Bakkt Holdings, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the BACT first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I'll now turn it over to Cody Fletcher, investor relations advisor at BACT. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining BACT's first quarter 2025 earnings call. Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone that today's earnings call includes a separate supplemental presentation that can be found at our investor relations website at www.investors.bact.com. During today's call, we will make certain forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our cooperation agreement with DTR, the proposed commercial agreement with DTR expected by Q3 2025, and the anticipated integration of DTR stablecoin and AI payment infrastructure with BAC's regulated platform. We'll also discuss our strategic transformation to a pure play crypto infrastructure company, including the divestiture of our custody business to ICE, including expected timelines and ongoing discussions regarding our loyalty business, as well as expectations regarding the stablecoin payments market, regulatory environment, and our product roadmap. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. which may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. For additional information regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the first quarter of 2025. Further, in addition to discussing results that are calculated in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, We also make reference to certain non-GAAP financial measures. For more detailed information on our non-GAAP financial disclosures, please refer to our earnings release, which can be found on our investor relations website. Thank you. And I'll now turn the call over to Andy.

Thank you, Cody. And hello everyone. Thanks for joining BAC's first quarter 2025 earnings call. And it's great to connect with you all again. With me today is Karen Alexander, our chief financial officer, and I am excited to introduce Akshay Mehta, founder of Distributed Technologies Research, or DTR, who officially joined back as co-CEO on March 21st. Starting with our Q1 performance, we navigated a slower crypto market following the post-election rally of late 2024. with our total transaction volume reaching 1.06 billion for the quarter. This represents a 40% sequential decline from our strong Q4 results and a 23% below the broader market. On a year-over-year basis, our performance reflects a more positive story, with volumes growing 23%, outpacing the growth of our broader market benchmark. This achievement is particularly meaningful considering we are comparing against a period that included March 2024's significant activity and price surge driven by Bitcoin ETF purchases and the meme coin rally we saw from SHIB and DOGE. Despite softer market conditions, this volume represents substantial progress for BAT as we continue to grow our market presence. We believe these metrics demonstrate our platform's resilience. While we adjust to current market dynamics, we believe our year-over-year performance relative to the industry demonstrates the strength of our value proposition and expanding customer base. For the quarter, total revenues, net of crypto costs, execution, clearing, and brokerage fees decreased 25.9% year over year to 12.6 million. Total operating expenses, excluding crypto costs and execution, clearing and brokerage fees, decreased 36.3% year over year to 31.1 million. Net income improved 176.5% year over year from a loss to a profit of 16.2 million. Adjusted EBITDA loss, non-gap, improved 11% year-over-year to $14.5 million. From an operational standpoint, we are making progress on our transformation to a pure-play crypto infrastructure company. The sale of Backtrust Company to Intercontinental Exchange is expected to close on or about May 15th. And as mentioned on our previous earnings call, we continue to explore strategic alternatives for our loyalty business and are in discussions with potential buyers. We believe this represents the best path forward, eliminating ongoing operational losses while focusing our resources on higher growth and higher margin opportunities. These initiatives reflect our sharpened focus on core crypto infrastructure. We are deepening our strength in crypto trading and expect to expand into stablecoin payments ecosystem through our planned collaboration with DTR. Steps that we believe will accelerate our evolution and position us to capture more potential opportunity in the digital asset space. As Akshay will describe in more detail shortly, we remain committed to disciplined expense management. With our cooperation agreement with DTR signed and the negotiation of a commercial agreement and integration with DTR underway, we are taking a bottom-up rather than top-down approach to operational efficiency, methodically evaluating each aspect of our business to identify opportunities for improvement while preserving our ability to capture growth. We believe this granular approach will help ensure that we are making strategic decisions about resource allocation without compromising our competitive positioning. During this period of refinement, we are suspending our practice of providing quarterly guidance as we work to finalize the definitive commercial agreement with DTR and complete our optimization review. Lastly, we have brought on key hires who are seasoned leaders in crypto and payments. Philip Lord, President of BAT International, and Ankit Kemka, Chief Product Officer for BAT. Actually, we'll explain a little more about their backgrounds and how they bring tangible value to the table. With our sharpened strategic focus, I want to take a moment to articulate our vision for BAT's future. through our cooperation agreement and pending commercial agreement with DTR, backed intent to power how businesses and consumers interact with digital payments. We are transforming to be not just a crypto trading platform, but an essential infrastructure layer for the future of finance. The regulatory tailwinds we are experiencing have created unprecedented opportunities in crypto trading, stablecoin-related payments infrastructure, and agentic commerce. We believe that this stable environment, coupled with our combination of regulated infrastructure and cutting-edge technology, positions us at the forefront of a multi-trillion dollar transformation in global financial services. I'd now like to hand over to Akshay Naheta to share more about DTR and our partnership. Akshay.