Good afternoon, and welcome to the CoinCheck Group First Quarter Fiscal 2027 Conference Call Covering the Quarter Ended June 30, 2026. With us today are Pascal St. Jean, Chief Executive Officer, and Jason Sandberg, Chief Financial Officer. Before Pascal and Jason begin their prepared remarks, we'd like to remind everyone that the discussion today will include several forward-looking statements, including statements about plans, goals, expectations, and aspirations of the company. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance or success, and actual results may and often do differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. These differences may be driven by factors discussed in the company's filings with the SEC, which may be updated from time to time. The company undertakes no obligation to update its forward-looking statements except as may be required by law. Also throughout this conference, call non-IFRS financial measures may be presented or discussed. Reconciliations of these non-IFRS financial measures to their most directly comparable IFRS financial measures appear in today's earnings press release, which is available on the company's Investor Relations website and on the SEC website. And finally, Coincheck Group's functional currency is the Japanese yen. During today's call, for your convenience, figures may be expressed in U.S. dollars using a translation from yen to U.S. dollars. Please see the company's earnings release issued earlier today for detail on how the currency translation was done. I would now like to turn the call over to your first speaker, Pascal St. Jean. You may begin.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter fiscal 2027 earnings call. Last quarter, I laid out an evolution in how we think about the company. From a holding company with a collection of independent businesses to one unified synergistic business serving both retail and institutional clients. In this quarter, I want to show you that this is no longer just a concept, but it's actually happening. The clearest way to see it is through our three-legged stool. Our platform stands on three connected legs. Crypto as a service, which embeds our rails inside trusted partners. Asset management, which seeks to convert customer balances into higher value, institutional great revenue. And custody, the trust layer that underpins the whole thing. Three legs, one stool. And critically, all three are anchored to the same opportunity to fully unlock the Japanese crypto market. Let me take you each in turn. Our first leg is crypto as a service, and this is where our momentum is most visible Our partnership with Mercari remains our first production crypto-as-a-service deployment. Millions of customers can now access digital assets. Fifteen supported cryptocurrencies directly inside a consumer marketplace app they already open every day. It's been running live since June. This is the model working exactly as designed. Trust a partner brings the customers, and we power the flow underneath. Our partnership with KDDI has advanced further. Following their 14.9% equity investment in Coincheck Group, we're now moving forward on mutual customer referrals across both ecosystems, as contemplated in our business alliance agreement with KDDI that was signed in May at the time of the investment agreement. KDDI is one of Japan's largest telecommunications companies, and its AU mobile brand serves an ecosystem of nearly 40 million users, representing one of the most significant consumer on-ramps to digital assets in the country. And we recently added Credit Saison, one of Japan's most established financial institutions, with a customer base of approximately $33 million. And together, we intend to give Saison card members new ways to access crypto through points and loyalty programs, integrated payments, and jointly developed products. Because we don't compete with any of our crypto-as-a-service partners, core businesses, They can easily plug in without handing an advantage to a rival, and every channel we add should ultimately make us more valuable. This is crypto as a service compounding in real time. Our second leg is asset management, where our wins have demonstrated genuine institutional leadership. In Canada, Dynamic Funds, a Scotiabank subsidiary, selected 3iQ as sub-advisor on their dynamic, active, multi-crypto ETF listed on SIBO Canada. This means that a tier one Canadian bank shows our institutional capability to bring crypto to their clients at scale. In Asia, 3IQ has been appointed to manage a portion of Bhutan's Bitcoin treasury. Being entrusted with a sovereign nation's reserves is a significant responsibility and one we take seriously. It is also a clear signal of our credibility, 3IQ brings to the group, the kind of mandate that can open doors globally, from a Canadian bank to a sovereign initiative. These are mandates that establish us as a trusted institutional manager. It's the second leg of our stool. The third leg is custody. And the most important development this quarter is the clarity taking shape in Japan's regulatory and market structure around institutional custody. We think Japan is building one of the clearest institutional custody frameworks in the world for digital assets. Custody of consumer assets already sits within a well-defined regulatory structure. Now, with that said, the regulators are now actively working to raise the bar. Following the JFSA's April 2026 Policy for Strengthening Cybersecurity in Crypto Asset Exchange Services, an FSA Commission study published this quarter is now informing of revisions to the supervisory guidelines. It's deepening the standards for key management, lauded operations, and third-party risk, and aligning them with international frameworks. For institutions, this is exactly the signal they've been waiting for. Custody in Japan is becoming a more regulated, auditable, trust-bank-grade discipline. This plays directly in our strengths. We've operated a licensed, security-first exchange in Japan since 2019. We are built around the segregation and key management standards these guidelines are raising. And we are actively working and seeking to develop the institutional-grade custody capability that lets a Japanese trust banked or qualified institutional investor engage with digital assets with confidence. As the framework crystallizes, custody shifts from a barrier to a bridge, and we intend to be on the right side of it. With crypto as a service driving volume, asset management proving our leadership, and custody clarity arriving in Japan, the platform's third leg is coming into place. Now let me explain why all three legs converge on Japan, and why the position we seek to establish in Japan should be difficult to replicate. Let's start with how things in Japan are today. Japan is one of the world's most important regulated crypto markets. But it's also a cash-heavy economy. Nearly half of households' financial assets, over 1,100 trillion yen, still sit in cash and deposits. Government policy over two decades has been slowly pushing households from savings towards investments. That enormous pull of capital may only now be beginning to move. What's changing now is more regulatory clarity, and we think this is the primary catalyst. Japan is moving from a Payment Service Act to the Financial Instrument and Exchange Act, the FIEA. In plain terms, this repositions crypto from a payment instrument to a financial product. It's aligned with Japan's national agenda of asset formation. Think of it as a three-stage roadmap. Stage one is developing a path for traditional financial institutions to be able to participate through revised rules and guidelines. Stage two opens institutional product channels, spot crypto ETFs, and inclusion and investment trust and fund wrappers. And stage three brings tax treatment closer to other financial assets, which will be significantly more favorable to crypto investors than the current tax rates which apply. Crucially, as lower separate tax rates make it more advantageous to trade, we would expect it to lift the trading activity in volumes across the market. So the question is no longer whether Japan regulates crypto. It is what may open next and when. Here's why we think we win as those doors open. We've held the number one downloaded crypto app in Japan for seven consecutive years. That's not a populatory contest. It's proof that we've cleared Japan's highest barrier to entry, and we've stayed. And we did so in a market where global majors entered and pulled back. We built our base before the doors actually fully opened, so that when household money begins to move into crypto, the home is already there. On the institutional side, appetite is turning as well. In a recent Nomura Affiliate Survey, roughly 79% of Japanese institutions said they plan to invest in digital assets within three years. with diversification, not speculation, as their primary driver. The potential inflow could reach a trillion yen order. Now connect this back to our stools. Over the next 18 months, our plan is to build and strengthen all three legs specifically to capture this unlock we're seeing unfold. Crypto as a service, together with our organic growth, should capture the retail flow as household money moves. Asset management should capture institutional allocations as product channels open. in custody, should capture the trust that lets Japan's regulated institutions participate. One large asset pool, three legs in. That's the deliberate sequence I described last quarter, prove the model, scale what we've proven, then expand beyond our core. And everything I've walked through today is phase one, starting to become visible. It brings me to where we go from here. We came into this year as four businesses. We're leaving this quarter closer to being one diversified platform offering. The integration of Apple and NFT is nearly complete, and that work has moved faster than we expected back when we set the plan in April. This means to us that we need one unified name and brand. And so we're also working this quarter on a new name and brand for our unified platform offering that is coming together, and we expect it to be revealed and rolled out later this calendar year. To close, our three legs are all in place and all pointed at the same goal. Crypto's service is compounding across trusted partners today. Asset management is winning institutional mandates from Canada to Bhutan. And on custody, Japan's regulatory and structural framework is maturing in exactly the direction that favors a licensed, security-first operator like us. Japan's regulatory arc is moving in our favor, and we cleared the initial barrier to entry years ago. I'm confident in the strategy, excited about the opportunity ahead, and committed to delivering value to our shareholders as we build Quention Group into the global platform of choice for digital finance. With that, I'll turn it over to Jason, our CFO, for review of our financial results. Thank you.

Thank you, Pascal. Let me take you through our first quarter fiscal 2027 performance. I will start with some year-over-year comparisons. Total revenue increased 36% to 114.3 billion yen, or 703 million USD in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, up from 84 billion yen or 570 million USD in the first quarter fiscal 2026. Growth was primarily driven by increases in transaction revenue, specifically institutional revenue and revenue from covered counterparty transactions. Adjusted revenue for the first quarter fiscal 2027 increased 19% to 2.92 billion yen or 18 million USD from 2.445 million yen or 15 million USD in the first quarter fiscal 2026. The increase was driven primarily by an increase in staking revenue of 176 million yen, or 1 million USD, and investment management fee revenue of 404 million yen, or 2.5 million USD, both of which related to having a full quarter of the 3iQ-related staking and investment management fee revenue. Our verified accounts increased 12% to 2.63 million accounts as of June 30, 2026, up from 2.35 million accounts as of June 30, 2025, while our customer assets decreased 37% to 631.6 billion yen, or 3.9 billion USD as of June 30, 2026, from 1,000.3 billion yen or 6.152 billion USD as of June 30, 2025. Customer assets decreased primarily to the decline in the market price of certain crypto assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP. Our assets under management were 105.5 billion yen, or 649 million USD, as of June 30th, 2026, compared to zero yen as of June 30th, 2025. This increase reflects the AUM added to our acquisition of 3IQ, which closed effective March 1st, 2026. Our marketplace trading volume decreased 4% to 59.1 billion yen or 363 million USD for the first quarter fiscal 2027, down from 61.5 billion yen or 378 million USD in the first quarter fiscal 2026. Please note that fluctuations in marketplace trading volume are usually driven by crypto asset industry market volumes and conditions generally, and the size and level of trading activity at CoinCheck specifically, as well as market price fluctuations in the crypto assets frequently traded. Our net loss was 1.18 billion yen, or 7.2 million USD, in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, compared to a net loss of 1.37 billion yen, or 8.5 million USD, in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. The improvement in net loss was driven primarily by a decrease in the loss from the change in fair value of the warrant liability and a net tax benefit in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, compared to a tax expense in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, partially offset by an increase in operating loss due primarily to an increase in selling general and administrative expenses. Turning now to adjusted EBITDA, we reported a loss of 516 million yen or 3.2 million USD in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of 398 million yen or 2.4 million USD in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. The increase in this loss related primarily to the increase in our selling general administrative expenses partially offset by an increase in adjusted revenue. Let's now move on to our operating expenses. Our total selling general and administrative expenses increased 4.3 to 4.3 billion yen, or 26.4 million USD in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, compared to 3.6 billion yen, or 22 million USD in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. The majority of this increase relates to a full quarter of 3IQ's operational results versus the prior year. We ended the first quarter of fiscal 2027 with cash and cash equivalents of 16.1 billion yen, or 98.9 million USD. In summary, we remain focused on executing on our three-legged stool strategy, growing crypto-as-a-service partnerships for their retail business, winning new asset management mandates globally, and developing solutions for Japan's evolving regulatory landscape.

Together, these efforts position us well to grow platform assets and capitalize on opportunities in japan and globally with that operator please open the line for q a thank you if you would like to ask a question please press the star and one on your keypad to leave the queue at any time press star two once again that is star and one to ask a question and we'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone a chance to join the queue and we'll take our first question from ed engel with compass point please go ahead Hi.

Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on all these recent partnerships. I guess just given a lot of these recent partnerships have kind of been more focused on the exchange business, I was wondering if there's any active discussions within the asset management business and partnerships in Japan. And I guess within any asset management partnership opportunities in Japan, would that just be related to ETFs, or could there potentially be some trust structure that you could potentially launch with a partner even before NTS. Thanks.

Yes. Thank you, Ed, for the question. So there have been some deals outside Japan signed this quarter that are not publicly announced. We've announced Bhutan as one, and there will be a lot more announcements linked to that in terms of what that roadmap looks like. But there have been some distribution channels signed in Switzerland, as well as increased distribution in Canada and Abu Dhabi. They're just private partnerships, and at this point in time, I'm not being disclosed, but you'll start seeing results from an AUM base across those. So we continue to build out distribution channels well beyond just retail in Japan on the asset management front. Now, to answer your question specifically on Japan itself, the answer is yes, much more beyond just ETFs. As you know, 3iQ coming in is a fully diversified crypto asset manager. ETF capabilities, of course, are one. Our hedge fund platform, our SMA platform, we've just been testing our first few vaults. So we are a fully diversified asset manager with global distribution licenses and capabilities in several jurisdictions. And so nothing public can be announced yet, but conversations are happening with individuals that we feel will be key to trading partners and they will go beyond ETFs.

Great, super helpful. And then just to understand some of these B2B partnerships on the trading side, acknowledge that you're obviously going to be sensitive in terms of the economics for each of these. But overall, are the economics in terms of your take rate on any of these B2B to C volumes? Are they closer to maybe what you're doing today, which is maybe not quite there, but like a 3%, or are they closer to like what Apple is doing, which is just maybe a couple of basis points or somewhere in the middle?

So I'll let Jason, I think it's being more specific, but without disclosing exactly in terms of the deals, the end take rate, so the end customers take rate is between the joint partnerships, is closer to what we make on the retail side. Now, the split between us and our partners are individual deals, not to be disclosed on the call, but overall the economics of the deals for both parties is closer to what we have with retail than it is what we have with, for example, an Apple or what you'd see with a hashtag or someone else that's US-powering underlying flow. So it's closer to the retail take rate, but of course there's a partner involved and so there's shared economics on it.

Great. Thank you for all the time.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Alex Markraff with KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Hey, guys. I appreciate all of the new material on regulatory updates. I guess maybe just looking at the stages of development on page five of the deck that you provided. I'd be curious if you could just sort of pair these stages with your sort of perception or interpretation of model impact. Pascal, I think you talked about trading activity sort of aligning with the tax treatment change, but maybe just speaking to the other two stages, if you could sort of pair that with potential model impact. Not so much in numbers, but just sort of revenue type and composition would be helpful. Thank you.

So first of all, thank you for diving into that deck. We've put a lot of time and effort, And we will be continuing to progress on our sort of education on what's going on in Japan to make sure people understand that it's not nothing's happening until 2028. And it's also not nothing happening right now. There's actually activity quarter over quarter. So the first one that was recently voted was that actually passed in the 2026 value just before the summer in Japan was the official move to the FIE sort of licensing. And so from a model impact, I know we had announced Mercari last year, and there were questions on when are we going to start seeing that partnership get activated? And then last quarter, we announced KDDI. The reality is this license or this final shift was needed for all parties. And essentially what this unlocks, the first phase of the unlock, is basically the introducing broker type of agreement where we can act as that underlying infrastructure, which is what we call crypto asset service. So this is now unlocked. And so what this means is these partnerships can be established, users can be referred, APIs can be integrated, custody, KYC, trading activities, all of that. So now, of course, we could talk about volumes globally. Volumes globally are lower as we speak in the last quarter. So that will, of course, impact short-term models. But in terms of user growth, we're seeing positive impact from these partnerships that we wanted to see. then our job is, of course, is work with those partners to educate them on these new features, these new trading capabilities, et cetera. But that is live today, and we expect to see positive impact from that in, of course, the coming quarters because it is live. In terms of the next bigger unlock, it's the institutional unlock on the asset management side. This will not be for another year, which means that at that point in time, but you can imagine that vendor selection, partnership creations, agreement signing, all of that is being done as we speak, which is why we're spending, of course, a lot of time in Japan as the Coinship Group Management Team, as well as with our local team on Boots in the Ground. Nothing that can be publicly announced just yet, but there's a lot of conversations and planning for that because to launch these products, to get operations ready, to do all that in time for a year from now when these trust structures become ready, work's happening on a weekly basis with partners that we've come together with that will be announced. That, from a modeling perspective, won't get unlocked until those product launch, which is going to be towards the end of 2027, which would be earlier. But we are just positioning ourselves to be at least in line, if not ahead of what's in line. So we're building ahead of the unlock so that when the unlock happens, we're the leaders. And then finally, on the tax reform, it doesn't mean that there's no trading happening today. It just means that as a tax reform of crypto changes, we would expect that the trading culture that we see with Forex and U.S. equities and others in Japan, you know, make their way to digital assets as well, just because the tax treatment will be better. That will also lead to the opening of other products that can be pushed through our crypto as a service channels without disclosing which ones it will be much more than just spot crypto. And so think of it as today as partners are live, accounts are being opened, education is being done as we speak. Next phase is preparing the institutional unlock to get ready for next summer. You'll start seeing the impact of that at the end of next year.

And then the ultimate unlock, which is complete regulatory reform, tax reform, and additional products that could be pushed through our retail channels beyond Spot Crypto. got it that's um that's helpful detail and it's great to see the the proactive approach and being ready when the time comes um helpful maybe one more just on on um on sales and marketing spend and account growth i'm just sort of curious as you and maybe this applies more to the the sort of retail side of things but as we think about the the sort of sequence of events here and the unlocks to come. Is there a desire or any opportunity to sort of lean into account growth? I'm just sort of curious what the posture is there on spend. And then, Jason, just kind of from a disclosure standpoint, remind me on some of these partnerships, Mercari, et cetera. Are those captured in verified accounts or are those counted separately? Thanks.

Yeah, I can start. Those are captured in verified accounts, so you'll see those in our verified account numbers and the KPIs we released. And from an overall, you know, spend perspective, I'll let Pascal, you know, answer as well. But, you know, we've been pretty disciplined on the, you know, customer acquisition, you know, per account side. You know, I think we're continuing to think through that, you know, methodically and trying to stay disciplined as well. The new distribution partners we're targeting is allowing us to be, you know, pretty efficient economically as well. So, you know, Yeah.

So, a high level, if we think about the access of crypto in Japan, is still primarily linked to crypto exchanges. That's what we're seeing in North America, right, with Robinhood entering crypto aggressively, you know, even testing out different tokenized, you know, sort of assets and launching their L2. And then on the flip side, Coinbase, you know, calling themselves now the Everything Exchange. So, they're trying to bridge the gap to provide more services to their users. Japan as a whole is still, call it the old model, where if you're going to get your equities, you're going to go open a brokerage account. And if you want your crypto, you're going to open an exchange account. Those worlds will collide over time as these new regulations come into place. And so for us right now, our marketing on the Coincheck Inc. retail app is more focused for the OG retail experience for crypto. And so we continue to see organic growth. Our digital marketing team has been consistently excellent at driving growth, organic growth through digital marketing forms. The brand is very strong and we plan to continue to invest responsibly to grow that user base because it is a different user base than what we're seeing with our distribution partner. So a user that's coming from Macari or KDDI or Credit Saison is a different user than what we are doing organically. So we're making sure that no one's stepping on each other's toes. And so, yes, we will continue to invest in that because we want to cater to those diverse user groups. Now, what products and services get offered to each of those channels will be based on our user segmentation and user surveys. But in terms of what we are building to offer those users, it is a unified platform of additional trading tools and capabilities, as well as asset management products and services over time that will be enabled as regulation continues to evolve. And so today that's not possible, but we've already invested time, the tech, and the resources to get ready for that. So just think about different channels, not stepping on each other's toes, and then, you know, pushing proper products in those channels to meet those users' needs. But yes, Coinchecking continues to grow organically. Hopefully that answers your question.

Yeah, okay, great. I appreciate the thoughtful responses.

Thank you. And as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, it is the star and one on your touchtone telephone. Our next question comes from Devin Ryan with Citizens Bank. Please go ahead.

It's Neil on for Devin. So similar to Alex, I found some of the new regulatory roadmap materials very useful. One data point I found particularly interesting was that Japanese households still hold roughly 48.5% of their financial assets in cash. historically that allocation has remained pretty stable and has only come down incrementally kind of over the past two decades and more recently we've obviously seen some greater adoption in equities as you think about the evolution what kind of gives you confidence that crypto can become a meaningful beneficiary of that next wave of asset allocation and what do you see as kind of the key catalyst that ultimately moves crypto into the mainstream investment for japanese households absolutely so so from that perspective that slide is bang on it is it is the the opportunity at hand

uh compared to other jurisdictions outside of crypto uh and what and what you've seen as policymakers and government you know have you have you seen from from the deck are are purposefully creating new rules and regulations and education and encouragement and one of their big successful accounts was the NISA account, which is an investment savings account, very similar to your Roth IRAs or your TFSAs in Canada. So that's seen a lot of success and has created to a lot more of the younger generation opening accounts. Now, again, to be clear from our perspective, think of us as a unified digital platform. So today, our primary offering is crypto spot volume. You will hear more in terms of what's coming into the pipeline in the coming quarters. We will be offering much more than just that. And so for us, as our brand, as the younger generation are looking for a digital-first native experience and digital-first native products, now whether that's spot crypto, whether that's tokenized products, whether that is on-chain derivatives or access to DeFi, these are things that are not currently available based on current regulation, but the roadmap points to that direction. And so we are, you know, hoping to leapfrog, you know, legacy technology to new on-rail technology to capture that change in behavior. And so as, you know, basically the policies and, you know, continue to be pushed by, you know, the regulators and government to encourage more investment, as the younger population get more educated and comfortable with direct investing and crypto as a whole and a digital first experience, we feel that we're super well positioned not only because of the app we have, but also the channels that we have to give that experience to the emerging users in Japan. So this is not a one quarter solution, but it is a longer term tailwind that as that ships over time, we want to be right there to capture that. In terms of how long or how fast That is, you know, that's the trillion-dollar question or trillion-yen question to your point. But we're confident and have been seeing movements because of policy change and a push by government to move from cash to investing.

And then maybe one more question just on the credits based on partnership. Obviously, this gives you access to one of Japan's largest consumer financial ecosystems with roughly like 33 million members. As you think about executing on the opportunity, should we view the rollout as occurring in waves with certain products or use cases launching first? And is there any timeline you can share around how investors should think about the rollout over the next few quarters?

Yes. So, yes. So, thank you. So one thing, again, that may not be clear in the depth that we want to continue educating is, you know, we're all comfortable globally with credit card points or loyalty points in general. But in Japan, it is on another scale. And so what can be done is those points can be utilized for more than just redeeming for an airplane ticket or redeeming for a gift card. You can do much more. And so companies are competing to not only offer more points to their users for loyalty, but also better experiences of what you can do with those points. And so what we've actually done with Credits and what we're doing with other partners is the rollout of using your points to be able to invest. So it's not just about getting crypto rewards, it's actually being able to use your loyalty points to, you know, invest and trade in crypto. And so we power the flow in the back end. And so there are two legs into our crypto as a service sort of offerings. One is, of course, the cash inflow. So a user will fund their accounts in cash and trade for crypto. But the other side is the point avenue. And that's what the first unlock with Credit Saison has been is through the points. Mercari has been through cash trading. So they're all coming in from a different vector. But over time, the desire of these partnerships is to grow what we can do with them. But everyone has to start with one first product. And so, yes, Credit Saison was on the points trading capability.

Thanks for taking the question, guys.

Thank you. And at this time, we have no further questions in queue. We'd like to thank everybody for joining today's conference call. This does conclude the call. and we appreciate your participation, and you may now disconnect.