Abaxx Technologies Inc. (ABXXF) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good day, and welcome to the ABAX Technologies Second Quarter 2026 Earnings and Business Update Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. For sell-side equity analysts on the call with us today, there will be an opportunity to ask live questions following today's management presentation. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star and then 2. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. Please note that live questions will not be addressed until the Q&A portion of the call begins following prepared remarks. For those on the webcast, you may submit questions throughout the event by typing in the Submit a Questions box on your screen. Questions will be addressed after the formal presentation has ended. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tara Hayes, Director of Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, afternoon, or evening, depending on where you're dialing in from today. Thanks for joining us for our Q2 Earnings and Business Update call. With us are Josh Crum, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Frey, Chief Financial Officer, David Greeley, Chief Strategy Officer, Joe Rea, Chief Commercial Officer, of ABEX Exchange, and Leah Wall, Digital Title Lead at ABEX Technologies. The primary disclosure for today's call are our quarterly financial statements, MD&A, and earnings announcement, which were released prior to this call and are available on our Investor Relations website at investors.abex.tech. This call is being webcast, and an archived version, along with the presentation, will be available there shortly after the conclusion of today's event. Our discussion today includes forward-looking statements, which are subject to various assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, and other factors that are difficult to predict and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Please find our full disclaimer and cautions regarding forward-looking statements on the slide on screen. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and therefore undue reliance should be not placed upon them. We refer you to our earnings press release and CDAR filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could impact the future operating results and financial condition of the company. We do not intend to update any forward-looking statements made on this conference call to reflect events or circumstances after today or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events except as required by law. And with that, I'm going to turn the call over to David Greenlee.

Thanks, Tara, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. ABEX Exchange celebrated its two-year trading anniversary this quarter, and not coincidentally, it was the strongest quarter that ABEX Technologies has reported to date. At its core, ABEX is building one of the rarest assets in global finance, a fully licensed, regulated exchange and clearinghouse designed to bridge physical commodity trading between east and west. Our operational execution remains at a high pace, and multiple transformational milestones were completed during the second quarter that solidified the global foundations of our business, setting up years of scalable growth ahead. In Q2, we chose to accelerate our plans for scaling that growth towards our goal of $1 million average daily volume in the next three to five years. We raised capital and put it to work, expanding our sales team and building the initial liquidity in our markets that will attract commercial participants and as liquidity begets liquidity will allow us over time to win these markets as the venue, providing commercial participants with best execution on a number of global commodity benchmarks. We can see the results of these efforts in our trading activity and financial results, which I will walk you through first, and again in the network building and commercial milestones, which I will review in our 2Q highlights. First, the results. Total volume reached 888,902 contracts, and year-to-date trading volume surpassed 1.1 million contracts in the second quarter, a seven-fold increase over the full year of 2025. Average daily volume reached 14,572 in Q2 and continued to grow into July, where it reached 34,136 contracts per day, with single-day volume on ABEX Exchange surpassing 100,000 contracts for the first time on July 1st. Average daily open interest reached 641 in Q2 and continued to grow into July, reaching 1,119. And as we continue to advise investors to evaluate our trajectory on six-month horizons, we're pleased to report our first half-over-half comparison from daily trading commenced in mid-2025. with a 613% increase in H1 2026 volume over H2 2025. We expect this positive, though nonlinear, growth to continue in H2 2026. Looking ahead to 2027 and beyond, based on the continued expansion of our client network, new products, new markets, more trading hours, and more trading regions, we remain confident in our trajectory to reaching our goal of 1 million average daily volume over three to five years, which would imply maintaining 50 to 100 percent half-over-half growth. Returning to our Q2 results, the increased trading activity generated $4.5 million in transaction and clearing fees for ABEX Exchange. These transaction and clearing fees covered the liquidity-related credits to liquidity providers, resulting in a small positive revenue. However, this quarter's transaction revenue was not the goal. The goal remains to build the liquidity required for widespread commercial participation in our markets. As our transaction and clearing fees and liquidity-related credits have grown into significant light items in our financial results, our CFO, Steve Frey, will be discussing how we are presenting these in our financial statements. Importantly, our deployment of these liquidity-building programs, which are used at all exchanges, have worked as designed, deepening order books, establishing institutional-scale liquidity for the first time in our markets, driving broader onboarding across clearing members, ISVs, and brokers that will grow transaction and clearing fees from commercial participants. In order to capitalize on this commercial interest and engagement and accelerate growth of commercial participation in our markets, we recruited to build out our sales team and scale our market development efforts. this increased our nat cash spend to 16.3 million in 2q compared to 12.3 million in 1q 2026 and 13.2 million in 4q 2025 and remain consistent with our steady long-term trend of disciplined budget and headcount expansion even as the company's trading and commercial activity scales more rapidly than our largely fixed cost base. Just as we continue, just as we chose to increase spending this quarter, we retain the levers and flexibility to reduce cash spending in the future if required, including adjusting our spending plans for commercializing our market OS and ID++ technology and our exchange commercialization runways. Including a non-cash component of expenses of $12.4 million, the company reported a net loss of $28.8 million for Q2, 2026, compared to a net loss of $21.6 million in Q1, 2026. We note that this non-cash component includes an unrealized loss on derivatives of $6.1 million caused by the effect of the decline in our share price on our outstanding convertible debentures.

We raised capital, put it to work, and are seeing results.

ABEX raised $69 million during 2Q at a price of $54.25 per share. And as of June 30, 2026, ABEX had $95.1 million in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet, remaining in a secure financial position to continue scaling our markets and completing a number of major milestones planned over the next four to six quarters of funded runway. on our agenda in the call today we'll dig into our operational accomplishments and plans going forward i'll review the key operational highlights from the quarter josh crumb and steve frey will then discuss our approach to capital allocation and how we're prioritizing investment to support commercial growth joe ray and i will follow up with an update on abex exchange including the progress we're making in market development and participation finally leah wald will discuss the commercialization of ID++ through market OS and milestones ahead. Before discussing our second quarter highlights, I'll provide a brief update on the unfounded and meritless allegations advanced by Viceroy Research in a series of so-called short reports issued between June 11th and 30th, 2026. Viceroy published these communications while disclosing a short position in ABEX such that it stands to benefit from a decline in ABEX's share price. The company has taken regulatory and legal action. We asked the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization, or CERO, to investigate potentially manipulative or deceptive trading activity in ABEX shares. And we retained Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton, and Garrison to investigate potential wrongdoing related to Viceroy's campaign in trading in the company's shares and to assess all available legal remedies. The Board directed the Audit Committee, which is comprised of independent directors, to conduct an independent investigation into the allegations. The Audit Committee retained independent legal counsel and a major international public accounting firm to assist in the course of the investigation. As outlined in detail in our MD&A, that review has found no evidence supporting the allegations. The process requires a substantial amount of time and is ongoing, and we will provide an update when it is complete. Finally, the board believes the current market price does not reflect the underlying value of the company, and on July 22nd, authorized a normal course issuer bid and automatic securities purchase plan, both of which became effective July 24th and remain in place. Purchases under the plan are intended to protect shareholders and the company's cost of capital from the effects of potentially manipulative trading activity associated with the campaign. with that update i'll turn to our second quarter operational highlights i'll move quickly to leave space for the rest of the team to discuss these in more detail and provide the context for what each means for our business at abex exchange broader connectivity and growing liquidity are increasing the relevance of our markets to commercial participants market os advanced toward commercial implementation at abex clearing and toward third-party commercialization outside the exchange. Our shares began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange on May 21st after ABEX had grown to become the largest company by market capitalization on SIBO Canada. We welcomed Young and International Singapore as our first mainland China-backed clearing and trading member, providing institutional clients across Hong Kong and Asia with direct clearing access to ABEX Exchange. ABEX Exchange market data is now available through LSIG and Bloomberg, expanding our reach across the institutional commodity markets and creating another potential source of recurring revenue as our market scale. We also launched Silver Singapore Futures and NWAC's German Solar Futures, bringing the exchange's product suite to 18 contracts. Joe will provide more detail on these developments during the market update. We entered into a commercial agreement with Alta, our first Singapore integration partner, to advance the use of money market fund shares as yield-bearing T-plus-0 margin collateral at ABEX Clearing, subject to all regulatory processes. As software increasingly acts on behalf of firms, we also formed ABEX Labs and released Agents++, extending seven years of work on globally resolvable identity infrastructure from humans to AI agents so they can operate as verifiable extensions of the people and institutions that authorize them. Our Exchange and Clearinghouse gives MarketOS a direct path into regulated markets. In turn, the technology is designed to make participation in those markets more capital efficient, support broader participation, and help accelerate our path to 1 million ADV. MarketOS also creates opportunities beyond AbEx Exchange. During the quarter, we signed an agreement to support development of the Cambodian National Futures Exchange, creating a path to deploy the technology with third parties, and extend its revenue potential beyond our markets. Leo will provide more detail on these developments, including a look under the hood during the digital infrastructure update. Now, I'll turn it over to Josh and Steve.

Thanks, David, and thanks, everybody, for joining us today. We have never been more confident in this business. Q2 gave us the clearest evidence yet that the infrastructure that we have spent seven years building is converting into commercial market activity. Our prices are now available on more than 400,000 institutional screens through Bloomberg and LSEG. Order book depth and trading activity increased, and that activity is accelerating institutional onboarding and strategic discussions around new commodity benchmarks from both commercial participants and interested governments across multiple jurisdictions. Our commercial and executive teams have always maintained unparalleled access to global commodity clients throughout our careers. But there is simply no substitute for a prospective new trader or clearing member than being able to pull a live time series of trading data off of the Bloomberg Terminal, LSEG, TradingView, or one of our many live ISVs to discover market arbitrage opportunities and execute in our order books. ABEX's strategic position as an independent commodity exchange and clearinghouse sitting between East and West is also becoming more relevant. Our conversations across Washington, China, and the Middle East reinforce the demand for a sovereign-grade global trading venue engineered with modern technology and contract designs to eliminate a number of systemic basis risks plaguing today's physical commodity supply chains. Seven years into our 10-year plan, the commercial case for ABEX is stronger than it has ever been. The activity we saw in Q2 gives us greater conviction in the value of the exchange network, the benchmark opportunity in our markets, and the revenue potential that comes with scale. As we update our market on our growth and development path going forward, I want to start with what we have already built. The infrastructure in place today, looking at our business from a sum of the parts or from the top down, had substantial strategic and replacement value even today before assigning any value from the commercial upside of our individual markets from the bottom up. We've already worked through seven of the nine hard cold start problems, which can be seen in the accompanying slides. That work has created an increasingly difficult to replicate exchange and clearing network, even though much of that value is not reflected directly in our balance sheet numbers today. It also explains why we continue to invest in liquidity building programs, which Dave will expand in our market update. Liquidity turns connectivity into functioning markets, supports best execution and benchmark status, and strengthens the broader exchange and clearing network as those markets develop. We like to say that liquidity is an asset and best execution is the product we sell from that asset base. Looking ahead, we are excited, we're executing against a defined set milestones through year end and early 2027 that would further strengthen the value and earnings capacity of the exchange and clearing network. Walk through a few of these as bullets. Extended trading hours. Expanding operational trading hours to match ICE and CB global session schedules. Product suite expansion. Following the trading hours extension, we plan to begin launching products largely already developed in our existing pipeline with the potential to more than double our current suite over the next four to six quarters, subject to regulatory requirements. New asset classes. The expansion would also take ABEX exchange into new markets, including potentially oil, base metals, and agriculture, materially broadening the range of commodity risk management on the exchange. Tier one bank onboarding. Onboarding the first major global bank clearing member transforms the clearinghouse credit profile and supports larger institutional positions going forward. Critical mass of Chinese onboarding. Completing onboarding for a critical mass of mainland China-related FCMs and commercial trading desks, expanding participation and clearing access across the region. Physical deliveries. Executing first physical deliveries across LMG, lithium, and silver to join what we've already seen in gold and carbon. Validating contract utility for commercial participants and supporting durable open interest. Active trading in wind and solar, bringing additional utilities and trading desk participants into our wind and solar markets this fall, supporting daily trading, initial market making, and liquidity development. Non-cash collateral acceptance, beginning live acceptance of yield-bearing money market fund shares and vaulted gold as T plus zero margin collateral at ABEX clearing using market OS and ID++. We believe we are still a few quarters away from being able to project guidance and break even for each product individually and for the exchange collectively, but we believe these final key infrastructure completions will put us in that position well before we would seek new growth capital from strategic partners or the equity markets. Looking at our individual markets from the bottom up, we continue to prioritize liquidity and commercial participation over near-term net fee capture. Dave will walk through the economics that investment in the market update. We expect growth to continue in the second half of 2026. As we've stated in the past, our business is best examined through a lens of half-over-half infrastructure development and onboarding, and our outlook remains intact for 50 to 100 percent half-over-half growth in trading volumes over an extended horizon, consistent with our three to five-year goal of 1 million ADV. We are already seeing the return on that investment beginning to show up in our precious metals markets. Based on current trading activity and client engagement, we now see a path for that complex to reach standalone break-even and potentially begin carrying the exchange's baseline operational costs from 2028. Client conversations across the U.S., London, and Asia were also reinforcing Singapore's role as a neutral precious metals hub. We continue to see major benchmark opportunities in LNG, lithium, and VC carbon as we've developed over the years, but precious metals can now become a core asset for ABEX rather than a niche market share. Our precious metals opportunity also gives you a good example of the operating leverage in the exchange model. As much of this opportunity is a welcome upside surprise against our initial expectations for this segment. Our baseline operating costs across personnel, clearing, operations, regulatory compliance, and cloud infrastructure are relatively fixed. As trading volumes scale through the second half of 2026 and first half of 2027, incremental exchange fee revenue will be reinvested in liquidity provider programs and deeper order books. Investors should therefore not expect rising trading volume to flow directly to our net margin or bottom line over the next three to four quarters. We intend to deploy growth and transaction clearing fees back into liquidity across our developing markets, and we'll continue to update investors each quarter on the economics we're seeing. As that investment drives liquidity, network growth, and connectivity towards critical mass, we expect net fee capture per contract to inflect sharply positives, which we now believe should begin by the end of our funded runway. Even after completing a transformational financing in Q2, we continue to manage our runway against market conditions and the next stage of growth. Management continues to have a significant ownership stake in this business, and with an owner-operator culture, we have a long track record of disciplined budgeting, tight dilution, and maintaining multiple paths to additional capitalization alongside a deep strategic investor base supporting this growth and vision. Frankly speaking, we believe we should be investing much more in developing new products, growing contract liquidity, and growing our valuable financial network into very large addressable markets across Asia and beyond, on top of the infrastructure that we've already proven out and that is now scaling. Ultimately, our investment pace remains tied to our cost of capital, and we will maintain the strict dilution constraints we have always imposed on ourselves. For now, that means trading some speed for patients, including moderating the expansion we had planned for MarketOS go-to-market this fall. We will continue to assess the trade off between growth and dilution with our technology expansion budget remaining a lever to extend runway as our exchange break-even horizon begins to emerge. And finally, I have one additional comment to share with you today. I'm pleased to update that Joe Rea has been appointed president of ABEX Exchange. Joe is supported by Chief Business Development Officer Russell Robinson and five new specialized commercial sales lead hires covering energy, metals, and environmental markets across Houston, London, Singapore, and Asia. With that, I'll hand over to Steve Frey to walk through a few notable detailed financial disclosures this quarter.

Thank you, Josh. This quarter, we completed our accounting assessment of payments issued under the market maker and liquidity provider programs at ABEX Exchange, which are relatively new. That assessment resulted in two determinations affecting the presentation of our financial statement. First, we determine that the liquidity-related credits to market makers and liquidity providers constitute consideration payable to customers under IFRS 15, and we recognize and should be recognized as a reduction of related fee income. As a result, we're presenting the payments we receive as transaction and clearance fees, and we are presenting the liquidity-related credits paid to market makers and liquidity providers as a separate line item that is deducted from these fees before staging our revenue. These liquidity related credits were previously presented within our operating expenses under travel, marketing, and promotion. Secondly, we determined that delays in when market makers and liquidity providers were invoicing the company for payments earned under those programs could result in the related payments being recognized in a subsequent period to the underlying program activity. As a result, these program payments are now being recognized in the quarter in which they were earned rather than when we received and paid the invoice. In our financial statements on MD&A, we provided a table to clarify the impact of these determinations in the previously reported issue on audited income statement where the three months ended March 31, 2026. As shown in that table, $543,000 of program payments previously presented within the travel, marketing, and promotion expense would instead be presented as a reduction in transaction and clearing revenue. In addition, $1.3 million of program payments relating to March 2026 would have been recognized in Q1 2026, rather than when invoices were subsequently received and paid. These changes had no impact on cash and cash equivalents or total assets. As of March 31, 2026, total liabilities increased and shareholders' equity decreased by $1.3 million. For the three months ended March 31, 2026, revenue decreased by $1.4 million, operating expenses decreased by $112,000, and net loss increased by $1.3 million. Because these programs are relatively new, and there would be no significant change to prior quarters. Regrettably, there are riskable errors made when incorporating these changes into an audited financial statements and MD&A. This resulted in Q2-2026 operating expenses being overstated by $1.3 million. As corrected, Q2 2026 operating expenses were 19.2 million when compared with restated operating expenses of 15 million in Q1 2026. This makes the actual growth in operating expenses 4.2 million or up 28% from Q1 2026. The balance sheet was accurate as presented for Q1 2026 and Q2 2026. The income statement was accurate as presented for H1-2026, but not for the individual quarters. We have reviewed our processes and controls and have made changes to prevent a recurrence. These errors were corrected over the weekend before the markets opened, reviewed by external auditors, and we refiled our financial statements and MGNA for Q2-2026. These are available on CDER and on our website at investors.abex.tech.

Thank you, Steve. Before we move on, I want to acknowledge that as CEO, those errors are ultimately on me. Our shareholders are entitled to accurate disclosures, and the controls change Steve outlined is designed to prevent a reoccurrence. We also want to thank the team and the board. The last two months have been demanding, and this team continued to build relentlessly. We have enormous talent and experience across the company, and a team that understands both the opportunity in front of us and the work required to capture it. I'll hand it over to Dave to begin walking through what that work looks like.

Thank you, Josh. in our 4q 2025 earnings call on april 19th of this year i discussed how we look to capture generational opportunity to build the new commodity benchmarks for the next decade and beyond two years after the launch of abex exchange were a good way down the road we built the exchange in clearinghouse launched 18 products and we have connected a robust network of clearing firms ISVs, data distributors, brokers, and traders. And while we continue to connect and onboard new partners, we are focused on driving volumes and liquidity in our individual product markets up the S-curve from being new to mature markets. The nature of a market is that it is a network, and so it becomes more useful to each trader as more traders participate. The first participants in a market are taking real risk that they will not be able to enter and exit trading positions the solution of this problem adopted by exchanges has long been to compensate the early participants who take this risk the liquidity providers who provide the initial liquidity that enables commercial participants to trade and so what we typically see as trading activity and participation moves up the S-curve is that the revenue per contract, the transaction and clearing fees, less the compensation to these liquidity providers, often begins low or negative, then climbs up over time on an S-curve of its own. It's important to note that the liquidity of an exchange's markets is an important competitive advantage. A bad liquid contract will often beat a good illiquid one. And so it's important to not view liquidity programs programs as a necessary evil, but as a tool for developing and retaining a competitive advantage. We see this today at other exchanges. On May 29, ICE, the Intercontinental Exchange, launched a new liquidity provider program to make their Corsia Phase I market more competitive. And the Hong Kong Exchange introduced a new liquidity provider program as it seeks to revive its gold futures market in Hong Kong. Consequently, while we expect fee revenue from commercial participants to lift our revenue per contract up its best serve over time, we expect these programs to continue because we see these programs as an investment, an investment in the liquidity and competitiveness of our markets, not an expense to try to drive to zero. That said, let's discuss the nature of the investment we are making in building liquidity in our markets and how by overcoming the cold start problem, we expect to create a return on that investment. As you'll see in the slide, it all begins with building network connectivity for traders through their clearing firms, brokers, and ISVs, and then using market making and liquidity provider programs to build that initial liquidity in markets. Then the wheels begin turning. Liquidity begets liquidity as more trading participants are attracted to the market by those already trading. The trading activity creates business opportunities for more clearing firms, brokers, and ISVs, leading them to connect to our exchange. Their increased connectivity provides access to more traders who can enter the market, creating more liquidity and trading activity, and those two mutually reinforcing cycles drive the market up the S-curve to maturity. While the liquidity programs require funding, this investment ultimately generates returns through three channels. The trading activity generates transaction and clearing fees for the exchange. The increased connectivity raises the network value of the exchange and clearinghouse. And the trading activity creates valuable market data, including pricing benchmarks, from which the exchange can earn market data fees. One item I haven't discussed is the role of margin financing, which can be a very important means of helping commercial hedgers to use the exchange. While I won't go into detail here, I will note that our work on the technology side to advance the use of digital collateral performs effectively the same role, lowering the cost of collateral and helping to drive commercial participation. And with that, I'll turn it over to Joe to update you on how these dynamics are playing out in our markets. Over to you, Joe.

Thanks, Dave. This next slide shows how much our connectivity network has expanded over the past year. As we talked about earlier and a year ago, much of our work was focused on establishing those core connections. In fact, to Bloomberg and LSEG slash Refinitiv, an activity took almost two years of hard work from the ABEX data and ops team. Today, ABEX Exchange is connected to seven clearing firms, over 20 interdealer brokers, five licensed data distributors, including the leading global providers, five exchange ISVs, two settlement banks, and more than 100 trading firms. We made several important additions to that network during the quarter. With LSEG, Refinitiv, and Bloomberg now distributing in our market data, Apex prices are available across all major global commodity features ISVs and data distributors. And in early July, we went live with our carbon and LNG markets on Mstream, a boutique OTC broker electronic platform that has an incredibly dedicated following of commercial firms. Several firms have already asked to onboard as a result of the Apex liquidity shown on that screen. Again, as we keep saying, market maker liquidity attracts commercial requests for access with those commercial firms paying full rack rate of exchange fees. As Dave and Josh both mentioned, we also added Young Ann Singapore as our first, but not last, mainland China-backed clearing and trading member, expanding direct clearing of access to Apex Exchange for clients across Hong Kong and Asia. That access is particularly relevant in LNG and lithium and gold and silver, where Yongan is seeing client interest as China's commodity markets become more accessible to both mainland China and its international participants. I would strongly encourage shareholders to listen to Dave Greeley's August 8th Smarter Markets interview with Yongan's Singapore CEO, Josh Zhao, for a direct perspective on why they chose AVAX Exchange. An additional note on young end, they executed and cleared for their first trade, our GKS gold market trade, at the end of last week. With the commercial team expanding during the quarter, we are increasing our coverage across key regions to continue adding clearing and brokerage access globally so that our growing network of global customers can better manage their market risk with our rapidly expanding product suite. India continues to be a fantastic source of new liquidity for us, and we have been paying particular attention to developing those key relationships in that important region as their percentage of volume continues to grow. This next slide does give a great visual on the growth of the ABEX overall market liquidity. In Q2, as we talked about earlier, total volume reached 888,902 contracts, up 276% from Q1. To put that in perspective, volume in Q2 alone exceeded our total volume for all of 2025 by more than 450%. Average daily volume reached 14,500 contracts per day, nearly four times the Q1 level, and then ADV increased to 34,136,000 contracts per day in July. Average daily open interest increased from 280 contracts in Q1 up to 641 in Q2, and then again to 1,199 contracts in July. Certainly, open interest does capture positions that remain outstanding rather than simple contracts trading during the session. And commercial firms consistently tell us that sustained open interest is one of the metrics they watched when deciding when to participate more actively in a market. These commercial firms also equate equally focused, are equally focused on market liquidity, which they say the ethics markets clearly are showing growing. July total exchange volume just for the month of July reached 785,129 contracts, more than double the June volume. But markets are cyclical, so we don't expect activity to increase in a straight line every month. July was incredibly strong, but our focus remains on building sustained liquidity and commercial participation over time. Our new physically deliverable silver contract, the first of its kind in the region, only launched on May 22nd, but traded a total of 107,477,000 contracts before the end of Q2. We designed the contract around 4.9 silver, the high-purity silver required for industrial manufacturing. Based on feedback from commercial customers in the region, an initial performance certainly reinforces our conviction in that design, as silver volume alone increased another 80% in July over Q1 volumes. Participation in our gold futures markets also continued to build. Q2 volume reached 630,000 contracts, up 287% from Q1, and July volume increased another 188% from June. As our gold Singapore market has gained traction, we've seen the broader regional market moving in the same direction, with established Asian exchanges renewing their focus on regional gold benchmarks. That renewed focus is opening new opportunities to trade basis and arbitrage across regional gold markets while further validating the market need we identified when we launched GKS. In our global LNG benchmarks, combined Gulf of Mexico and NPA volume reached 121,000 contracts in Q2, up 102% from Q1. In April, trading represented the equivalent of more than 110 full physical LNG cargos, An NPA, our Asia contract, at one point represented more than 40% of the JKM volume. In September, ABEX will be the sole exchange sponsor at the annual GasTech Global Gas Conference in Bangkok, also hosting an LNG Japan Energy Leadership Roundtable with some elite senior LNG market trading firms and NGO and government entities. There are over 50,000 people that annually attend GASDAX, and ABEX will be well represented and play a prominent role again at that conference. TradePort recently highlighted Gulf of Mexico as a new FOB benchmark for the U.S. Gulf Coast, independently reinforcing the market need for a transparent LNG price anchored directly to the point of the U.S. export. And speaking of Tradeport, as of early July, there were over 20 specific commercial firms and over 75 individual traders that had requested access specifically to ABEX markets on the Tradeport Juul platform. These firms include large bank trading desks, European utilities, and merchant energy firms. And also just today, we had another request for go-live access from one of those large European merchant trading firms. It proves the point, again, fully that liquidity begets liquidity and that market-making programs attract commercial firms, which generally pay full rack rate and exchange fees. Our pipeline of new products includes innovative contracts across energy, environmental markets, agriculture, base metals, and precious metals developed around specific risk management needs we hear directly from commercial participants. The investment in our team, our data distribution, execution, clearing, brokerage, trading relationships, and initial liquidity Josh and Dave outline compound with each new contract launch. Each addition to our product suite supports the contracts already trading, while each new product makes the network more useful to participants. Our oldest contracts are only two years old, within the three to five development period we've outlined. Those investments are delivering the market development we expected and de-risking the path to our target of 1 million ADV. We have launched 18 net new contracts in two years, and the network we've built gives the next products more clearing access, distribution, and trading relationships as they come to market. Our commitment to solving hard problems in commodity markets continues to attract new talent to our product development team, And it's Q&Q, too, including professionals from CME and commercial energy firms, expanding both our market expertise and our capacity to translate those needs and turn them into new contracts and markets. Now I'll hand it over to Leah for an update on digital infrastructure. Over to you, Leah.

Thanks, Joe. Everything in a clearinghouse is an identity question. Who authorized this trade? Who holds this collateral? Who's entitled to act right now? Each one is slow and expensive to answer today, and that cost often shows up as collateral sitting item. AVEX started there seven years ago, building ID++ to give people and institutions control over their identity, permissions, and data. Market OS is the application suite on top of it, and every application on that page inherits the same identity layer, which is why each one is stronger and cheaper to build than the last. We also have something most technology, financial technology companies don't, our own regulated exchange and clearinghouse. So we build to specification rather than guessing at what a central counterparty clearing means. We've been working hard building and shipping. This quarter, Verifier shipped new releases in both app stores, and we completed important work on ABX1, which is designed to connect a firm's existing enterprise identity environment to ID++. We work from a simple commercial premise, which is that firms shouldn't have to replace the systems their people already use to adopt ours. Identity should travel to where the work already happens, not the other way around. For the time we have left today, I'm going to focus on our tech work in real-time collateral because it shows most directly how MarketOS improves the economics of trading in ABEX's markets. Now let's walk through this backdrop. Cash margin is a solved problem. A call goes out, the clearing firm collects it, and the clearinghouse can recognize it immediately. Before a clearinghouse can recognize non-cash collateral margin, it needs current evidence of ownership, eligibility, and control. Today, that information sits across fund administrators, custodians, transfer agents, and other third parties, each one operating on a different system and a different timeline. Members compensate by holding more cash. That cash earns a negotiated rate at the FCM, and that's fine as far as it goes, but it isn't the return on the asset the member would rather be holding. The member gives up that difference every day across very large collateral balances because the collateral cannot be recognized fast enough, And that's the cost we're going after. ID++ proves the cryptographic controls behind MarketOS, which connects to the existing systems of records and captures the state changes the clearinghouse needs to see in real time. So rather than each party learning about a change at a different moment, they all see the same event at once, signed, attributable, and independently verifiable. The adage I grew up with in this space was don't trust, verify. Trust isn't something you ask for at the start. It's what you're left with once everyone can verify for themselves. We've been deliberate about what we didn't want to build. Clearing firms are comfortable with their customers' credit. Otherwise, they wouldn't be customers. But we didn't build a credit tool. We built an evidence tool. And real-time evidence is what can allow Clearinghouse to recognize collateral without waiting to be told what's true. The popular version of trying to solve this problem has been to tokenize the asset itself, turn it into a bearer instrument, and move it on to a blockchain. That creates two problems for a risk manager. First, a bearer instrument means whoever holds the keys holds the asset. And most of the largest losses in digital assets this year have been key custody failing, not cryptography failing. When a key goes, so does the asset. Second, the legal question. And this isn't just us saying it. The SEC and the IMF have both flagged the same gap this year, that in many jurisdictions, a token is a claim on the issuer rather than on the asset, which can leave you as an unsecured creditor in a bankruptcy. Both point to the same fix, legal certainty harmonized across jurisdictions. There's been real work done here, and I don't want to dismiss it. It may well get there. We just don't think a clearinghouse should have to wait, and we don't require any of it. We've built MarketOS to work with the existing system of record. so the same infrastructure can support a money market fund share vaulted gold or commodity in transit each has different custody title and settlement mechanics each requires current verifiable evidence of ownership control and status each additional asset class draws on the same infrastructure which is powerful because it then becomes a distribution question and dave mentioned agents plus plus which extends extends that same identity and permission framework to software agents via abex one it has a path into the fuller market os suite so a firm coming to us for collateral efficiency can make progress on agentic automation too we're continuing to develop our market os work into the three commercial applications we isolated as having the most potential and supporting our clearing business money market fund collateral at abex clearing stored commodities and commodities in transit first we're working to establish money market fund shares as T0 collateral at ABEX Clearing. Alta is the appointed fund manager of the Singaporean DCC with a money market fund sub fund, and ABEX Clearing aims to accept those shares in that fund as eligible margin subject to completing the applicable regulatory processes made possible by digital title. Second, stored commodities. We have demonstrated in our previous pilot that vaulted gold can serve as collateral while remaining in existing custody that can reduce the cost and operational complexity of transferring physical inventory and put more of the asset to work we are now validating that structure with bullion banks and commodity lenders with the same approach applicable to other stored commodities third commodities in transit when lenders can't independently verify what they're financing credit titans and financing costs rise Digital Title is designed to give traders and lenders a current, verifiable record of the cargo, including changes in ownership and control. That gives lenders better visibility into the asset they are financing and gives traders stronger evidence to support access to credit. MindHub is our partner in taking that application to market, and we're working towards validation with commodity market participants and ultimately live institutional use. Collateral friction is a key reason firms stay with incumbent venues, and every piece of it we take out improves the economics of moving to ABEX and supports the smarter markets vision Josh described. Across our industry, exchange groups are spending billions of dollars buying their way into technology and infrastructure. And capital can buy a platform, but it can't compress the seven years we've spent solving the identity verification problem to bring market OS to market. MarketOS gives us a capital efficiency advantage in our own markets and a commercial opportunity beyond them. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to the operator so we can start the question and answer.

We will now begin the sell-side question and answer session. For those on the phone, to ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press start and then 2. For those on the webcast, you may submit questions by typing in the submit a questions box on your screen. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from I-Tien Ricard with BMO. Please go ahead.

Okay, thank you and good morning. On the liquidity provider programs, I understand the rationale for the payments and the need to build liquidity. Josh, I heard you say you'll continue to support these programs for at least the next three to four quarters. Now, we've seen similar programs typically last two to three years at other exchanges. So, assuming volume activity continues to build, is this also a reasonable timeline for a trade-back exchange as well? I mean, in other words, how fast and how meaningfully should we see the net revenue capture rate improve from here?

Yeah, so thanks, Etienne, nice to hear from you. So, I'll take it first and then hand it over to Dave. I think one thing that's important when we're comparing us to other venues, while the contract, like I said, from the bottom-up perspective, looking at each contract, we're not going to be any different than other exchanges. I think the one difference you have to remember in our market is that we're building a new clearinghouse at the same time as building individual contracts, right? So, you know, and that's, it's a good thing, because even if we don't, you know, even if that revenue doesn't hit our net capture, our ecosystem is profiting, right? Our clearing members are still collecting their portion of the trade. Our ISVs are still collecting their portion of the trade, you know, inter-dealer brokers and so forth. So the economic activity is increasing in our network. And as you can see, we're not spending anything, you know, additional in our OPEX, in our fixed OPEX, but really just, you know, that we agree, you know, recirculating that revenue. So, yeah, this is a point that I think sometimes gets lost is that we're building our clearinghouse at the same time as the individual products, but, you know, but it is growing and it is working. Dave, do you want to talk a little about the time horizons?

Happy to do that. And then I might flip it to Joe, because at the beginning of your question, you remarked about the length of programs at other exchanges, and I think Joe could have some valuable insights into that piece as well. But really, you know, it really goes back to that three-step chart that we've shown on a couple of quarterly earnings call now of going from new market to critical mass to a mature market. And really, in the beginning, as we said, in a new market period, it's primarily the early movers, the market makers, liquidity providers, and what we've seen, some of the early commercial adopters, the merchant trading shops. And what you expect to see over time is that as the commercials come in, and as Joe said, as they're paying the full rate on the contracts without any liquidity provision payment, that will start to pull up the average revenue per contract across all of the trading. So it's really a question of having those commercial participants come in. You know, as they're generating liquidity through their own trading, it can allow you to pull back a little bit on some of the liquidity provider programs, but they still remain important. So I would say, you know, it's difficult to say, it's as difficult to say when does the RPC go to a certain point as it is to say when does commercial participation hit a certain point. So I think we'll keep doing what we always do, which is look to the step ahead. Right now, we're seeing, as Joe said, much more commercial engagement in a reaction to that initial liquidity we've built. And as those come in, that trading would naturally pull up the RPC numbers, and that's how we will progress. And Joe, do you want to comment on how those programs are used at other exchanges in terms of the length or duration of those programs?

Yes, sure, Dave. I mean, having been involved directly with them at the NIMAX back in the day, if you look simply even on their fee schedule, you'll see programs that have been in existence since I was there in 2003. I launched the Brent Market Making Program in 2003, and it's still in existence. So it depends on how it becomes retooled or adjusted depending on where the needs are. They're absolutely necessary for all markets, even as Dave said, where you have exchanges that have longstanding clearinghouse development and relationships. We're starting from a cold start, and we obviously needed to build liquidity. So I would say two to three years is the normal lifespan. As I said, there are many that have been in existence for many, many years. And, again, you just need to adjust them as the marketplace develops and as you start bringing in commercial farms. I would make an important note that when you look at the other existing exchanges, their mix of market makers versus commercials is always – you can look at their RPC and how their RPC goes up and down over the years. But generally, it doesn't go below 45%, 50% of the market makers. So that just points out how important they are.

Okay, so if I understand correctly, the net revenue for contracts should remain near current levels, probably for next year, and then hopefully it improves from there. Is that fair?

Well, I think we would expect it to be improving over the course of the year as the commercial participation pick up.

Yeah, we might be blending a couple concepts here. So, you know, like on our precious metals in general, again, as the commercial activities come in, like on an individual basis, we don't necessarily need to then start increasing spending to drive to zero, right? So we can, you know, on an individual contract basis, that revenue capture can grow. I'm just saying from a business perspective, we should expect to continue investing, but this is very much cost-to-capital dependent, right? You know, if the market, you know, wants us focused on, you know, break even and cut more investments or reinvestments, absolutely. And that was sort of what my comment was on. We're seeing signs that, you know, that we think that, you know, the precious metals business alone, that the products we've launched and ones in our pipeline, you know, can be in a position to carry, you know, carry the freight of our fixed operating costs in 2028. And that'll be more clear over coming quarters. You know, that's an early assessment of just data we're seeing in our market and conversations we're having. But, again, we don't have to reinvest everything to net to zero, is my point.

So, Josh, on capital allocation, you have about $100 million in cash up to the capital raise. Now, expense growth has increased a little bit this past quarter. In what areas of the business are you seeing the strongest return potential to grow the exchange business? And as a follow-up, how do you think about your ability to reach breakeven levels without the need to raise more capital?

Yep, sure. So first on the cost side, it has jumped in Q2 over Q1, but that's why we're showing the Q4 as well. There's a little bit of volatility in the timing of some of these costs. As we mentioned, we did do a big ramp up of some key executives in the commercial team, but we actually think where Q3 and Q4 are tracking, you're not going to keep seeing those sequential jumps. So I think we are closer to a run rate this year, you know, after our capital raise, after some new expansions. And so we should have a pretty consistent operating cost base through the remainder of the year. Again, unless something changes significantly in our cost of capital. And then, yeah, so as far as the runway, I guess that's back to my comment. You know, look, we're taking this on a sort of a quarter by quarter basis. You know, we're very disciplined with our dilution, and so we will, you know, we will go slower if the cost of capital sort of dictates that. And so there are some levers we can pull here, but we do not see a significant cost increase while we will continue to see, again, that what we believe is that sort of 50 percent, half over half growth in, you know, activity in our markets.

Thank you very much.

And the next question comes from Aravinda Galapathij with Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question. Just following up from there, that was very useful. With respect to, so it's really about sort of the timing of the commercial participants becoming more evident. um maybe just help us sort of with um you know what we should look for as we track that i mean you know is there a recognition i mean you know the the open interest has already increased a little bit i mean there's obviously room to grow more um in terms of your conversations with them what else are they looking for is it more clearing members to sign on maybe just help us with those set of guideposts.

David, do you want to take that one, Joe?

Yep. Sorry, I was on mute. Sorry. As a regulated exchange, we don't obviously put out the specific names of firms that trade our markets. Open interest is certainly a good indicator. And as you mentioned, Arvinda, we have seen a nice growth in our open interest. I think the liquidity is helpful, too. So as I mentioned in my remarks, open interest is a great balancing point, but the actual activity in markets and deep liquidity in markets is equally important. You know, market traders say they like open interest, but they also want to be able to get in and out of contracts. So that's an important guidepost for us and also for the marketplace. I would say that we're lucky now that most trading firms have more than one clearing relationship, and some of the non-bank clearing firms that are already connected to AbEx are seeing a lot of move over from some very significant firms to them for existing for new clearing relationships. So that's helped us quite a bit in the expansion of our markets, particularly in India, where a lot of the trading firms that are coming on board there use some of the existing clearing firms of AbEx. So that's been a big help for us. But I think in general, just the growth and volume is a good guidepost as far as not only how market makers and liquidity providers are joining us, but also as commercial firms are also.

I should also probably note beyond looking for increased commercial, you know, open interest deliveries these types of uh indicators um you know having a tier one bank uh in our clearing house as well um because remember we we don't have retail trading here um so the cold start is really large lot commercials um and so you know even the you know even the increasing credit profile of the clearing house with more clearing members and stronger clearing members uh you know including tier one banks does help the confidence in positions, as well as the physical delivery underwriting. So, yeah, that's the other key one to unlock more open interest and liquidity throughout the year.

Thanks, Josh. And then just moving on to market OS, again, you know, some helpful comments. I just want to make sure I understood a comment you had made earlier, Josh, about sort of the time to deployment. Are you sort of, you know, is that sort of something that will perhaps take a little bit more time than originally expected, or did I sort of not hear that correctly?

Well, so within our own clearing system and our own network, we're still on track. You know, we're still pushing everything. It's more the expansion of the sales and the tech team for more third party. You know, that's where we're kind of remaining a little bit more on hold. You know, we made some internal changes to move some folks over to ABEX Labs and focus on the agentic opportunity, and then we've, you know, very, very much focused the team on the internal collateral use case to support the exchange. Other things we kind of had in the works around Messenger and others, I would say a little bit more on hold, and in fact, we've even had some cost savings. You know, we've always maintained a couple of outsource development, software development shops, because that allows us the flexibility, you know, with, with budgets that, you know, that, that we've kind of monitor on a, you know, quarter over quarter basis. But of course, AI is now doing a lot of the work that we that, you know, people firms used to use with third party, you know, development hours. So I think that efficiency of AI, you know, combined with a little bit more focus on the two, two sectors, we can actually reduce some of our cost spending. But, you know, again, we're also just staying very focused on those two areas, rather than a broader technology expansion.

Sounds good. Thank you. I'll pass the line.

And the next question comes from Martin Toner with ATB Cormark. Please go ahead.

Thanks so much for taking my questions and congrats on results. Sounds like you're pretty encouraged by some of the trading in metals contracts. Can you talk about if some of those contracts are now kind of reaching the point of, you know, quote-unquote liquidity?

Yeah, sure. I could take that. They are. That's a simple answer to that, Martin. Thanks for the question. I think, though, when you compare it against other markets, certainly we have our aspirations to grow even further, particularly in the expansion in the region and the need for these contracts as a Singapore-listed contract. Certainly with the addition of Young Ann as a clearing member and the great start on our silver contract, we're looking to other contracts that firms have been asking us for in the region that can help bring additional liquidity to those markets and also new volume and revenue for us. So, yeah, we're excited about the growth of gold and silver, but we know that, you know, the use of the clearinghouse is important for other markets, too, that we'll look forward to be launching.

Yeah, and just to add on to Joe's piece – oh, sorry, I just wanted to add on quickly. You know, I think in terms of, like, what we're seeing is what commercial participants want to be seeing, right? So, in terms of is it liquid, it's really liquid enough for what? Is it liquid enough for commercial participation? A lot of the feedback we get is, you know, they want to see the volume. They want to see the open interest. They want to see narrower bid-ask spreads. They want to see depth in the order book. And when you look across those markets now, they're able to see those things. And so that's why we're getting the higher level of requests to start going live than we have previously.

That's great. How focused do you think investors should be on the change in open interest across your contracts?

I think it's one of the important mileposts or guidelines for futures exchanges, but it's not the only one. I use the example a lot in discussions with customers where one exchange had several thousand lots of open interest in one of their battery metals contracts, but yet they hadn't traded that contract in months or weeks. And so the argument is, how would a trader get out of that position, even if he had open interest, if there was no liquidity? So I think, as Dave said, with a deep bid-ask spread and daily liquidity, it's obviously equally important to open interest. And so you have to really balance that and bring in firms that will not only hold open interest, but also, again, the liquidity providers that will allow a trading firm to get in and out of their position.

Yeah, one other kind of related, one other related point that I think is actually, you know, very critical to understand about our markets versus others. So, you know, of course, there is, you know, well, essentially almost a duopoly in, you know, in these energy and metal markets out there. And so often firms will block trade open interest against a market, even if there's no real volume. And a lot of that is because these are very specifically PRA, survey, sort of assessment type markets. So this isn't necessarily a central limit order book activity. This is a block trade just because they're utilizing one of the handful of clearinghouses. With our products, so the question could ultimately be, what's the end point? You know, can't they just spend more on liquidity and be more liquid? The end point is you've got to have the contract that is best execution. So if you look at, you know, again, our battery metals contracts in comparison, you know, we believe that that's better execution than a PRA, you know, sort of cash settled index. So our liquidity can naturally drive more trading than somebody that's trading against a PRA. And so, yeah, so while they may have, you know, high open interest, low liquidity, and right now we've got low liquidity, sorry, high liquidity, open interest, we do believe that open interest is an endpoint for us, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that's great. Thanks, Josh. Can you talk a little bit about the pipeline for new products and contracts going forward?

I think for a competitive reason, Martin, we don't – and also from a regulatory perspective, we don't put out the specific pipeline. But as the slide pointed out during the presentation, we have quite a few new contracts in various asset classes that we are looking at that we'll be rolling out here over the next few months. So, you know, just stay tuned to that. You know, we have a lot of requests from clearing firms and trading firms for new markets. I think after the summer here, we'll have a few that will be coming out in various markets. But that's why I did give you probably a good idea of what asset classes we'll be looking at.

That's great. Last one from me. Was the accounting change, you know, your call? or was there something else? And, like, what triggered the change?

Steve, are you still on for this one?

Yeah, I'm here. I'm just coming off mute. Thanks for your question. We work closely with our auditors as part of the quarterly review, and there wasn't a specific trigger. As we go through our review, we will always assist. And the application of IFRS, which is actually quite complicated, And as the understanding evolves and matures, the newness of the program was always going to be assessed. And that was just one of the things that happened during Q2 and reported within Q2.

Yeah, remember, this is sort of, again, an oddity of our market. Remember, almost all of our comps are either U.S. reporting under U.S. GAAP or Chinese. So there's actually not a lot of commodity, you know, IFRS out there. So, you know, and as Steve mentioned, there are some real nuances, particularly given that we, you know, that we invoice, you know, through our clearing members, not directly through the customers. So anyways, it's more complicated than it should be.

That's very helpful. Thanks a lot, guys. That's all from me.

And the next question comes from Paneet Singh with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead. Okay, thanks, guys.

Just going back to the top of the call on the incentives, Josh, you mentioned, you know, how the precious metals contracts could carry you through, and you spoke about maybe pulling back in other areas. I just wanted to understand if I got that, like, what that means. So would you pull back on liquidity programs in relation to newer contracts, or just trying to understand that point?

So again, like, you know, this is the classic battle for, you know, a company that understands sort of, you know, the end point and the scale of the markets that we're building. You know, but, you know, the investing in network growth versus investing in, you know, towards breakeven, that's always going to be a push-pull. You know, it's no different than probably any tech VC company or anyone else that's got a network business. And so we're just taking it day by day, right, or sort of quarter by quarter. What we're seeing, should we hyper-focus on one or two products to break even, or should we be investing at the scale? Of course, my bias, I think, shows out clearly that with a better cost of capital, we should be investing at the scale of our opportunity. And frankly, I think, you know, one of my favorite comments from the critics is, you know, how can this be real with the budget they spend? But look, we are absolutely competing against companies 100 times our size with a much, much smaller budget. So, yeah, I mean, it's really the market's acceptance of those milestones. And, again, we've got a TAM of commodity market development and basis risk, gas to power, power to intelligence that spans, you know, the largest market in the world across Southeast Asia and China. We, you know, we have a massive TAM beyond just the products we've already gone after. So I think, you know, investing more, you know, should be the case. But we're only going to invest, of course, what the market can bear. And so, you know, given the share price decline, you know, we just want to be clear with our investors that we watch this stuff closely and we want to control dilution.

Okay. Thanks, Josh. Joe, you were mentioning Yongan conducted their first trade last week. You know, I did listen to that podcast that the CEO did with Dave there. That was good. I just want to understand, though, you know, given that they have a big client base, when do you actually expect more material volumes to come from them? How does that trajectory look over the coming quarter?

Yeah, that's a great question, Benita, and we're really excited about the young man relationship, and, you know, that creates a lot of FOMO within the country. And, you know, again, the CEO, Dashiell, was very specific about the products that their customers were asking him for and the type of customers that they have. And so for us, we feel that like any large clearing firm, once they open the, you know, the access to our markets for their clients, you know, you can never, you know, We don't have an expectation on specific volumes, but we know from large clearing firms, and these are young and is probably equal to the size of one of the large U.S. banks or international banks, that there's a very good opportunity for them to, you know, to trade with us, to manage their risk, and to grow our volumes. So there's a big partnership with them. We'll be doing events with them, co-marketing events with them. We'll be at GasTech with them. We're really looking forward to the expansion of the relationship, and we do think it will create FOMO within the region, and we'll see further onboarding requests for other FCMs within China.

Okay, so maybe I'll flip it a little bit, Joe, just based on other clients, right? Like, does it take you something like six months before you really see more volumes to come from them, if they have interest and it looks like they do?

I would say it's probably less than that. We don't like to give horizons on volumes and growth. But once a clearing firm does connect and opens up the opportunity for all of their clients, then, you know, theoretically, that could start quite quickly. So we're hoping that that will – you know, it is summertime. We do think that that will start once they've gotten – you know, they did get their first trade in. was in the gold markets and we're excited about that and I think that that you know mostly clearing firms like to put a trade on to make sure that the pipes work and everything works well and then hopefully we'll see a quick ramp up.

Okay thank you and then just last one you know just gold versus silver so your gold contract took about if I'm correct about nine months before it started seeing larger volumes and silver has been you know different it took about a month. Is that because You know, a silver contract is being used by the same clients as your gold contract, i.e. already onboarded – part of it is that, and I would say – yep, sorry, you broke up there.

But part of it is that, you know, there's familiarity with, you know, with the clients that are trading our gold contract. But also, the region had a real pent-up demand. We had met specifically with one of our clearing firms last fall, and, you know, when we were talking about new products, they said, you know, your gold contract's doing great, but you need to look at silver next. And a lot of people were kind of, you know, some folks from London were like, well, maybe you don't, you know, maybe that won't succeed out there. But, you know, we know our clearing firms hear their requests from their customers, and so we kind of listened to them pretty intently as far as where new markets and new opportunities lie, and this was a good one. And, you know, we, again, felt that not only the trading firms, but the clearing firms that we have connected with us were then allowing access to their client base, again, some of those, to your point, that were already connected with us, which caused that ramp up to happen a lot faster. So having launched so many contracts over my years at the exchanges, to look at a contract that starts on May 22nd and is trading as actively as our silver contract is now, is quite, even for me, I'm very impressed by it.

Okay. Thanks, Joe. Those were all my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference over to ABEC's Chief Strategy Officer, David Greeley, to moderate this session.

Thank you, Dave. And thank you, everyone who's been on the call asking questions and staying with us. I know it's we're well past the allotted hour. Not unusual for one of our earnings calls every quarter. We try to make it shorter. But I think the value of the transparency and the interaction with clients is something that we value and are proud of. So I do want to take some of the questions. Thank you to those who have submitted. You can continue to submit them. Many of them, as I scan through, have already been answered. So I'm going to try to take some that are a little different from the questions that have been asked so far. and the first one I'll start I think it's important and then maybe I'll flip it to Josh we had a question on with Joe's promotion what is the status of Nancy just want to say Joe's not going anywhere so we're very proud of Joe and the work he's doing and terrific to have him as president of the exchange he's going to keep on doing what he's doing and really help our you know biz dev team that's growing and scaling hit the ground running just as Joe isn't going anywhere Nancy isn't going anywhere. Nancy remains CEO of ABEX Exchange. So no change in Nancy's role, and we're very appreciative of that. Don't know if you want to add anything on to that, Josh.

No, other than that, you know, we just really have such an amazing team across the board. Of course, you know, the president of product and the CEO of our clearinghouse, Dan McAuliffe, as well. You know, we've got a number of people, you know, that ultimately have tremendous experience. And, yeah, look, I think it's just sometimes we get accused of doing too much, too many things. But I think it's that the focus and the specialization of each one of these leaders. And again, you know, Joe's leadership over the commercial business and representing the exchange around the world as the president is very important. And, of course, a job he's earned as, you know, kind of one of the co-founders since the beginning. So, yeah, I mean, look, we would just – and look, you know, that's going to be emerging in our tech business as well. I think that's the key thing is everyone in our company is very focused. you know, even though we're doing so many things as each quarter shows.

Thanks, Josh. I'm going to come back to you with another question because one of the items in our financials this quarter was the eye-pull investment. And the question is, can this be viewed akin to the relationship history with Mindhub vis-a-vis the strategic context?

Yes, absolutely. Look, again, we had the CEO on one of the podcasts. I'd encourage everyone to listen to that. This is a very, very smart team that really knows the trading desk, you know, really knows the, you know, both the IT and the plumbing systems and, you know, frankly, the, you know, the history of the trading desk. And so it's really a natural place, you know, just like Minehub as really being infrastructure for, you know, physical commodity transit data. You know, this is a team that really knows what's happening, you know, from data, ISVs, messaging systems, and we think is a huge value add, you know, particularly down the road with our data business and with our messaging and AI businesses.

Thanks, Josh. Joe, we've had a number of questions coming in, basically asking if you could shed some light on the status of our Northwest Europe LNG market.

That's a great question, Dave. So we delisted the contract last fall. The reason for that was a change in what they call remit, which is a European-specific reporting requirement specifically for physical power and gas markets. And we had to make some changes internally to allow for that reporting. We have – we're at the very end stage of getting that ready to be added to our product and reporting across all of our products if necessary. So no specific date on the contract yet, but I would just say stay tuned to everybody, and that should be coming out shortly.

Thanks, Joe. I also had a question. I think this could be a good one for Leah. We've had a question saying, is our full digital title, private digital title software custodian agnostic in contrast to, for example, the Canton Network only having one approved custodian? So I think there's also a question related to the ability to work across platforms.

Oh, sorry, not sure if you're on mute, Leah. Well, maybe we'll circle back. Not sure if we have a connection issue.

I have another question in the meantime for you, Joe, and that is, glad you're here. What is the feedback from majors and trading houses around transitioning OTC bilateral cargo hedging onto cleared block trades or screen trade liquidity via the ABEX LNG contracts?

Yeah, it's a great question. And we constantly are interacting with the commercial market on the value of the contract's liquidity and translating that into actual trades, whether it's on block trades or even on central limit order book trades. And I think that, you know, we had great interaction and participation on the two LNG workshops that we had before the summer. And we had 70-something firms in London, 50 firms or 40 firms in Houston. The Gas Tech Conference coming up is another great opportunity for that education. And it really is an education point of explaining firms how our delivery works, you know, how to make sure they're comfortable being able to get in and out of contracts. You know, we're onboarding firms that want to trade. I think the trade board request by some of the trading firms on there is specific to LNG. And so I think, you know, just watch the space. We'll see hopefully some good things coming in the fall here on firms that will be going live and that potentially will want to go to delivery. But it is an education thing, for sure.

Thank you, Joe. With that, I know we're well past the time, so I think it would be good at this point to conclude our question and answer session. I really want to thank everybody for joining the call today and for your interest in building smarter markets with us. A recording of this webcast will be available this afternoon on our Investors Relations website at investors.abex.tech. If you have a question that was not answered, please feel free to send it through to our Investor Relations team. And I'll pass it back over to our call operator to end today's event.

This concludes our question and answer session. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.