see might be coming in the future.

Absolutely, thanks, John. So we're looking at a few different opportunities and we're we're very actively involved in evaluating options at the moment. So we have a strong pipeline and and a few different paths we can go down. We're looking at opportunities that both involve, larger scale, more developed businesses that have strong existing revenue that are in the infrastructure space or in the in the product space in the Solana ecosystem. But we're also evaluating opportunities that are smaller teams that have very big, very strong promise that, have a really strong team that we think will be accretive to our internal engineering teams, and business teams, but also that are building exciting technology that we think will fit in and slot in with some other, verticals that we're working on.

Great, and kind of maybe switching gears just a little bit, the LST I'm kind of really trying to think about how it fits in your existing, staking business is it really going to compete with the the native validation business and any kind of revenue expectations you might have longer-term.

Absolutely. So, when we think about the staking market, it's sort of like a layer cake where you've got the validators right at the bottom and then you've got the stakers at the top. And over the last two or three years, we've seen this middle layer evolve, which is the liquid staking market. And that market is growing consistently. We've seen over the last 2 years, it's grown from basically 0 to now I think it's about 15%, 17% of the total market, the total staking market on Solana. Now, what's very important is that liquid staking. Acts as kind of an aggregator above the validator layer. So, there's an important market, and important use case for native staking, which is staking directly to the validators. It provides you with, the ability to choose your validator, to have a relationship with that validator if you want, which is important for institutions.

And with liquid staking, you get the other side, which is where you have a token that you can hold in your wallet. You can deploy it in DeFi, you can potentially collateralize it. You might have some tax advantages depending on your jurisdiction. Obviously check with the tax adviser. This is not tax advice.

But liquid staking gives you that flexibility, and what it means for us is that rather than competing with our validators, where we're really serving a different segment of the staking market, we're stepping into that aggregator role, where now we are providing the ability for liquid staking users to get exposure to dozens of different validators, and we're acting as an intermediary that is helping secure the network, supporting dozens of validators based on our algorithmic scoring.

So we're really focused on smaller validators with good track records, we're using 120,000 data points, evaluating every single validator that we delegate to.

So with that, we're we're really trying to improve the network and and offer a unique use case to those liquid sticking users.

And sorry, just that on the revenue front, you can think of it similar to operating an additional validator. We charge a 5% fee on all of the rewards that the liquid staking protocol generates. So all of the soul people deposit generates sta rewards, we charge a 5% fee on that. So that's kind of similar to running a validator with a 5% commission. The difference being here that we're sitting at that intermediary aggregation layer.

Great, thanks so much that does clear up some things. Thanks so much.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions)

And gentlemen, it appears we have no further questions this afternoon. Mr. Hubbard, I'd like to turn things back to you, sir, for any closing comments.

Thank you all for for joining us today. We're extremely excited about the future of global finance on Solana, and we continue to work diligently to capture that upside.

I think the the reports really speak for themselves. Year over year we're seeing good growth. Our validator and staking business is maturing.

Additional verticals have come in now with the liquid staking and the institutional partnerships. So we're on a strong footing and we're excited for the year ahead.

With that, we end our earnings call today and I thank you all for joining.

Thank you, gentlemen. Again, ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude the Seoul strategies fiscal first quarter earnings conference call. Again, thank you all so much for joining us today and we wish you all a great evening. Goodbye.