Forum Markets, Incorporated

Hello, and welcome to Forum Markets' first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. During today's discussion, all callers will be placed in a listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, the call will be open for questions. This call is being recorded on May 14th, 2026, and a replay will be made available on Forum's Investor Relations website later today. I will now turn the call over to John Kristof, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications and Investor Relations.

Thank you, Megan. Hello, and thank you all for joining Forum's first quarter 2026 financial results conference call. Joining me on the call today are McAndrew Rudisill, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and John Saunders, Chief Financial Officer. We hope you've had an opportunity to review our first quarter financial results issued earlier this morning. We've also posted an earnings presentation to our investor relations website. As a reminder, some of the matters we'll be discussing on this morning's call are forward-looking in nature. Please keep in mind that actual results could differ materially from what is expressed in these forward-looking statements. Forum assumes no obligation to update the information, and we encourage you to refer to our most recent filings with the SEC for a discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. During our call, we will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information for investors. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measure can be found in our press release and presentation on our Investor Relations website. And with that, I'll turn the call over to McAndrew.

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. Since our last call, our team has remained focused on executing our strategy of originating, structuring, and tokenizing institutional-grade cash flow generating assets to modernize capital markets. We've made meaningful progress across the platform, expanding our asset origination pipelines by entering the AI infrastructure financing space and making significant progress on establishing strategic co-investment partnerships with major financial investment firms. At the same time, we recognize there is a meaningful disconnect between the market's current valuation of the company and the progress we are making and the intrinsic value of the platform that we are building. We've taken deliberate steps to directly address that gap, including activity through our share repurchase program and initiating a formal strategic review aimed at preserving the long-term opportunity in front of us. On the share repurchase program, since our announcement in April, we repurchased approximately 5.8 million shares for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $24.9 million, representing approximately 28% of our shares outstanding. All shares under the program have been retired and canceled. Following these repurchases, we had approximately 14.5 million shares outstanding as of April 30th, 2026. We view repurchasing shares at current levels as a highly accreted use of capital and a direct demonstration of our conviction in the Intrinsic Value Forum. Our board authorized the program with the flexibility to act programmatically and opportunistically as market conditions permit. In parallel, the board has established a special committee comprised of independent directors to formally evaluate a full range of strategic alternatives with the objective of maximizing shareholder value. This includes engaging with parties that have already approached the company and proactively evaluating all available value creation pathways. These actions reinforce rather than alter our view of the business. We remain highly competent in our operating model, the long-term opportunity in tokenized real-world assets, and in our ability to generate revenue and cash flow as a standalone company. This process reflects our disciplined commitment to ensuring the full value of the business is recognized. While that review is underway, we remain focused on executing on our core strategy and continuing to build and scale the platform. Turning to the platform, we have continued to expand our asset base and deploy capital into high yield institutional grade assets that generate income today and create future tokenization pipelines. Most recently, we announced our entry into AI infrastructure financing, specifically short-term bridge loans, supporting the acquisition and deployment of NVIDIA GPUs. These loans finance the period between hardware purchase and long-term financing once the GPUs are operational. sourced through established partners with a clear path to repayment. We are targeting annualized returns in the mid-teens on these short-duration loans. Critically, these are income-producing assets that generate yield from day one, independent of tokenization. While we intend to tokenize a portion of each deal, this structure allows us to put capital to work immediately while building out the pipeline of assets we can ultimately bring on-chain. Given the rapid expansion of demand for AI infrastructure, we view this as a repeatable, scalable opportunity set where we can deploy capital, earn yield, tokenize, and recycle into new transactions. We've made significant progress in establishing relationships with established well-known institutional investment firms to deploy capital into our asset origination pipelines, particularly our AI infrastructure financing and commercial aircraft engine leasing verticals. We are confident in our ability to generate meaningful capital deployment opportunities into our asset pipelines, enabling Forum to earn revenue through origination and asset management fees as we source, structure, and manage assets on behalf of our institutional counterparts, with more details to be announced once capital has been actively deployed into our pipelines. We view the progress we have made establishing these relationships as validation of our sourcing and structuring capabilities, and as an early demonstration of how form can scale beyond our own balance sheet in access-constrained, double-digit yielding asset classes. More broadly, it illustrates the two distinct but complementary distribution paths we are building. Retail access through tokenized products and institutional access through co-investment agreements and distribution agreements where we can white-label our products on existing institutional platforms. We continue to believe this is the right strategy and these opportunities are well aligned with our model and position us to grow meaningfully as we bring more assets onto the platform. As we look ahead, our focus is on scaling the platform by expanding asset pipelines, increasing capital deployment and broadening distribution. Liquidity.io remains a core part of that strategy, enabling a broader set of investors to access institutional grade opportunities and serving as our proof point for bringing real world assets on chain. Importantly, Liquidity.io is currently undergoing a major platform upgrade that will significantly expand its capabilities. In addition to digital tokens, the enhanced platform will offer trading in stocks, bonds, cryptocurrency, and private credit securities, a meaningfully broader product set that we expect to drive substantial growth in their user base. We anticipate the updated platform will launch late second quarter or early third quarter. Perforum, a larger and more diverse liquidity.io user base, directly expands the buyer pool for our tokens on their exchange, which we view as an important catalyst for driving token distribution at scale. Combined with the institutional co-investment channels we are building, we are creating a multi-channel distribution model designed to serve both retail and institutional investors and to scale alongside our growing asset base. And as we noted previously, we will continue to evaluate potential capital raising opportunities with a focus on long-term value creation, balance sheet flexibility, and shareholder alignment. Overall, these steps position forward to build a durable income-generating platform that we can expand across asset classes and distribution channels as we continue to grow. The actions we have taken since our last call, aggressive share repurchases, a formal strategic review, developing institutional co-investment partnerships, and continued expansion into high-yielding asset verticals reflect both our conviction in this platform and our commitment to ensuring shareholders benefit from the value we are building. As capital markets continue to evolve, we believe platforms with the ability to uniquely identify, originate, and scale high-quality art assets will emerge as leaders. We believe Forum is well-positioned to be among them. With that, I'll turn the call over to John Saunders.