Horizon Kinetics Holding Corp Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call

Good afternoon, everyone. Apologies for the delay on the struggle. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Mark Herndon, Chief Financial Officer of Verizon Kinetics. We're pleased to have you joining us today for a call that will cover the results of our first quarter of 2026. Today's discussion of our first quarter will include comments from Stephen Bregman and Peter Doyle, Verizon Kinetics' Co-Chief Executive Officers. I will also be available to answer applicable questions and will moderate the questions. So first, a reminder that today's presentation may include forward-looking statements. Reliance on forward-looking statements involves certain risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, uncertainty about the future security evaluations or our performance. During the course of today's call, words such as expect, anticipate, believe, and intend may be used in our discussion of our goals or events in the future. Management cannot provide any assurance that future results will be as described in our forward-looking statements. Furthermore, the statements made on this call apply only as of today. The information on this call should not be construed to be a recommendation to purchase or sell any particular security or investment fund. The opinions referenced on this call today are not intended to be a forecast of future events or a guarantee of future results. It should not be assumed that any of the security transactions referenced today have been or will prove to be profitable or that future investment decisions will be profitable or will equal or exceed the past performance of the investments. We encourage you to read our filings with the SEC on our Form 10-K, as well as our other quarterly filings, which describe the risks and uncertainties associated with the managing of business. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements made today. These filings can also be found at the OTC Markets website, and our press releases or other information is at our corporate website at www.hkholdingco.com. If you would like to ask a question, you will need to be logged into the GoToMeeting platform. Those of you on the telephone connection will be in listen-only mode. Again, for those of you that are on the GoToMeeting platform, you can submit the question via the chat function. Please direct those questions to the presenters, where I will summarize and relay as best I can so that we can address as many questions as possible. To begin, of course, we want to first acknowledge the recent tragic and unexpected passing of Murray Stahl. And for that, I will turn it over to his long-term friend, Peter Doerr.

Thank you, Mark. Good afternoon to everyone. As Mark pointed out, six weeks ago today, almost to the minute, Murray passed away. So I think in previous calls that we've had in other related businesses, we've been accused of maybe doing too much or too little but I think it would be a mistake if we didn't acknowledge his impact so for two-thirds of my life or 41 years Murray stood as a guiding light he was generous with his time and his vast intellect he was dedicated to sharing wisdom that truly mattered Murray didn't just teach he equipped me Steve and the entire Horizon Kinetics family with mental toolkits for navigating not just investments, but life's complexities. He had a unique ability of distilling centuries worth of knowledge into practical, timeless wisdom. Murray showed us that real success comes from consistency, systems, and intellectual humility. In our new roles as co-CEOs, Steve and I are responsible for shaping Harrodin Kinetic Strategy and to ensure that the operational aspects of the business support that strategy. investors will be happy to hear Steve and I have found very little to change thus far our unique value oriented eclectic investment style will live on and the non-traditional opportunities that we have always presented to investors will continue unabated Steve and I have known each other for 41 years as well I believe that Murray Steve and I self-selected over our willingness to think long term that view is embedded throughout our company 80 or so employees. There is a new level of enthusiasm among our staff to maintain and to build on an organization that would make Murray proud. I would like to thank our clients and shareholders for their heartfelt condolences and empathy over Murray's passing. At the time of Murray's passing, he was probably the most optimistic I have ever seen him as it pertains to our underlying investments and business. Steve and I share that enthusiasm, and we possess the discipline, fortitude, and patience to let our investments flourish. In closing, I would also like to thank Steve for taking on the added responsibility of being chairman of the board. Steve? Just like that? Just like that.

Thank you, Peter. I was warned to lean forward toward the mic because I have a habit of leaning back in my chair and coming away from the microphone. mine are I don't have any prepared remarks so what I'll say is not as well structured as might be it's more impressionistic because we've been kind of busy but I'll call it constructively busy happily busy yeah in terms of our association with Murray not only has it been 40 odd years but we first each of us in our turn began working with him at Bankers Trust Company in the most formative period of our investment careers we weren't yet officers and And I already ran what was called the Growth Fund at Bankers Trust. And like mind, like philosophy, like inclinations, we found ourselves working together with them more and more, even though we had to cross official corporate lanes to do so. And it wasn't always approved of. And yet we even then came up with productive investment products for the bank, sometimes against their initial will. Interestingly, I'm going to talk a little bit about our personal history because I presume that that qualitative aspect is important to many investors in HKHC because the numbers, at least on a snapshot basis, are what the numbers are. Anybody can evaluate those. You've got so much in assets and their management. You've got so much in cash and the balance sheet. But contextually, that doesn't say much. I will say that none of us, including Tom Ewing and John Meditz, the original founding principals, really have had any fights in the last 40 years. There are no serious disagreements, which is kind of remarkable, I suppose. Well, with one exception last week, if I might share this, Peter, over a selection of furniture for our new offices, which I might mention a little further. Not the fight, but the offices were changing. And I describe it to this. None of us wants anything that's not ours. We're, just by luck of the draw, we're honest people. And on an intellectual basis, if one of us, let's just take Murray for the moment, he tried to say, I think this thing is a good idea. It could be a stock investment. It could be a different kind of idea. And if we weren't quite convinced that his attitude was, and it happened in reverse as well, well, maybe I didn't explain it well enough. Let me try again. And he might have some success, and on occasion not. And then he'd think, well, maybe I need to rethink this and try again next week. And he would, and he might convince us, sir, if not. And if not, the attitude would be, well, maybe it's just not that good an idea.

And so that's the way we've always done things.

So in terms of our, if I say something about our most general kind of sense about our position as a business, we've got, we're in the strongest position on a number of fronts we've ever been in. So in terms of our foundation, so balance sheets, we have liquid balance sheets. We have no debt, and on that front, that idea of accumulating earnings on the balance sheet, not passing it out, as is more or less the rule for partnerships of all sorts, whether it's a law partnership or a medical partnership, investment partnership, is that they don't really have staying power in the organization. And we wanted to have that for a variety of strategic reasons, at least of which we were in a very cyclical business, and we wanted to be able to withstand any pressures from cyclical downturns and not be forced into making investment decisions or business decisions that we wouldn't otherwise want to make. So the idea of establishing that kind of staying power and strategic flexibility, that actually started before we even opened our doors in 1994. That was our intent, that should we ever actually be fortunate enough to actually have enough clients and assets under management to actually have a business that could reach some critical mass, that once we got that far, we would endeavor to make sure we could build that position up. So I don't think anybody needs to have any concerns on that front. With respect to the merger in 2024 with Scotts Liquid Gold that Murray led us to work and to bring us public. We now have an external board that, you know, fashion we didn't have before that also provides us with regular advice, and they have expertise in various ways that we don't have in experience. And they're really quite qualified, and they've been supportive, and we've learned we can count on them as a resource. And I'm not afraid to say we can, at least I can, use all the help we can get. I don't consider that a negative. And, in fact, we have it. So we have it in the board. We have it in our employees. Everyone here pretty much has raised their hand to help out and do what they can. And those who haven't raised their hands have just done it. It's been really quite remarkable from my point of view, and all the employees are actually passionate about it, which actually took me about how much so.

So that's an asset for us.

So one of the things we've been doing is we've both been in a strange way at the same time dividing responsibilities and also joining them. So, on the one hand, we now have a division of labor and attention, a chairman, myself, I guess, of the HKHC board. We now have a board seat on Texas Pacific Land Corps, which is now Peter Doyle. We now have a board seat replacement at Minneapolis. Excuse me. Let's just see where my head is. at Miami International Holdings, which is Eric Seitz, Eric Seitz. Behind the scenes, at least from the perspective of an HKHC shareholder, but wouldn't have known otherwise, he's been working quietly, aside from writing research reports, working with Marty for years on the ground in, let's call it, other strategic relationships. So he's been talking and working with MIAC for a decade, and they were very, very pleased to invite him along. They already know him. So that's a form of division, but in terms of joining, we now have co-chairs of the investment committee meeting. that's kind of important to us because investment research, investment ideas, seeing the world in the right way is what the engine of everything here. We have co-CEOs. We have all sorts of teams from within that are on the job. So that is, as far as everything is working the way it should. As far as our portfolios, our investment positioning, separate from the balance sheet, but our actual business of investing, we are stronger than we've ever been before. And our best to talk about that. So, when Peter says Murray was more optimistic than he's almost ever seen him in recent months, the past year or so, one can see why. If you're in our, if you're working with us on a day-to-day basis, you'd see why. Because we are now replete both in account portfolios and on our own balance sheet and in our relationships outside of our four walls, we're replete with strategic investments as opposed to the traditional plain old investments. Now, plain old investments can be wonderful things. Traditionally for ourselves, you go back, let's say, a decade or two ago. What was our job? Our job is to look for but wait for, in a passive kind of way, value or opportunities. An example might be, you know, a certain portion of the market that was suddenly disrupted and it's down and we like the quality and it's cheap and it'll be a great investment and then you buy it and then you wait. But as opposed to waiting for value, let's say we've now graduated through Murray's direction and efforts and approach to being part of helping create value, and that's a very different place to be. So in terms of our portfolio positioning, we now have more representative of our portfolios than not. They're filled with what I'll call strategic investments, and in a way that couldn't have happened, say, 10 or 20 years ago. So, for instance, we – how rare is it? What is a strategic investment? A really superior investment. I'm going to – this might be too narrow. I think it is too narrow. It's too narrow for this call, but I'm going to do it anyway because I think it might be illustrative. So, we own a particular recovering utility company, And it's a really superior, I think, value investment, classic value investment that should provide a very nice return over the next several years. It's too cheap for what it is. The risk is very low. One can afford, therefore, to put more capital at risk and make it a large position. And it will have, if things work out as the way I would expect, a very nice impact on the portfolio over several years. But several years from now, it won't be a recovering utility that is far too cheap. It will become a regular utility. And at that point, the then-future expected returns are going to be fairly innocuous, and it will be time to find a better place to allocate that capital. We'll take our capital gains and go forward. But what if one can find a business that, to learn the best ability to assess, should compound financially, not talking about the stock price, but financially, without disruption from regulation or competition or cyclicality or balance sheet issues, should be able to compound financially for decades, that something can actually grow on a financial basis. 12, 15% a year for decades is a very, very powerful thing. And very, very few people, exceedingly few to the point of being vanishingly small, investors, whether retail or institutional, ever hold anything long enough to have that happen. But it's also exceedingly difficult to find, because how many businesses are that well protected? Well, our portfolios, depending on the strategy, of course, are now represented by that kind of security. It could be people who are familiar with our portfolios understand what they are. a royalty company, like the Meadows Royalty Company, or Texas Pacific Land Corp, which is oil and natural gas, and more recently, plus water, and perhaps additional attributes. There's hardly any cost to a pure royalty company. It doesn't have to have much in the way of employees. It might have 90% pre-tax profit margins. You could have a $60 billion market cap royalty company that might have a couple of dozen employees. It's extraordinary. They're not found in indexes. They're not conventional business models. But they're strategic assets because you can compound them for a long time. And securities exchanges in their ways are like that, too. These are the longest-lived businesses as a group in the world. They go back hundreds of years. We're just a necessary and additive vector in any developed economy. So the thing is, we couldn't even have had that 20 years ago because the royalty companies, there were hardly any royalty companies public 20 years ago. There were hardly any securities exchanges public 20 years ago. For people who might have forgotten, the Eric Stock Exchange had to demutralize. London Stock Exchange had to demutualize, and so forth and so on. So we have those in our portfolios, and as Peter joked to me once, but it wasn't all that improbable, portfolios like that could probably be left alone a few years, and they'll do just fine, right? But there's a different character of strategic investment we have now, which is businesses like that, perhaps, in which we have a direct engagement, like Texas Pacific Bank, or like Miami International Holdings, like Landbridge, perhaps. And because now we're engaged with those parties, and when you're engaged strategically with somebody else like that, you learn more than you might otherwise. You make different connections and different relationships. And you're now in the flow of not only new ideas, but helping to develop them, new vectors of engagement. And one can actually assist them in their development. If anybody asks, we are not activist investors. It's not in our bones. We don't even think it's, well, for us at least, you have to stay within your circle of competence. We're just investors with a long-term point of view. We'd like to find others who share that. And in a sense, we've now arrived at a level that strategically Murray had always been after, which is that we're in a place now where we can look even further around corners before things happen and be part of that, before things happen in the public sphere, right? So we've got those as well. and there's no shortage of interesting and new developments here. We're actually quite busy processing them and thinking about how to make use of them for our clients. And it's been very engaging. And I will say that one of Peter's comments about Murray helping shape his outlook and philosophy and views of things, apparently it was, you get a group of people who worked with Murray closely for any period of time, including people outside of Horizon, they all say kind of the same thing. He gave them a different outlook on something in particular, and that's useful. and for me, I think Peter also one of them was he engaged me in, I mentioned to him once I thought a weakness in my own personal education was history because I tuned out in history class you know what the textbooks are like and they're about facts and figures and tests and there's hardly any context there, it's boring as all get out to many students and he said well he was subtle about it and kind He says, well, like, I told him I thought I had certain big gaps, which were troubling me. He said, well, like, what interests you? What do you like? And he's like, you like war? You like spies? And I said, yeah, spies. Yeah, that'd be pretty good. And so he suggested to me a couple of books to start off with, which were, like, bite-sized autobiography or memoir. And one was called Take Nine Spies, and that was the first one, by a fellow who had himself been a spy for the British, and ultimately a Member of Parliament. And each chapter was about a famous spy, a double agent, triple agent, and there's not normally much information about them because their job was not to be known. But some of those stories in there of someone being questioned by the Russian secret police and they're suspected of being a triple agent and listening to an account of that interview, reading an account of that interview, it was so hair-raising. It was so exciting in a scary way. There's not a single Tom Cruise movie that comes even close. What he did was he turned me on to the idea that learning at a granular level aspects of history, politics, war, whatever subject you want, you can find through memoir. So you want to learn about how people cheat and steal and get away with stuff? I can think offhand of two books that I read that he suggested to me. Two different eras, and now I'm thinking of a third and a fourth. But one was, remember the movie Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale, Jr.? Well, it was a book first, and the book was way more exciting than the movie, and the movie didn't do him justice, not by a long shot. And then P.T. Barnes himself wrote a book called Humbugs of the World, which is every which way people cheat and deceive. And Frank Abagnale wrote another book actually also called, I think it was called, let's steal this book. But basically, it was also a similar book, Ways You Can Protect Yourself from Guys Like Him. So he kind of opened the world to me. And once I was started, you know, like you can give a guy a fish if he's hungry, or you can teach him how to fish. That's what Murray did with one person after the other. Anyway, enough of that. I wanted to give you a little bit of a feel for us if it's helpful. And go back to Mr. Herndon, who's much more structured than I am.

Andrew, maybe a little more boring. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you, Peter. As we do turn to the results of our first quarter, I can say again that the company continues to perform favorably for the HKHC shareholders. For the first quarter of 2026, the company reported GAAP revenues of $18.3 million, and the company resulted in $72.5 million, or $3.89 per share of net income attributable to the HKHC shareholders. The company's AUM was $11.4 billion as of March 31st, which is up from $9.6 billion at December 31st, 2025. Those results were driven by a couple key and positive developments, including the following. One, the company recorded performance incentive fees of another $18 million, which are in addition to the GAAP revenues of 18.3. So as we've discussed previously, these incentive fees are part of the determination of the allocation of total net income to net income attributable to favorable non-controlling interest on our primary gap presentation. That's a mouthful, and we try to simplify that presentation a bit for you with our supplemental advisor-only presentation, which you can find in the press release. That document shows these fees as part of management and advisory fee revenue. These incentives were the result of certain trading restrictions expiring that were associated with our clients' investments in Miami International Holdings, or MIACs. Second, shareholders benefited in a variety of ways this quarter from TPL's 65% share price appreciation during the first quarter. Most directly is the $36 million increase in the fair value of the shares held directly by HKHC, which is presented as unrealized gains on investments net in both our GAAP and our advisor-only presentation. TPL's impact was also a notable contributor to the extent it was held within the private funds where HKAC has an interest, which is presented as approximately $46 million of equity and earnings of private funds net in the advisor-only presentation over the press release. And, of course, to the extent that our mutual fund, ETFs, or client accounts hold that entity, the positive impact at AUM provides a higher base of management and fee revenue. I should also note for you that the company's operating expenses for the quarter were $22.6 million. However, that value included incremental commissions and bonuses and other costs of $6.1 million associated with that $18 million incentive fee earned during the quarter. So as a result, when comparing to the first quarter of 2026 to the first quarter of 2025, total operating expenses were slightly lower on a comparable basis. These results led us to a GAAP operating loss of $4.3 million for the quarter. But again, that includes the $6.1 million of incremental expenses that are related solely to that $18 million of incentives that are excluded from the revenue in our GAAP presentation. Our supplemental advisor-only presentation includes both of those financial impacts, and the resulting operating income is $17.1 million. We believe these results illustrate the consistent earnings potential of our core asset management business. Now, so once again, it's not that our gap, net income, or loss will often be impacted by swings in unrealized gains or losses associated with certain investments, including digital assets. And as we also expect that from time to time, our results will be impacted by incentive fees, like we've seen this quarter, or more typically in the fourth quarter, which is when we typically measure any performance fee associated with our private funds. As an example, the company reported a record number of over $50 million of incentive fees in the fourth quarter of 2024. And while we can't expect that kind of result every year, we will expect to see some volatility from quarter to quarter and year to year due to incentives and unrealized gains in our overall results. From a balance sheet perspective, the company continues to maintain a substantial amount of cash, $36.7 million at quarter end. The company also has investment portfolio of $113 million, digital assets of $10 million, and approximately $200 million of interest in various private funds, which are consolidated. The company also has various other private investments. And the company continues to have no third-party debt. Our long-term liabilities are limited to various long-term office space leases. You will notice an increase in our overall operating lease liability next quarter as we expect to commence the use of a couple locations where we have recently signed long-term leases. We'll discuss that impact a bit more next quarter. And lastly, with respect to the quarterly dividend, the Board of Directors declared a 12.7 cents per share dividend to be paid on June 17, 2026 to shareholders of record as of May 27, 2026. That brings our trailing 12-month dividend declarations to about, not to exactly, 42.4 cents per share. And with that, I'm going to turn it back to Peter and Steve for some Q&A. We can discuss any questions that are coming in over the webcast. And I'd like to repeat to you that if you would like to ask a question, you do need to be logged into the GoToMeeting platform. Those of you that are on a telephone connection are still in listen-only mode. And again, for those of you that are on the platform, you can submit the questions via the chat function and please direct those questions to the presenters where I will summarize and relay to Steve and Peter, and we can address whatever questions you may have. So we do have a question, Tony. You mentioned earlier the roles of investment officer, and that cuts across a lot of different aspects of the firm. The question is specific to mutual funds and ETS. This one is specific to the REN fund, about how investment decisions are made at the REN fund.

So very similar to all our managed accounts, we have a research group and the assessment of the risk-reward, as Steve pointed out, in the case of the utility, that has a high margin of safety and the probability of an erosion of capital on a permanent basis is, in our opinion, very low. The upside is very substantial, but it's not a strategic asset, as Steve also pointed out. And then it's just a question of sizing. And both Steve and I differ somewhat with Murray in the sense that we tend to want our portfolios to undiversify a little bit faster. Murray would take many times smaller initial positions, even though he might have had strong convictions. Steve and I tend to size them a little bit, at least initially, larger. And then we all have the same kind of long-term time horizon to leave it alone. So those investments are going to be selected within the Red Fund the same way they're selected in the Kinetics Mutual Fund, the same way in our managed accounts. So there's a process and there's a determination of how much capital we would like to risk and what is the benefit of that security in terms of the type of diversification it might bring to the portfolio. Do you have anything to add?

Albeit, not to misunderstand, we do very much believe and have written about in the past the concept of time diversification when you start an investment. But Murray was quite happy. It might be a slight exaggeration, but sometimes not, to buy a couple of shares a day of a certain security, but every single day. And what he was after was the harmonic mean, because the moment you decide finally to buy something, maybe you bought it two or three weeks or four weeks or a month later than you thought you would because you kept carrying certain documents around with you in your briefcase until you finally evaluated them. And because of that, the stock price was quite a bit higher, and you buy it on that particular day, that's when you commit your capital, it can pretty strongly impact your annualized return over the coming years relative to the lower starting point, and that's just an accident of time. So, we believe in time diversification, and quite recently, as I was reviewing an account that Murray used to manage, and I was looking at the history of the tax lots of some large investments comparing it with one that I managed even mine going back to ownership of some core positions 10 years ago 12 years ago like TPL and you can protect precious metals I saw that even then I could take six months to a year to establish the position, just like I did it in larger bites than Murray did. And wouldn't you know it, give or take, depending which security I looked at, the last purchase price might have been lower than the first purchase price. So, we do practice that. But, I don't know, Peter and I don't quite have the temperament to buy a couple of shares a day, usual.

Okay. Next question is related to a company called Urbana Corporation, and I think we've made in past presentations references to Urbana. So the question is really just expand on that relationship and how that entity interacts with Horizon.

Sure. Urbana is run by the Caldwell family. And the Caldwell family and Horizon Kinetics are probably the two leading firms focused on exchanges. And I think we're very unique in that. They've been based in Canada, us here in the United States, and the security itself is tremendously undervalued, something that we've added to over the many years, and you get a portfolio of private investments for essentially free and it trades at that discount. So we did a collaboration where we have our product together, and we jointly market that product, and we're getting our shareholders access to companies that they would not like get because many of these are going to be private exchanges private clearing houses etc and if you've been a long-term follower of us you know that you know between the Minneapolis Great Exchange the Bermuda Stock Exchange merging into the my X and how well that's done we think that the that product will have similar success over over an extended period of time that right there is an example one example of the kind of strategic relationships we have, right, where working familiarity

with someone else in a given sector allows us to do things we wouldn't otherwise have done, and they're very productive relationships.

Okay, I don't have any other questions in the queue, so I'll emphasize to anyone on the webcast, if you do have a question, please go ahead and submit that to us now via the chat function, and of course, as I say that, another one comes in, so let's give me just one second here, that's it, not a question, just a comment, of course, is there a comment you can read, or is it shared, but you can score it again, just a thank you, okay, well, it's appreciated, so that, I don't have any other questions that are pre-prepared, if you guys want to say anything in closing, yeah, so I'm going to, I think Steve and I

I are going to adopt the Warren Buffett method, criticized in general, praised in specific. And I could select one of 20, 30 different employees, maybe as many as 80 employees and say really nice things. But I would like to, you know, just give a shout out to Mark and all your help in helping Steve and I get up to speed. Alan Williams also on the operational side and Jay Kesslin and Russ on the legal slash compliance side. I think it's been of great value to us. And, again, I could say many, many more employees. I hate to kind of do that because I feel like I'm cutting off people. But, again, the staff has been very enthusiastic, very helpful, and Steve and I have been doing a lot. But I also realize that the train is on the right track. There's a proverb, a Japanese proverb, if you're on the wrong train, get off at the next stop. We're on the right train, and it's going down the track in a nice fashion. Oh, you've sparked so many thoughts.

Yeah, so, indeed, all of our employees pretty much, they've been force multipliers for us. We've got a lot to reorganize processes and wrap our heads around, and they've allowed us to do that by organizing things for us and keeping us on track. There's another expression, Peter, but that doesn't really apply so much. Churchill said, if you're going through hell, keep going. And we're keeping going. We're doing fine.

Okay, that concludes our call. Thank you again for joining us, and I look forward to talking again next quarter. Thank you all.