Hilbert Group AB (publ)

Good morning and welcome to Hilbert Group's Q2 2025 earnings call. I'm Bernali Biswal, CEO, and I'm delighted to be with you today to share what has been a transformative quarter for our organization. This has been a quarter of strategic execution and operational excellence at Hilbert Group. We have strengthened our capital foundation, accelerated platform innovation, and expanded our global footprint. Today, I want to walk you through the progress across our business verticals, share why we're optimistic about the road ahead, and explain how we're building a company designed for sustainable long-term value creation. At Hilbert Group, we remain laser focused on growth through innovation and strategic partnerships. This isn't just a corporate tagline. It's the fundamental driver of everything we do. And I invite you to join us on Hilbert's exciting journey as we continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in our industry. In this presentation today, you will see our unwavering commitment to building sustainable, scalable solutions that create lasting value for all stakeholders. Let me walk you through the remarkable achievements that defined our Q2 performance. These highlights span our three core business verticals and demonstrate the integrated strength of our platform approach. First, our Synthetica platform innovation. On April 30th, we successfully launched HBTC, our Bitcoin native yield product, marking our entry into tokenized asset management. Just 16 days later, on May 16th, we published our comprehensive Synthetica roadmap, providing complete transparency into our development milestones. The market response was extraordinary. Our SYNT token seed round achieved six times over subscription, ultimately expanding to $2.5 million to accommodate strategic partner interest. Second, our financial strength initiatives. We completed a 20 million SEK directed share issue in May with overwhelming support from our board and key stakeholders. Most significantly, we achieved full prepayment of Deus Ex convertible note originally due April 2026, eliminating this obligation eight months early. Simultaneously, we secured a strategic three-year 150 million SEK financing agreement with LDA Capital, providing exceptional operational flexibility. Third, our asset management excellence. May marked the successful launch of both our Hilbert Liberty Fund and Hilbert Multi-Strat Fund, already generating strong institutional interest. We also appointed Russell Thompson as Group Chief Investment Officer on May 21st. Russell brings proven leadership and credibility. Centralizing investment efforts under him ensures consistency, discipline, and the ability to scale globally with confidence. This is not just about adding another executive. It is about strengthening the foundation for long-term institutional trust. Our fun product performances demonstrate the power of our AI-driven strategies and validates our investment thesis. Let me walk through these impressive year-to-date results. Our Hilbert Liberty Bitcoin Fund, otherwise known as Basis Plus Strategy, has delivered a year-to-date performance of 25.08%. The dollar version has performed even stronger with a year-to-date return of 26.7%. These numbers reflect our sophisticated approach to Bitcoin yield enhancement. Our Hilbert Multistrack Fund has achieved a year-to-date performance of 12.64%, demonstrating the consistent value creation across diverse strategies. Meanwhile, our Hilbert Zappo Byzantine Fund has delivered a steady year-to-date return of 1.63%, reflecting its conservative, yield-focused mandate. These results validate several strategic initiatives. The integration of Liberty Road Capital, completed at the end of March, is already creating measurable value. Their expertise and relationships give us deeper access to market and accelerate our global presence. This combination of performance, expertise and scale is positioning Hilbert Asset Management as a serious global player. Our asset management pipeline continues to demonstrate exceptional strength and quality. I am pleased to reconfirm our full year total asset under management target at $750 million, a figure that reflects both the scale of opportunities we are capturing and the quality of our institutional relationships. The composition of this pipeline is particularly encouraging, most of which is comprised of crypto institutions, traditional asset managers, as well as a very large traditional allocator. Currently, outside Byzantine Fund, we have approximately $60 million in total expected asset across eight active deals with conversion window of approximately three months. This represents high probability near-term growth on 220 fees. That will significantly impact our Q4 results. Looking ahead, we anticipate consistent monthly inflows into our Byzantine fund starting September 1st, creating a reliable foundation for asset growth. It is important to stress that this pipeline does not include any inflows via the Synthetica platform where demand is already substantial. In other words, the true potential pipeline is even larger than these headline figures suggest. Our financial positioning has been fundamentally strengthened through three major initiatives this quarter, each designed to optimize our capital structure and provide strategic flexibility for growth. The 20 million SEK directed share issue completed in May received exceptional support from our board and key stakeholders. including co-founders Nicholas Sandstrom, Magnus Holm, and CIO Russell Thompson. This successful raise demonstrates continued confidence in our strategic direction and provides immediate capital for growth initiatives. Most significantly, we achieved full prepayment of our Deus Ex convertible note originally due April 2026. This early elimination of debt obligations substantially improves our capital efficiency and removes a potential overhang on our equity structure. Simultaneously, we secured a strategic three-year 150 million SEK financing agreement with LDA Capital. This facility provides exceptional financial flexibility to execute our growth strategy, capitalize on market opportunities, and maintain our aggressive expansion timeline without dilutive equity raises. Additionally, as mentioned before, we are at final stages of locking in additional funding of more than 300 million SEK as of today. Our Synthetica tokenization platform continues to exceed all expectations, consistently delivering on ambitious milestones while pushing the boundaries of what's possible in institutional-grade tokenization. The development timeline speaks to our execution excellence. On April 30th, we launched HBTC, Hilbert BTC, our Bitcoin native yield product as the first major offering on the Synthetica platform. This wasn't just a product launch, it was proof of concept for our entire tokenization thesis. On May 16th, we published our comprehensive Synthetica roadmap, demonstrating our commitment to transparency and provide clear visibility into execution milestones. This roadmap gives our stakeholders confidence in our ability to deliver on ambitious technical objectives. During the second quarter, we completed Syntex, our decentralized exchange for tokenized real-world assets, making the first of two key development milestones. This achievement keeps us firmly on track for our full platform launch in September 2025. The platform's regulatory-grade, zero-knowledge KYC-powered infrastructure positions us uniquely at the intersection of traditional and digital assets, We're not just building technology, we are creating the regulatory compliant bridge that institutions need to access tokenized opportunities at scale. The market response to our SynToken seed round provides powerful validation of our vision and execution capability. The results exceeded even our most optimistic projections. We achieved an impressive six times over subscription, demonstrating exceptional investor enthusiasm for our tokenization platform. This overwhelming demand forced us to expand the seed round, ultimately raising a total of $2.5 million to accommodate strategic partner interest. This strong market response confirms investor confidence in Synthetica's revolutionary mission, seamlessly integrating decentralized finance with institutional-grade asset management. The quality of investors who participated reflects the institutional caliber of our approach and validates our positioning at the forefront of tokenization innovation. Beyond the capital raise, this success provides us with strategic partnerships and market credibility that will accelerate our platform adoption and market penetration. Our Zappo partnership reached a transformative milestone recently, demonstrating the power of our strategic partnership approach and providing immediate visibility into substantial asset growth. Zappo secured the requisite licensing required for their banking app launch with regulatory approval received in July. This breakthrough enables the September 1st launch of their comprehensive banking application. The opportunity is substantial. Zappo is positioned to convert approximately 10,000 Bitcoins from their existing depositor base into Byzantine Credit Fund. With Bitcoin prices, this represents a potential AUM of over $600 million, a cornerstone opportunity for our asset management division. This milestone validates our strategic partnership approach and reinforces our position at the forefront of integrated financial solutions. The partnership creates a seamless flow. Customer Bitcoin moves from Zappos secure regulated crypto banking application into Zappos institutional grade custody. Hilbert then helps deploy these assets into structured credit opportunities via Byzantine fund, creating shared value for all parties while delivering superior returns and security for clients. This is exactly the type of strategic partnership that differentiates Hilbert Group and creates sustainable competitive advantage in the digital assets ecosystem. On July 4th, Hilbert unveiled a differentiated digital assets treasury program. Unlike conventional corporate treasuries that simply hold assets, we are implementing a framework that actively manages capital to generate alpha while controlling downside risk. This isn't passive treasury management. It is strategic capital deployment that creates value while maintaining appropriate risk controls. The Treasury is no longer just a defensive function. At Hilbert, it is a value-creating engine. We are implementing an advanced capital allocation framework designed to optimize balance sheet efficiency while creating distinctive shareholder value through alpha generation and strategic ecosystem partnerships. Beyond our LDA financing facility, we are currently in advanced negotiations with multiple institutions regarding additional strategic financing arrangements. These discussions reflect our strengthened market position and provide additional flexibility for capital deployment and growth acceleration. We remain exceptionally well positioned in an increasingly favorable market environment that creates powerful tailwinds for our integrated business model. Bitcoin's continued strength, Accelerating institutional adoption and improving regulatory clarity, particularly in the United States, create optimal conditions for our asset management, platform innovation, and strategic partnership initiatives. These aren't temporary market conditions. They represent fundamental shifts that favor sophisticated, compliant players like Hilbert Group. Our integrated approach creates sustainable competitive advantages by combining performance-focused asset management with proprietary platform innovation and strategic partnerships. We have built complementary business verticals that enhance our competitive positioning and create multiple value creation engines. The significant progress across both our asset management division and our Synthetica platform demonstrates the power of our strategic execution. With our comprehensive financing arrangements now in place, we are fully funded to execute our operational roadmap for the foreseeable future, ensuring strategic flexibility to capitalize on all market opportunities without capital constraints. As you may have noticed from our recent press releases, we are also making major advancements when it comes to governance. Steen Jacobson, former chief investment officer of Saxo Bank, has now formally joined the company's board of directors. Steen brings decades of macro trading expertise and FinTech innovation experience that will be invaluable as we scale our operations globally. We're also currently in the process of nominating a new chairman in order to further strengthen our board composition and ensure we have optimal leadership structure to support our ambitious growth trajectory. These governance enhancements reflect our commitment to institutional grade standards as we continue expanding our asset management capabilities and platform innovation. This focus on governance excellence aligns perfectly with our strategic vision of building the infrastructure for the future of global finance, and having the right leadership framework is essential for executing on that mission. I have deep personal conviction that we have positioned Hilbert Group at the epicenter of the most significant transformation in financial services history, and we are executing with precision and scale required to capture this generational opportunity. In summary, Q2 2025 has been a quarter of focused execution and strategic advancement across all business verticals. We have made significant operational progress in our underlying business fundamentals, from our expanding asset management pipeline to the exceptional traction of our Synthetica platform. Most importantly, Hilbert Group is now fully funded for the foreseeable future. our strengthened balance sheet strategic financing arrangements, and operational cash generation provides us with the resources and flexibility to execute on our ambitious growth plans without constraint. I am convinced that we are poised to scale rapidly, capture the tremendous opportunities ahead of us, and create enduring shareholder value. The infrastructure we have built, The partnerships we have forged and the team we have assembled position us uniquely for the next phase of explosive growth. To our shareholders and partners, thank you for your trust and support. The best chapters of this journey are still to come. I look forward to updating you on our progress as we continue to execute on this exciting vision for the future of digital asset management and tokenization. I wish you a great rest of the day.