MDB Capital Holdings, LLC

The MDB Capital Holdings third quarter 2025 update conference call. Thanks so much for joining us today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Before we begin the formal presentation, I'd like to remind everyone of several important things. Today's conference call is being recorded. A Q&A session will follow the formal presentation. So if you have questions during the presentation, you can type them into the Q&A chat to be answered during the Q&A session. Questions can only be seen by the moderator. Please remember that statements made on this call and webcast may contain provisions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking. While these forward-looking statements represent our current judgment on what the future holds, they're subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Your caution not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect our opinions only as of the date of this presentation. Also, please be aware that we're not obligating ourselves to revise or publicly release results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. Throughout today's discussion, we'll attempt to present some important factors relating to our business that may affect our predictions. You should also review our most recent Form 10-Q for more complete discussion on these and other risks particularly under the heading Risk Factors. A press release detailing these results, which crossed the wire this afternoon, is available in the investor relations section of our website, mdb.com. A replay of this call will also be available later on mdb.com. Your host today is Chris Marlett, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of MDB Capital Holdings. He'll be joined later by George Brandon, MBB president and head of community development. Chris will lead an update on the third quarter ending September 30, 2025. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Chris Marlett. Thanks, Tony.

Well, welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining today. I saw it was a pretty crazy day in the market. And so it's been a really interesting period in time to navigate these markets. And I just want to thank all of you that have been supporting us and getting behind us. And we've had a really good last few months as – our platform takes shape and um as our pipeline builds and so we're very enthusiastic despite all of the the backdrop of uncertainty so well um one of the things i wanted to do today was talk a little you know do a little bit of a different approach to try and help to explain, you know, what we do at MDB, why we create value or how we create value and why we went public. Because I want to remind everybody that we did this for a very specific reason. And there was a big why, if you will, why we went public. But I also want to recognize that, you know, so many of you that have believed in us, you know, have lived through the stock really going down. And while the stock is down, you know, You know, we've lived through so many different markets before, and sometimes, you know, when you call me or I talk to some of our shareholders, they think that I'm not too, you know, worried about things. Well, I'm not super worried, but I don't like the stock being down either. So we really are in this together. But I want to also reiterate that we're not – we're not changing what we do just because the market's down. You know, what we've done for a long time has worked, and we think it's going to work again, despite the fact that, you know, times are changing. There's a lot fewer small public companies out there. The small public market has not been, you know, really great. And so, you know, we're just as excited as we've ever been, even though, you know, Things are not unbelievable with our stock at this point. So the last, I would say, two years have been very challenging because we've had this great historical success, but it's certainly not reflecting the stock today. We've had 28 years of launching big ideas. And we've had really, you know, it's an incredible record that really no other firm has really matched. You know, we've never failed at doing an IPO. There's been times that were super tough to get them done. You know, there's good times, there's bad times. But we've been, you know, 100% of them we've ever tried, we've done. And amazingly, of all of our IPOs, 100% of them have traded at 2x the IPO price at some point post-IPO. So that means that these companies got public, they did well, they had a chance to raise money. They don't all win forever, but we did what we were supposed to do, was really launch these companies that have big potential. And so many of them have reached, you know, real significance as far as valuation. And I want to remind everybody that we've published sort of a historical perspective of those companies we've launched in the public markets. So we can remind everybody that this can work. And I think that, you know, what's wondering, what's I think lingering in everyone's mind is the whole concept of, you know, is public venture dead? And I think that... I'm super excited because I think we're in sort of a whole new beginning for public venture, and I couldn't be more excited about what we have ahead. And again, reminding everybody why we went public. We really, for 28 years, we only launched, what was it, 17 companies, so about one company every 18 months. And it was really, I think a lot of you saw it was sort of a founder-led operation, led by me and our team. But quite frankly, people looked to me for whether or not they should buy or sell something. And that was not something I looked forward to. And I really felt like our results had proven themselves and it could be scaled. But we were really constrained by operational bandwidth. So the funding that we did for the IPO was really to put in a team to be able to scale this operation. And so it's been a proven model. But the big question has been, can we scale? And we really our goal is to get to three to five launches per year. which enables people to build a public venture portfolio. Because buying one company here or there is not really a strategy. It's just we're kind of deal salesmen as opposed to helping people to really build a diversified portfolio and public venture. And by doing that, we can bring our impact and our process to more and more companies. So I think You know, the mission is always to build this operational framework to make this sustainable and a long-term business that survives beyond, you know, the initial founders of MDB. And so that is our mission. We're sticking to it. And I think we're making great progress that I think will become very evident very soon. So simply what we've done, and I've talked to this in the past, is really we curate by looking through thousands of ideas. It does take. looking through thousands of ideas to find ones that have that asymmetric profile that we believe is so important and the reason why we've been able to do what we've done historically. You can't just, you know, episodically stumble across things. You have to really get out there, and our team has done a great job of getting out there and looking through thousands of ideas. I know a lot of you that bring, you know, ideas to us get a bit disappointed sometimes because there's such a small percentage of the things that we actually end up getting behind, but we say just keep bringing them. You know, sooner or later, you're going to get better at finding ones, and we really appreciate all of the companies that are brought to us by our community. It really is an important part of it, and I would tell you that a very high percentage of the things we do are actually brought to us by our community as opposed to us going out and finding them. Then we position them for success, and that's really the hard work. Once we curate them, which is equally hard, but position them for success and being able to live in the public markets is really where the platform has really been built. And I'll talk to more of that later in the presentation, but I don't think that that's really apparent to most shareholders today. I don't think that they really understand what we've built and why we have something that really nobody else has. And then, of course, launching them is the things that you see, which is really when they're ready to go public and trade in the public market. So for the new people in the community that don't really know public venture, it's really this explosive growth potential of venture-stage companies and bringing that public market liquidity and transparency that we now call public venture. We used to have an old tagline that we're bringing back, which I think is really – something that we forgot about and really is important to understand what the value that we think that we bring at MVB is that we really see value others don't. Most of these opportunities would not be opportunities to any other firm. And I think that our ability to create value from those is really completely unique and not something that these entrepreneurs and inventors can just find anywhere. So it's really this transformative magic of transforming these early-stage big ideas into investable public companies with a billion-dollar-plus potential. And I think that we've really thought about what it is that we do that adds value so that people understand how we actually earn these equity positions or are able to make this a business. When things come to us, they typically are really exciting big ideas, but they're really underdeveloped without a clear commercial path. And they don't have an IP strategy or protective mode around them that's completed. And it's kind of a bit unfocused because it's still early but can be developed. And as a result, they have limited access to growth capital. And after we're done and they're ready for launch, they really have a clear mission as a new category leader, not to say that it doesn't pivot after they're public. It doesn't mean that it's 100% fully baked as a company, but they're really going to be a leader in a particular technology or business category. And they have a comprehensive IP strategy and a protective moat. that we're experts now at making happen. And they really are differentiated and they're public ready for the public markets. And so these companies trade and are valued in the public markets as evidenced by our track record. And when they walked in our door, they really didn't have that capability. So I think that that's what's exciting about what we do and how we create value for shareholders. and talk a little bit about what we're, you know, that underpinning or that foundation for that is really this integrated, these integrated components that stand underneath this whole strategy. And I think that when we first went public, we didn't do a good job of communicating. I think a lot of people really believe that we were operating multiple businesses when really it's really one business to support this sort of launch of these public venture companies, stage companies. And it's really the foundation that enables us to provide this value that really nobody else can because there's really no PE firm or VC or underwriter that's built to do what we can do. There's We are completely unique, and I would say that that leadership is clear in this category because just like the companies we're launching, this category of public venture, we don't really believe we have any real competition. And so when you look at all of the services, and again, I'll let you guys read this at a later date, but really all of the things that we do, you do not find at an underwriter or a VC company. And ultimately, why I think this is going to be super important, it's not just the companies that we find in academia that might have a great new technology that we have to formulate into a company, but it's also companies that are more developed, like you would see with Buddha Juice that we'll be soon doing the IPO for, where we really help them to really go public and be a leader because quite frankly, they can't just walk into an underwriter. And we provide all these services that enable them to get to that public offering much faster. And so we say two to three times faster. That's hard to really quantify. That's just sort of what we believe. But we can take something like Buddha Juice from a very early stage company that didn't think they could go public and And in six to nine months, really get it ready for going public and have it be super well in demand as a result of positioning it correctly. And so I think that's a big part of what we do. The other part of it is that a lot of times these companies are told it's going to cost you $2 million to go public. And that's just, you know, that's just not our reality. You know, we have, whether it's law firms, accounting firms, et cetera, we have the resources to be able to take these companies public for their total all-in costs for going public outside of underwriting fees is usually less than a half a million dollars, which is not something that most people or most entrepreneurs understand. fully understand. I think that they, you know, again, there's big misconceptions about what it costs to go public and et cetera. So to remind you how we create value, it's a combination of the fees and equity that is how the shareholders of MDB make money. And so You know, when we transform these companies, there's some companies like at Exozymes, which we co-founded effectively with the inventors from UCLA. We have to really work hard to position that company and develop that company from, you know, putting together the whole team, the strategy, the IP, etc., And that's a very time-intensive process. And in those companies, we have more equity. In a lot of cases, in the case of Exrazymes, we put also $5 million in capital into the company. Other companies like Buttigieg that you'll see will have underwriters warrants and will have underwriting fees and that we don't have as big of equity position, but we also didn't spend as much time, effort and capital to get behind it. It was a very different type of situation. But in all cases with every company that we end up launching into the public markets, we will have an equity component because You know, we want to bet alongside of our investors. We want to make sure that we're completely aligned with investors at all time. And we're never going to be a fee-for-service, traditional fee-for-service shop because we add too much value with this platform to just charge an underwriting fee like many underwriters. So... I know there's a lot of confusion in the marketplace with that because everyone's a little bit different, but it's really just a function of how much time and effort it is to do it. And most importantly, It's making sure that we curate something for our investor community that works. That's always the way we think is it's number one, it's got to work. And number two, you know, we have to be compensated fairly for what we're doing. And it's what I love about what we're doing now is that we have a lot of flexibility about the big ideas we can launch. But Again, what always stays the same is they're category-leading companies, whether it's a technology category or a business category like what we're doing with Buttigieg. So our goal from an operating perspective, and I've talked to you before, we have about $10 million in operating expenses, which is really – In effect, our operating platform is really seed capital for the companies we're starting and launching because we're investing our time and effort to really position these companies for leadership. And that's really an investment in these companies. And I don't think, again, I don't believe that that's well understood. Even some of our biggest investors... they say, well, geez, why do you guys get such a big equity position in some of these things? I said, because we're providing the value. And I think that a lot of our co-founders and what have you, if you talk to the co-founders of a lot of these companies, I think that every one of these companies that we've launched and have taken public, I'm not so sure they could have gotten public publicly. without us. I'm not sure that they would have been public without us. And so I think that that's where that transformation on the value creation is so evident. So scale is the issue for us. Obviously, the big difficult lift here is operationally, how do we take one every 18 months to get to three to five a year? Well, I really don't believe that the curation is our choke point. What we're seeing as far as opportunities are concerned, we have now a very deep pipeline of opportunities. So I'm not really worried about finding enough opportunities. Even though we are going to be doing more companies, I believe that every one of the ones we launch going forward have a better probability of success than the ones we've done historically. And that's a big statement. And I really believe it comes from the fact that we are now, we've broadened our team to be able to curate more and effectively analyze more. But I also believe we're just better at picking because we've made every mistake in the book. We've We've created dysfunctional boards, management teams. We've picked the wrong business strategies. We've picked companies that went public too early. Like I said, we've made every mistake in the book historically, and I can tell you the one thing that we're all acutely aware of is we don't want to make those mistakes over again. The other major – so the biggest part – there's two really – two big things that really dictate how many of these we can launch on an annual basis. One is our process, because it's really standing up those companies and getting them ready to go public. Everything from developing their business and IP strategy, but also – You know, getting the narrative and getting the team right, those are hard to do. And that's where the community is so important. And we want to broaden our community because the bigger our community is and the bigger the influence is, the easier it is to put these companies together. We want to be able to lean on our community more to help us find CEOs, board members, businessmen, potential joint venture partners for these companies. And so that community is critical to that process. But also the community is important from the perspective of really investing in these companies. And I think that, you know, in good times, it's much easier. You know, we found sometimes, you know, in good times, you know, we send an email and we've got, you know, Three times over demand for an IPO. In bad times, you know, you call your friends and, you know, they cringe when they see the caller ID, right? And so it's very cyclical depending upon the markets. But we've managed to continue to grow that community and work on that because we know that the more that people are exposed to public venture relative to all the things they can invest in, that it just makes sense. And so we just have to continue to, to build it. Jordan's doing a great job and the team and Tony and all the rest of the guys that, that, that are, that are part of the whole community team. They're doing a great job. And, you know, every day we're out there making new friends and it's, and it's really, you know, it's really quite fun. And, and we're seeing, you know, great progress on that front. So, You know, I think that that's becoming evident as we're seeing the pace really pick up. And I think that we're excited because for the first time really in our history, we're going to be closing – Highly likely to be closing. We've received all the funds for Pollux, and we'll be announcing the closing on that here shortly. And then Buddha Juice we expect to be priced here in the next couple of weeks, hopefully if the SEC can hurry up and get back to work and get those comments in. So it will be the first time we've ever done two company launches in one quarter. So I'm pretty excited about that. But not just that. We've got a number of other companies in the pipeline, and I think we've got a very active calendar going into next year. So I think that there's four to five companies in late-stage negotiations. So I really believe we have a shot at making that three to five launches next year. I'm pretty excited about that. I also think that microcap is going to make a major recurrence. I'm making a market call here because it's been such a horrible last few years for microcap. But I'm making a market call that the transparency and liquidity that exists in the public markets is going to become a cool thing again. It was funny. I got a call from a very old friend in Indonesia, a very wealthy guy that has – businesses in Indonesia. And he called me up and he said, Chris, I want to go to NASDAQ. And I said, well, why do you want to go to NASDAQ? And he goes, well, he goes, in Indonesia, he goes, if I take my company public, I'll trade 10 times earnings. He goes, on NASDAQ, I'll trade 40 times earnings. And I was like, That's pretty profound. Well, I think that that's what you're seeing start to have happen is there's so few companies on NASDAQ now. These small companies that have any kind of revenue and earnings that are in the micro-cap space are very highly in demand. There's very few companies left in the U.S., ironically. So many of them are going the private equity route, the VC route, the PE route. And now, you know, you can talk to all the family offices and what have you. Nobody wants to allocate to that sector. But where can they get, you know, price transparency, liquidity, et cetera? It's the public markets. And so I'm a huge believer that we're probably on the doorstep of really this taking off in a major way. And I couldn't be more excited about being in the business at this time. So the third quarter financial update is pretty straightforward. Our goals, as I mentioned, are really to offset our operating expenses with financings. So we've used about $5.9 million for the first three quarters. You know, we'll have a fair bit of revenue in the fourth quarter that will send that, you know, in the other direction for the balance of the year. And so, you know, I expect that we'll have a good fourth quarter and we'll start to see that our op-ex are starting to get covered by the number of financings we're doing. In addition, more importantly, we're going to have important equity positions in Pollux Bio and Buddha Juice that really give us or all of our shareholders big equity upside going forward. And, you know, as always, we're trying to be very cautious with our OpEx and making sure that every dollar counts. And, you know, the team has done a great job. There's been – you know, the team has really – dug in, working hard. I mean, everybody on the team has been committed, and it's been a tough slog, guys. It's been really tough, but, you know, we have a great group of people all across the organization. Everybody is really, I couldn't be more pleased with everyone's commitment, and, you know, we have an unbelievable team, as many of you know. And I think that we have significant equity holdings that are really unrecognized in our stock price, which I'll talk about in a little bit. So when you look at our stock being, you know, undervalued, if you take the exercise position, the heartbeat position, and our cash, you know, the market value is significantly higher than the market value of our stock right now. And, you know, that comes from, I think, people just, you know, being worried that, in fact, you know, maybe, you know, public venture is dead. Maybe MDB has lost their touch and they can't figure it out how to navigate through this market, what have you. It's a commentary that I'm not proud of. Having lived through lots of cycles, I know that it can change and be on the other side of the equation, and we can be trading at a premium to our equity value. So I don't take it personally, but it does hurt because I know a lot of you have bought the stock at higher prices, and we're trying to rectify that as fast as possible. And I can tell you the team has dug in to make sure that that happens. But some things that aren't valued in the stock prices is really patent invest, which we've made the decision to spin it out, and I'm super excited about having the first, potentially the first public law firm in the United States, and it couldn't be in a better sector, which is patent law, which is a federal practice. We'll talk a lot more about it in the future, but I do believe that is an undervalued asset that's not valued at all on our balance sheet right now. And the other thing is we've been contacted by a number of people that want to be in the clearing business or associate with a clearing firm. And so I think there's a lot of potential value in our clearing platform as we move it forward. And so those are two assets that I think have significant value that could even, you know, be, you know, we could realize some real significant value. But I want to touch on a couple of the companies that many of you own stock in, and, of course, MDV owns a lot of stock in, which is Exozymes and HeartBeam. I couldn't be more proud of the accomplishments that those companies are making, albeit not necessarily 100% recognizing their stock prices, but Exozymes is making unbelievable progress, and their platform – is really going to be transformative. And really, you're going to see this, I believe, in the very near future, that we're going to see a new paradigm in pharmaceutical development enabled by their synthetic biology platform. And you're going to see that in paradigm-changing companies that will get spun out of exozymes. And we're hoping that gets sort of unveiled here very shortly. It's been a long time coming, but I think we're very close to making that happen. And HeartBeam, you know, it's been a tough road to get through the FDA, but hopefully we're right on the verge of FDA approval. And it really is a life-changing... opportunity, you know, in healthcare in the sense that now you're going to basically have a virtual cardiologist in your pocket at all times. If people carry this around, they're going to be able to get, you know, a 12-lead ECG to their doctor or to a cardiologist instantly. What does that mean? That could save millions of lives. millions of lives, and it's never been done before. And I think that, you know, hopefully, you know, this FDA approval gets through and we get this product launched because it is, it's a game changer. And both these companies I'm super proud of, and I'm super proud of our team for helping, you know, get these companies launched and, It really is an exciting time, even though it's been a tough market. These are game-changing companies that we couldn't be more proud of. So just to reiterate, we close three to five deals a year. We really cover our operating expenses. And then, as you can see, the equity that we earn in a company that we co-founded with Francisco Leon and Miguel – You know, we own a significant part of that. We really helped put together the license at Mount Sinai, and it's been a lot of hard work. But I really want to thank all of our investors that believed in us to get behind the launch of what could be a really game-changing company. So it was a long time coming, but, again, it was the fortitude of our team and the belief from our investors that are making that launch possible. And I want to thank everybody that participated. So really in summing up, you know, I think that I want to remind everybody, You know, we really have, in my mind, the only real public venture platform. And we have such a unique team of people. We have such a unique process that I believe is going to give life to lots of meaningful companies. And, you know, by being a shareholder... Obviously, in tough markets, it doesn't really matter that you have access to the deals. A lot of people have access to the deals. But in a better market, like I think is coming along, as a shareholder, you're going to have preferred access to each one of these opportunities to invest in. That's, I believe, an important reason to own MBB. And, again, our proven execution, you know, historically, and I think our momentum is a great reason to start thinking about, you know, owning the stock if you don't own the stock already. And we have a lot of hidden value. Our economics are scaling as we get more companies through the pipeline. And I think we really have a moat around our business. They're just, you know, I think we are in a class unto ourselves and what we do. And so I think that, you know, that gets recognized by companies looking to go public or looking to be positioned as a market leader. And I think that, you know, the timing couldn't be better to be a shareholder. I think that hopefully we're seeing some shifts in the marketplace and people coming back into public venture. So as Tony says, our model is proven. The machine is scaling and the window is opening. So with that, I want to thank everybody and open it up for questions.

Thank you, Chris. We'll start our Q&A session here. If you'd like to ask a question, use the Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom window. Please type your question in the chat and we'll be able to answer them. Remember that questions can only be seen by the moderator. And at this point, I'd like to welcome George Brandon, MDB's president and head of community, who will facilitate the Q&A session. So, George, welcome and take it away.