Webull Corporation

Good afternoon and welcome to the Webull Corporation fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Carlos Questel, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. Welcome to Webull's fourth quarter and full year 2025 conference call. Earlier today, we issued a press release detailing our fourth quarter and full year results. A copy of the release can be found on our IR website at weblcorp.com under the Investor Relations tab. Please note that this call is being recorded and will be available for replay via our IR website. During the call, we'll be making forward-looking statements about the company's performance and business outlook. These statements are based on how we see things today and contain elements of uncertainty. For additional information concerning the factors that can cause actual results to differ materially, please refer to the cautionary statement and risk factors contained in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and press release, both of which can be accessed via our website. Today's presentation will include a discussion on adjusted operating expenses, adjusted operating profit, and adjusted net income, all non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparative GAAP measures are included in the press release that we issued today. It is important to note that although we believe that these non-GAAP measures provide useful information about operating results, they should not be considered in isolation or construed as an alternative to their directly comparative GAAP measures. Furthermore, other companies may calculate similarly titled measures differently. limiting their usefulness as comparative measures to our data. We encourage investors and others to review our financial information in its entirety and not rely on a single financial measure. With me today is our Group President and U.S. CEO, Anthony Denier, and our Group CFO, H.C. Wang. We will begin with prepared remarks and then take questions at the end. With that, I would now like to turn it over to Anthony.

Thank you, Carlos, and hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Webull's fourth quarter and full year results show strong progress and returns for our first full year as a public company. Our full year results reflect our success as we continue to enhance our offerings for our growing base of active traders and investors, expand our client base globally, and extend our capabilities to new markets, including institutional investors. Following our public listing in April of last year, we have been executing on an ambitious plan to address the growing requirements of our user base of sophisticated, active investors looking for autonomy from traditional brokerages. We're proud to report that we offer that platform today, and it provides our users with a one-stop shop for securities trading, as well as offering in crypto, futures, prediction markets, and more. And what's more interesting is it's all enhanced by AI. AI is dramatically changing the investing industry, and we at Webull are on the forefront of many of those changes. We're proud to be shaping the future of active, self-directed trading through the integration of AI via Vega, our AI assistant for trading and platform guidance, delivering real-time insights and AI-generated trading ideas. Launched at the end of last year, Vega is already integral to our continued growth, providing our users with market data, information, and associated analysis, as well as real-time portfolio monitoring with user-controlled management of positions and risk preferences. Since launching just a few months ago, Vega currently assists 1.2 million global users each week with 10% of weekly active users deploying the tool to answer over 10 million questions since creation. AI deployment across our platform also extends within our organization with AI implementation across customer service, R&D, and internal operations. We're looking to integrate AI into every aspect of our internal business to optimize and scale a global business that provides a differentiated, sophisticated, regulatory-compliant trading platform to users across markets. I'm proud of the Weevil team for a strong first year as a public company. I'm also proud of our leadership and the development of our AI capabilities over the past year. As we establish Webull as a leading investment platform for active traders, I want to be sure you understand how important the scale we have achieved is to our strategies going forward. We are poised to bring our solutions to brokerage firms, high net worth individuals, family offices, and wealth advisors. I look forward to chatting with all you about B2B opportunities in 2026. With that, let me now walk you through the key highlights from 2025 in more detail. Here on slides two, three, and four, I'll walk you through our 2025 highlights. We are proud of our performance in 2025, delivering record revenue and a solid operating profit margin improvement from the prior year. We recorded revenue of $571 million, representing 46% growth from 2024, driven by record trading volumes across all asset categories. First, customer assets reached $24.6 billion, inclusive of approximately $1 billion in assets from the acquisition of Webull Pay, representing an 81% increase from 2024. Second, equity trading volume increased by 59% year-over-year to $732 billion, while options volume rose by 19% to 550 million contracts. And our newer products, including futures, prediction markets, and crypto, all delivered strong growth during 2025. We recorded an elevated but disciplined increase in adjusted operating expenses of $460.7 million, representing an annual increase of 24%, as we continue to invest in strategic product offerings and market expansion to support long-term growth. Operating profitability was strong with a 14.6 percentage point increase in adjusted operating profit margin on our annual basis to 19.3%, representing an adjusted operating profit of $110.3 million for the year. As our industry undergoes structural changes, we will continue to invest proactively to capture outside share over time. Turning now to slide five and our 2025 roadmap. I'm really pleased with this progress. Webull Premium, our subscription-based service for active traders and long-term investors, has reached 102,000 subscribers by year end, surpassing the 100,000 target we set for ourselves. Our premium subscribers contribute 30% of our AUM, 60% of overall margin debit balances, and our most active customers, Looking ahead, we aim to double our premium subscriber base in the coming year while continuing to enhance the product with additional features, making it the best valued product for active traders. One of our proudest moments of 2025 was the introduction of Vega, our AI tool that combines news, earnings, and technical data to deliver a focused, intuitive experience that helps both new and seasoned investors navigate modern trading and make smarter decisions. Since its release, approximately one in eight users have used the Assistant before trading, and Vega continues to play a role in not only bringing people to our platform, but keeping them there, as reflected in the 1.2 million users a week who utilize this exciting technology. We also launched BlackRock Model Portfolios, which provide a robo-advisor offering and allow users to access a range of diversified portfolios across various asset classes, including alternative and digital assets. In line with expanded digital asset offerings, 2025 marked the reintroduction of crypto trading for our U.S. customers with the acquisition of We Will Pay and the launch of crypto trading in Australia and Brazil. We are also actively exploring digital asset licenses in a number of other markets and expect to bring them online in the coming year. The introduction of prediction markets to our asset classes has also been an exciting innovation this year. This offering provides an engaging and accessible trading experience that lowers barriers to entry for users. this quarter more than 152 million prediction contracts were traded with 81 million in december alone we're excited to continue the momentum around prediction markets with the introduction of sports prediction markets across all the major sports leagues and while weevil has always been a global player 2025 has been a year of further global expansion we now have more than 760,000 funded accounts outside the U.S. APAC customer assets have surpassed 3 billion, and our partnership with Merit Financial Group has increased access to the U.S. market for Korean investors. Canada is also on track to soon reach 1.5 billion in customer assets, fast on the heels of surpassing 1 billion only four months ago. Additionally, we launched our platform in the Netherlands and are now licensed in four additional EU markets, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. We prioritize delivering US products to international markets from the start, and it is just good business to have diversified revenue streams globally. Looking ahead to 2026. On slide six, you'll see that we have identified three main priorities for the year. First, we will sustain and grow our elite offerings for active traders, leveraging AI tools that enhance the trading experience and allow us to maintain price leadership across the market. Second, we will continue growing our global business by cementing our position in existing markets and continuing to add to our localized product offerings. Finally, as I noted earlier, we will be building on last year's partnership with Merit to expand our B2B platform. On slide seven, I'll discuss our growth in both users and funded accounts for Q4. During the fourth quarter, we added roughly 1 million registered users, bringing the platform to a total of 26.8 million registered users. We saw steady sequential growth throughout the year, posting a more than 3 million user increase year over year and representing a 15% increase. Our investments in marketing are yielding results and are indicative of a strong fit between our offerings and market demand. As previously mentioned, Webull's roots as a global market data platform mean there is a significant number of registered users in geographies where our trading platform is not yet available. We continue to offer best-in-class market data and information to all users, regardless of their brokerage status. A feature of our platform has only been bolstered by the introduction of Vega to all Webull accounts. On the right side of the slide, you can see funded account metrics. Funded accounts, defined as accounts where customers have made an initial deposit that has remained above zero for 45 consecutive calendar days as of the record date, showed steady growth. We added approximately 100,000 new funded accounts this quarter, bringing the total number of funded accounts to 5.03 million, an 8% year-over-year increase. As we continue to innovate and enhance our offerings, we're also happy to report that our quarterly retention rate remained high at approximately 97%. Turning to slide eight, Weevil customer assets reached an all-time high of 24.6 billion in the fourth quarter, representing an 81% increase on a year-over-year basis and a 3.4 billion sequential increase. You all know that trading volumes were high in the fourth quarter. Our growth in customer assets reflects this. Customers deposited over $3.9 billion during the quarter, an incredible 225% increase year over year, and a sequential increase of $1.8 billion, bringing cumulative net deposits for the full year to $8.6 billion. Lastly, on slide 9, you'll see trading volumes for the quarter. While we saw strong growth in our newer products, particularly prediction markets and crypto, equity and options remain our core offerings and trading volumes continue to grow. Equity notional volume reached $239 billion, up 87% year-over-year and 17% sequentially. while options contract volume totaled $154 million this quarter, up 38% year-over-year and up 5% sequentially. These results underscore the strength and resilience of our active trader base, which remains highly engaged through periods of market volatility. our customers continue to trade consistently across four asset classes, reflecting a disciplined long-term approach rather than short-term momentum driven behavior. With that, I'll pass the call over to HC for a closer look at our financial results for the quarter.

Thank you, Anthony. And thanks to everyone for joining us today. In the fourth quarter, We both generated total revenue of $165.2 million, representing 50% year-over-year growth. This strong performance reflects continued strength across both trading and interest-related income streams. On the expense side, adjusted operating expenses were $143.6 million, up 62% year-over-year, primarily driven by increased marketing and branding investments. Let me take a moment to frame this clearly. The increase in marketing spend is intentional and strategic. We're capitalizing on a strong equity market backdrop, multiple industry catalysts, and the branding tailwind from our recent listing to accelerate customer acquisition, AOM growth, and international expansion. Over time, we remain confident in our ability to scale revenues ahead of expenses, supported by the operating leverage in our model. I will now walk through profitability and then the key components of revenues and expenses in more detail. Turning to slide 11, we continue to demonstrate consistent profitability. Wevo has now delivered five consecutive quarters of operating profitability, with each quarter generating over 20 million in adjusted operating profit. In Q4, adjusted operating profit was 21.6 million, representing a 13% adjusted operating profit margin. Adjusted net income was 14.6 million, or 8.8% of revenue. For the full year, we generated 84 million in adjusted net income in our first year as a public company. As we look ahead, our approach remains consistent. We will continue to balance disciplined execution profitability with targeted investments to capture long-term growth. Turning to slide 12, our trading-related revenues continue to grow, supported by momentum from the third quarter and strong trading activity across asset classes. Trading-related revenues increased 56% year-over-year to 112.5 million, and DARTs increased to 1.2 million in the fourth quarter. We're seeing broad-based engagement across equities, options, futures, crypto, and prediction markets. Importantly, our users continue to trade consistently across market conditions. This reflects the base of active traders who remain engaged through volatility rather than being driven by short-term momentum-based behavior. We believe this positions as well for sustained growth on trading revenues over time. Turning to slide 13, Interest-related income continues to scale along with client assets. In the fourth quarter, interest-related income grew 31% year over year to $43.5 million, primarily driven by higher interest earned on client cash, margin lending, and corporate cash. Specifically, customer margin balances increased 43% year-over-year to $689 million at the end of Q4, reflecting higher utilization from our premium customers. Sequentially, interest-related income was roughly flat as declines in fully paid stock lending revenues offset increases in other categories. This reflects the normalization of borrowing rates for certain hard to borrow securities, which had elevated stock lending revenues in the prior quarter. As I've mentioned on this call before, our business model is relatively resilient to interest rate changes. Over the long term, as we continue to grow client assets globally, we expect this revenue stream to continue to expand. Finally, let's turn to slide 14 for a closer look at operating expenses. Adjusted operating expenses increased 62% year-over-year, with the majority of the increase driven by marketing and branding investments. These investments are focused on accelerating customer acquisition and AUM growth, and we are already seeing strong early returns, as reflected in our record $3.9 billion of net deposits in the quarter. It's also important to note that excluding marketing, our cost base remains well-controlled, We achieved our highest operating profit margin ex-marketing in the fourth quarter at 45%, demonstrating the strong operating leverage of our platform. We expect that our margins should continue to improve as we further scale and diversify our revenue base, which will give us the flexibility we need to invest opportunistically in customers and AUM growth, particularly during periods of market expansion. Now, thank you, everyone. With that, I'll turn the call back to Anthony before we open the line for questions.

Thanks, HC. Q4 was another record-breaking quarter for Webull on multiple fronts as we focus on growing revenue, growing AUM, all while maintaining fiscal responsibility. This is now our fourth reporting quarter as a publicly listed company, and Webull has delivered growth and profitability every quarter. As we mark a monumental milestone for the platform, I want to recognize our global team for an outstanding year. It's clear that the team's dedication has been central to the progress we've made as a company and will continue as we look forward to the next year of supporting our user base of active securities traders, expanding our platform for investors across existing and new markets, and continually looking to expand our client base, including with B2B offerings. We look forward to engaging with you at several upcoming industry and investor conferences. On that note, we welcome any questions you may have either here on the call or one-on-one.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question is from Chris Brendler with Rosenblatt. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks, and good afternoon. Congratulations on the strong results. I'm going to ask the most obvious question first, which is, maybe dive into the marketing spend in the fourth quarter a little bit, you know, in terms of the sequential increase. You know, how much of that went to new customer acquisition? How much of that went to, you know, incentives on folks bringing over balances? And if you could comment at all about, you know, the run rate from here, if we think about 2026, do you expect this elevated level to continue? That would be great. Thanks.

Hey, Chris. Anthony here. Thanks for the question. So the Q4 marketing expense was certainly higher, and that's actually illustrated in the success in the AUM growth we've had. The majority of the marketing spend we do, you don't see Webull on Super Bowl Sunday. You don't see us on billboards around town. We focus a lot of our marketing spend on where it's most impactful for the customers that we are focused on acquiring. And those are high net worth active trading customers, right? And that's reflected in the net deposits we received in Q4, right? So record net deposits, 8.6 billion over the course of the whole year, you know, 3.9 billion over the course of just Q4 alone. And, you know, that, That successful marketing campaign is the main driver for the higher marketing costs we see in Q4. Now, going forward, we're going to be very conscious on maintaining a strong operating margin. So I do not expect that the marketing costs will be as high going forward. But again, we're opportunistic. Where we have an opportunity to grow and to invest in growth, we will take that opportunity. So Q1 is looking much lighter than Q4 was, but that was a lot because of the success of Q4.

Makes sense. Sorry, just something to add on top of Anthony. So if you look at our marketing expense, at the percentage of revenue, it was about 35% in 2024. And that as a percentage of revenue has actually come down to about 23, 24% in 2025. So as we continue into the new year, we'll continue to obviously invest in customer acquisition and AOM growth. But we'll also be keeping an eye on this ratio, percentage of revenue and spend on marketing. An important point I think Anthony had alluded to is that the majority of our marketing spend is actually performance-based. So these are for successful deposits, for successful account openings. These are that we can track. These are not fixed. These are not fixed branding investments that are committed early in the year, so we have a lot of flexibility to dynamically calibrate and adjust the marketing spend as we see where the market is going.

Makes total sense. Thanks, HC. Appreciate that, Culler. Since we're already in March and markets have changed a little bit since last year, certainly seeing a lot of of trading volume, but also some volatility. Can you comment at all about 2026 year to date in terms of the trends in darts and equity versus option? That'd be great.

Yeah, no problem. I think the market is setting itself up for an interesting rest of the year. But looking back, we're almost at the end of the first quarter already. And, you know, I can say confidently now that I mean, January is probably the second best month we've ever had as a company since inception. So Q1 is certainly looking strong. When there is volatility, especially with our customer base, there's a lot of activity and a lot of trading. When the markets start getting harder to read, whether there's, you know, geopolitical headlines that we're reading multiple times a day now that can change the direction of the market any time. We see a lot more concentration in our options business and the margin in our options business is quite higher than our equities business. So that's actually a net positive for us. And I think in a volatile tape, which seems like it is going to be in the foreseeable future, I think we're extremely well positioned with just our core customer base, right? You see a lot of our competitors looking to target active traders. We have only targeted active traders since day one. That is our core. That is our flywheel, right? And it will constantly help us when there is volatility in the market. The activity between a casual retail trader and an active retail trader is very different. So the second part, I think, where we have an advantage is our global distribution. We're now operating in 14 different countries around the world, and it's great to have diversity of revenue streams with different product types with a volatile market and a questionable outcome of which direction the market's going to go. And then lastly is our B2B business, which has done nothing but expand since we made our first announcement only three months ago. We'll continue to build on those partnerships. It is a long-term and slow-growing business when you're dealing with B2B relationships, but they are consistent through different changing markets over time.

That's great, Keller. One last one if I don't mind is the prediction markets. Super exciting to see the success after such a late-in-the-year launch. It seems to get ramped very quickly. How should we think about prediction markets in contributing to earnings and profitability in 2026?

So prediction markets are exciting for our business. I think it opens up our TAM to a completely new demographic of customer. It is a great re-engagement tool for customers that have gone dormant or have have slowed their activity on the platform. It's a great calling card to come back and rediscover investing and trading. I do not believe that prediction markets are going to be any part of our core business going forward. I think our core business is in the active securities trader. And I think the prediction markets are a great tool that we can use to engage and keep clients engaged with and keep clients engaged with their portfolio, allowing them to speculate, to hedge, and allowing them to have access to new tools and a new on-ramp to gather a new customer base.

Makes total sense. Thanks so much, and congrats again.

The next question is from Mike Grondahl with Northland Securities. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thank you. I wanted to follow up on the $3.9 billion in net new deposits you know you guys really called out the marketing spend and and we know what you've done there for people moving balances um but i didn't hear you mention crypto that new offering or merits that rollout um you know do you want to attribute any of that big growth to crypto or merits or i guess drill down a little bit deeper there anthony

So firstly, any of the B2B relationships that we've onboarded, they're not attributable to net deposits. Those net deposits are purely coming from retail. Crypto, however, is included because our crypto business is only attributed to retail right now. To give you a little bit of color on how Merits is going, we've been obviously quiet in terms of the revenue attributed to this new partnership. because we still are growing it and it's still very early. But we have, to date, traded north of a billion notional in equity for Korean customers through our relationship with Meritz. That number is growing on a week-to-week basis, and we expect them to be a very important partner for our B2B business in the longer term. On the crypto side, you know, and we talked about this before, The availability and the opportunity for us for crypto is a wide open field. And I'm extremely excited about the ability to be best in class for active crypto trading. But it's still too early. The amount of trading that we're doing on crypto versus our security business is still de minimis. We are still waiting to roll out a couple of key products. towards the end of this quarter. And I think there'll be much more material conversations to have for Q2 in terms of crypto revenue contribution.

Got it. And just going back to merits, how ramped up is that relationship? Is it still early innings, middle innings? And then what does the pipeline look like for other international partnerships or opportunities?

So for the marriage relationship, again, a very key one for one of the largest, uh, active trading regions in Korea. Uh, very, very early innings. I mean, we're still, we're still not even out of the second inning yet. Uh, first inning was getting them onboarded. Second inning is where we are as we're still testing. And some of the, that test phase, um, we are working out, uh, the different trade flows that they want to send to us. And that number has been growing on a steady basis. I expect, you know, I expect that, you know, I expect to be 10x at the end of this year where we are today, to give some context. And pipeline for B2B, that's where the B2B gets really exciting. As you guys know, onboarding institutional investors is not as quick as onboarding a retail customer. So these relationships do take time to build, but The pipeline is primed and ready. We have multiple businesses that are looking to connect with us on multiple reasons. We're beating our competition in price. We're beating our competition in technology. We're beating our competition on having boots on the ground where these B2B relationships are. And we're beating them on product diversification. There's very few competitors that we have in this space that can match us on all those fronts. So I expect the B2B business to be equal, if not greater, over the next several years than our current retail business.

Great to hear. Thanks, guys.

The next question is from Kareem Saif with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good evening. Can you guys hear me okay?

Yes, sir.

Okay, perfect. Congrats on a strong quarter. My first question is on capital priorities and M&A. So could you give us an update about your capital priorities for this year? And what are some of the key focus areas for M&A in terms of size and target markets?

I'll take this one. I think our answer hasn't really changed. We'll continue to be very focused. on investing in growth. That means customer acquisition, AUM acquisition, and continue to invest in technology, especially AI, to make us the best-in-class platform for active traders, and also in geographical expansion, where we're currently operating. So, So I would say it's primarily in organic growth, as we see a lot of opportunities in our current space where we're gaining share across a number of markets. In terms of the M&A opportunities, I think it's something I think will be opportunistic. We don't have a a strategy and necessarily saying that we have to grow through acquisitions. But if something interesting that does come along, we'll obviously evaluate it from a risk reward perspective.

Got it. Thank you so much. And then for my follow-up, Um, I wanted to know if there are any plans to, uh, you know, publish monthly metrics such as darts, account growth, net deposits, similar to what some of your peers provide. And if so, could you share the timing or the context around when you might start? Thank you.

Well, thanks for the suggestion. I think we are, um, you know, we are, uh, listening, you know, we are evaluating, and also balancing with, I guess, where we are in terms of the maturity of the business. So if you noted, we've actually disclosed more granular data in terms of darts and also the interest earning asset balances in this quarterly presentation. So we want to be transparent and give more information to our investors and research analysts. So when we are When we're ready, we'll be releasing data probably on a more regular cadence. So thank you.

Perfect. Thank you so much, HC. The next question is from Ed Engel with CompassPoint. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to kind of drill down some of the success you're seeing on the performance marketing side. Is there any specific segment or segments that are kind of driving a lot of the growth there, whether it's U.S., international, or kind of these new products like crypto and prediction markets?

So what I've been most impressed with, especially over the course of 25, was the growth of the international contribution, meaning our non-U.S. broker-dealers that are contributing into our U.S. product flow, mainly in the form of equities and options businesses. We have more than doubled the amount of incoming flow over the course of 25. So a doubling effect, which I am very confident that that trend will continue into 26 as we continue to export kind of the U.S. retail experience to retail investors outside the U.S. to all of our broker-dealer affiliates in the Webull Corporation umbrella. looking at things like a retail customer sitting in another country is still reading the same investment blogs, is still looking at the same Reddit channels, talking about using options to trade volatility or ahead of an earnings cycle. But that customer usually does not have access to that U.S. product where they live. And if they do have access to it, usually they have to be some ultra high net worth customer or they're going to pay some ridiculously high fees or have a very bad user experience. We are bringing that US experience outside of the US and been extremely successful in doing so. We're continuing to push that agenda. We are the first true zero commission platform in Hong Kong. And when we went to zero commission in Hong Kong, I believe it was November of 2025, our Hong Kong customer order flow nearly doubled immediately. we will continue to push pricing, price compression, and better user experience everywhere globally. So that international cohort is really important for us. And then when we look at product types, and you mentioned crypto, of course, crypto is extremely important for our demographic of customer. Like I mentioned earlier, we will be focusing on targeting active crypto traders with price compression here in the U S we have licenses and are offering crypto currently in Brazil and Australia. And I believe that we will have, um, I want to be careful. I don't want to make too many, too many promises, but we will have probably two more licenses that trade crypto before the next earnings call and continue to expand on that, uh, for expanding our user base for the products that we offer. And then lastly, I think prediction markets as a new product is something that's extremely interesting for our B2B business. In order to offer predictive markets, you have to have multiple licenses and you have to have the ability to offer technology on a quick delivery schedule that you can then offer these products to other platforms that do not have the proper licenses and do not have the proper technology to offer it. So there's a huge queue of clients that we're building that will also expand our prediction market business that expands outside of retail alone.

Great. Appreciate all that color. And then just kind of getting to the trading revenue segment within the platform and trading fees line item, a pretty big sequential increase in that. We can kind of back into prediction market revenue, just given the volume you gave us, and it's some of that, but not really all of it. So just curious, of that kind of platform and trading fee line item, what really drove that sequential increase?

Well, it's actually a number of things. So outside of our core products, equities and options, all the other asset classes are the trading-related revenues go into the platform and trading fees. So that includes futures, crypto, and prediction markets, as well as the commissions that we do collect on some of our foreign affiliates. Yeah, so... Q4, there's a big jump, I think, for several reasons. One is that our futures business actually continues to grow. And also we had consolidated, we will pay the crypto business at the end of Q3. So Q4 was really the first time that we had ever presented crypto revenue in any of our results. as well as prediction markets. So as you can see, Q4 was a big quarter for prediction markets. And so for us, that also is a significant contributor to the results in Q4.

Great. And then just one last housekeeping one. I saw on the balance sheet that you looked at the promissory note balance declines. Was that you paying this down? Yes, we paid.

That's correct. We had $100 million of promissory note on our balance sheet at the beginning of Q4, and then we paid off $35 million of the principal of the promissory note in Q4.

Okay. I guess the interest payment steps up, correct, in about a month. Is it fair to assume that you would try to take it down relatively quick, or are you okay with it out there?

I think we're, again, we're evaluating. We have time to pay down the promissory note, so there's flexibility on when to pay it off. So I think it depends on our cash flow and our balance sheet and also our strategic priorities. in the coming quarters. So there's the will, the goal is to eventually pay it off. So because we are, we like to, you know, we like to maintain a healthy balance sheet and not to take on too much debt. And so the goal is definitely to pay it down over time. And then so hopefully the, you know, save on the interest costs.

Great. Thanks. And I'm actually impressed on the great growth.

The next question is from Brian Vieten with Seabird. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks, guys. Hey, just a question on, I guess, the customer funnel, you know, kind of driving new ads and keeping people engaged. Can you just talk about prediction markets versus crypto? Like, what's been, I guess, a more compelling funnel for you and how you see that looking in 26? And then, Separately, just on price, it seems like for a number of products, the pricing is very competitive, but I do wonder if maybe you could come out at a healthier price level and then the customer could opt out versus you immediately cut the price and then you know, it's harder to maybe raise it down the road. Have you guys run through any of these analyses where maybe you do just have the normal fee structure and you could always sort of cut it down over time and kind of, you know, delight the customer from that standpoint? Is that an exercise you guys have worked through with prediction markets, crypto, your newer markets? Thanks.

Hey, Brian. So I think one of the big differences, though, when we talk about price compression for crypto, I think the biggest differentiator between our business and any of our competitor business in terms of trading of crypto and the spreads that are built in the pricing is that we're not reliant on any crypto revenue currently. So any revenue that we add, whether it's from, you know, a pricing spread that's, you know, one quarter of the margin of our next competitor, that's still accretive revenue for us. And if any of our competitors were to match our pricing, they'd have to be cutting their crypto revenue significantly. So we think that that puts us in a very good position. It almost reminds me of when I launched a platform in 2018 where there was us and two or three other digital platforms that were only offering zero commissions. Right. For equities and the largest players, uh, they were very, very slow to adapt and change because it was so cannibalistic to a very important revenue stream that they depended on. Uh, I see this as the same exact opportunity for us. And, you know, to get more detailed about your question when, you know, I don't think, um, I don't think we would have it across the board. pricing compression for all clients because the majority of crypto investors are long-term investors right they're buying it to add to their portfolio so the entry cost is not that important to them and we're targeting the active crypto traders right people that are day trading crypto multiple times a day every day that is you know that is the the majority of our customer base with active traders and we want to cater a product specifically for them so We do have a couple different models in mind, and I will give you more details as we get closer to a launch date.

Okay, great. Thanks. Okay, perfect. And I guess just from a fee capture standpoint, it sounds like near term it's more about getting volume out there and driving more engagement and getting new customer ads. Are we right to think there's probably – not a big revenue number coming from crypto prediction markets in 26. I might have missed that if you covered it earlier, but can we just walk through the fee structure a little bit for this year?

So for our prediction markets, we charge one penny commission per contract. We also do receive exchange rebates on top of that as part of the revenue stream for prediction markets. We did... We did run an offering around the Super Bowl where we announced no commission for prediction markets for anything related to the Super Bowl, game winner, point spread, MVP, things like that. And that actually drove a significant amount of traffic without us actually having to advertise or pay for, you know, expensive advertising during the Super Bowl cycle. Very successful program for us. I think, you know, I think there's very little compression that's available for prediction markets. I think the prediction market game is strictly about volume and size at this point. You know, and that can be run in a couple ways. It can be, you know, a targeted audience, which, again, you know, I'm not convinced that that's our audience. I think our audience are the active securities traders, you know, not the pure spec traders. But, you know, that can change. You know, it's still kind of waiting to see some data and waiting to see which direction, um, a lot of he, uh, a lot of the kind of, uh, regulatory and political cultural oversight and which direction that wind is blowing before I want to commit to doubling down on a specific product. Uh, and you know, and obviously crypto on ramp is, is, you know, as a natural progression for our demographic. and we'll continue to pursue the right product suite as we roll out, like I mentioned, as we roll out the offering and get aggressive into Q2.

Okay, great. And then just lastly, you know, I think for some of your competitors, one of them has, you know, 10, 11 businesses, I think, that are 100 million or more in revenues. Prediction Markets was the fastest growing, I'm sorry, the fastest to 100 million of all 11 businesses. And it's funny, we looked at, you know, a couple years back, a lot of them didn't, they launched five years ago, but even if you haircut the prediction market number by 80%, it's still the fastest to 100 million. And so I guess from my standpoint, it's, I'm still a little bit, I guess just confused why we wouldn't, you know, just have the full capture in such a sort of fast-growing, you know, market that's kind of wide open. But I hear your side as well. Thanks a lot, guys.

Yeah, no, so Brian, I mean, we do have the full suite of prediction markets that all of our competitors have. It's not that we don't offer them. We absolutely do offer them. However, we don't put our prediction markets front and center in our customer experience, right? And I think that's, you know, that's a great metric you mentioned. But, you know, another great metric is, you know, you look at our traditional securities products, you know, we're probably, you know, one-fifteenth in terms of AUM of the competitor you mentioned, yet we do, you know, we do one-third of the amount of equity business they do on any given day. You know, we do probably, you know, 20% to 25% of the options business that they do on any given day. So, you know, we understand who our core customer is, and we, you know, we build our platform and we develop it around our core customer.

All right. Thank you, sir.

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