Thank you for standing by. My name is Angela, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Public Square 3rd Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number 1 in your telephone keypad. If you would like to read for your question, simply press star 1 again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. William Kent, Head of Corporate Affairs. You may begin.

Thank you, Angela, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Public Square's third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Michael Seifert, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and James Wren, Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, we want to emphasize that the information discussed on this call, including our outlook and guidance, is based on information as of today and contains forward looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. We undertake no duty or obligation to update such statements as a result of new information or future events. Please refer to today's earnings press release and our SEC filings, including our 2024-10-K, for factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward looking statements. We'd also like to point out that we present non-GAAP measures in addition to and not as a substitute for financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. I'll now hand the call over to Michael. Michael, please go ahead.

Thank you, Will, and welcome everyone to our third quarter 2025 earnings call. We appreciate you all joining us today and to get us started, I would like to share some of our most notable highlights from the quarter. It was a big one for us. First, we beat our previously issued revenue guidance by 10 percent, and we are proud to reaffirm fourth quarter 2025 as well as full year 2026 revenue guidance secondly our fintech revenue increased 28 percent quarter over quarter with our payments revenue increasing 50 percent quarter over quarter and our credit revenue increasing 22 percent quarter over quarter third one year ago we spoke about how the investments we made in 2024 paired with the restructuring of our business that took place in november of 2024 would lead to a drastic improvement in our ability to generate more revenue while reducing our spend today i am proud and grateful to report that our efforts have paid off resoundingly our net loss has decreased by 33 percent compared to the prior year period and our operating expenses decreased 13 percent compared to the prior year period. I'm incredibly proud of the way our team has executed. We're continuing to leverage strategies to increase our efficiency, and we are excited for this positive momentum to continue. Finally, our third quarter performance emphatically affirms our decision made earlier this year that we spoke about on the q2 earnings call to streamline our focus and double down on fintech we continue to see rapid growth in our payments business as we onboard new merchants who are passionate about our commitment to economic liberty and technological excellence and we expect this momentum to carry into the fourth quarter with our robust onboarding pipeline and anticipated christmas shopping activity additionally our credit business remains healthy and is positioned to benefit from these same trends as we exercise the power of our bundled checkout offering that we speak about often. Looking to 2026, we plan to take advantage of significant opportunities to build upon our 2025 success. We're expanding our fintech platform with new services our merchants and customers have sought after, including private label credit cards, innovative fundraising tools, crypto payment capabilities, and digital asset treasury management solutions. I will now pass the microphone to our wonderful CFO, James Wren, to provide a deeper financial overview on our performance in the third quarter. James, please take us away.

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Let's walk through the key financial highlights from the third quarter in year-to-date 2025 results. As a result of our decision announced on August 12th to monetize our brand segment through the sale of EveryLife and to monetize our marketplace segment through a sale or strategic repurposing of the marketplace IP to complement our fintech offering, we are accordingly showing the results of both those segments and discontinued ops throughout our financial statements. In regards to revenue growth and financial performance, we reported net revenue from continuing operations of $4.4 million for the quarter ended September 30th, 2025. That's a 37% year-over-year increase compared to $3.2 million in Q3 of 2024. As Michael mentioned, Q3 revenue beat our most recent revenue guidance of September of 2025 by $0.4 million, or 10%. the breakdown of revenue illustrates the strengths of our current revenue streams as stated fintech financial technology which includes payment processing via psq payments and credit offering via credova earned 4.4 million dollars in net revenue which as stated was a 37 increase over the prior period this includes 1.5 million from our recently launched psq payments an increase of 50 percent from q2 of 2025 year-to-date fintech revenue was 10.9 million dollars which equates to an increase of 4.3 million dollars or 66 percent from the prior year as noted our credit business revenue increased by half a million dollars or 22 percent quarter over quarter to 2.9 million dollars in q3 the company enhanced the quality of its credit portfolio performance through greater use of AI-driven underwriting and machine learning. Our portfolio has demonstrated consistent improvement in early payment performance, with first payment default rates declining and doing so in a challenging market environment. Regarding operating expense controls for continuing operations, I'd like to highlight the following. The company maintained strong expense discipline in Q3 and continued to optimize capital allocation. For Q3, general and administrative expenses reduced by $2.3 million or 22.3% compared to the same period last year. And year-to-date, GNA expenses decreased by 33% or $10.1 million year-to-date 2025 compared to 2024. R&D expenses for the quarter increased by $0.8 million over the prior year and $2 million year-to-date compared to 2024. We continued to invest in internally developed software. These actions drove this increase in expense, and we allocated $2.3 million in capital for ongoing enhancements to our fintech platforms that are key to our future success. Ultimately, this resulted in a notable improvement in our operating loss of $8.1 million compared to the prior year and a $24.2 million operating loss year-to-date 2025. Transitioning to margin and profitability, FinTech non-GAAP gross margin for Q3 was 68% compared to 97% in Q3 of last year. The decline is primarily related to revenue mix and the growth in our lower-margin payment processing revenues. Our gap operating loss from continuing operations for the quarter was $9.7 million, a $0.6 million improvement from the 10.3 in the same quarter of 2024. Moving on, net loss for the quarter was $12 million compared to a loss of $13.1 million for the same quarter of 2024. The net loss on a per common share basis was $0.26 per share, a 37% per share improvement compared to a loss of $0.41 per share reported in Q3 of 2024. For continuing operations, the net loss improved from $0.27 per share to $0.22 per share in the current quarter. For discontinued operations, the net loss improved from $0.14 per share to $0.04 per share in the third quarter of 2025. Discussing cash flow and liquidity, as of December 30, 2025, Publix Square had $12.3 million of cash in restricted cash, which included $1.3 million related to discontinued ops. Net cash used for operating activities decreased by $9.7 million during the first three quarters of 2025, as compared to the same period of the prior year. On our revolving line of credit that we utilized to finance our Cordova credit products, we had $4.6 million outstanding on our $10 million line of credit. we made a strategic decision to retain consumer financing receivables on our balance sheet representing approximately 3.4 million dollars of cash flow year to date in 2025. we executed on this strategy to improve financial results and enhance yield upon capital this capital will be cycled back to cash based on the payment terms and with healthy returns um discussing our atm at the market offering, which was established May 23rd, 2025. I will note that we did not utilize the ATM during Q3. Transitioning to discuss the monetization of our brands and marketplace segments, the company is engaged in an investment bank to conduct a robust sales process of its brand segment business. This process, I'm happy to report, is on target to reach a purchase agreement by the end of the fourth quarter, 2025. we are continuing to explore a sale or strategic repurposing of our marketplace segment and we will provide updated disclosures as appropriate coming back to expenses we're happy to report that the company has experienced better than expected operating expense reductions results in its reorganization announced in the fourth quarter of 2024 realizing approximately 11 million of its expected 11 million dollars annualized savings savings so we're well ahead of schedule in 2025. moving on to discontinued ops brands driven primarily by every life earned 3.7 million dollars in revenue in q3 which equates which equates to 42.7 percent increase or 1.1 million dollar increase compared to the prior period trailing 12 month revenue for every life exceeded $13.4 million. Marketplace earned $0.2 million during the quarter, which was in line with management expectations. The business outlook and guidance is unchanged from our September 25, 2025 analyst and investor day. Fourth quarter 2025 revenue is expected to be approximately $6 million, comprised of $2.4 million in payment processing revenue and $3.6 million in credit product-related revenue. Again, we affirm our full year 2026 revenue guidance of greater than or equal to $32 million in revenue. And so, to summarize, we are growing revenue at a strong pace, maintaining healthy margins, and significantly narrowing operating losses, in part due to reducing operating costs year over year. We believe we're well positioned to deliver long-term shareholder value as we grow market share, maintain operational discipline, and scale the business. Now let me hand it back to Michael for more about the exciting path forward for Public Square.

Thank you, James. As we mentioned, Q3 was a monumental quarter for us as a company. We have focused our business and doubled down on our fintech charter with our mission-first model in in order to build a parallel economic ecosystem that serves a vast network of merchants and customers who value economic liberty. With our bundled checkout offering, including payments, credit, and digital asset treasury management, paired with our leveraging of AI, DeFi, and proprietary economic modeling, we are firmly positioned to lead the values-driven next-gen of fintech that is growing rapidly amid systemic distrust of legacy finance. Today, roughly five weeks into Q4, we are positioned exactly where we want to be. The business is exceeding expectations and we anticipate a significant Christmas shopping season for our merchant and customer community. We will have quite a lot of exciting developments to announce over the next seven weeks, especially regarding our soon to launch fundraising platform, PSQ Impact, as well as our private label credit card program. We're packing a ton into Q4 as we seek to end the year on our highest note ever, so be sure to stay tuned. We are grateful you're on the journey with us onward and upward. Now, let's move on to Q&A.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one in your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Darren Aftahi with Roth Capital. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the progress. Just two questions if I may. Just in terms of the bundling, can you talk about both the attach rate of customers' bundling and then how that's benefiting retention, and then second on your 26 revenue guidance, can you speak to in little bit more detail what's assumed as kind of existing products to drive that growth versus new products i guess said another way how much kind of line of sight do you have in that 32 versus some of these call options on new products you're introducing thanks great questions darren great to hear from you thanks for joining us today to address your first question i will say that the majority of our enterprise clients are utilizing our bundled services

so the majority of our payments revenue is actually coming from payments clients that are also leveraging our credit offerings at checkout to drive conversion as well as our marketing services because that's really the the trifold beauty we bring to the transaction is that we're able to not only secure your transaction via our payment processing capabilities provide conversion tools via our credit offerings that lend to the entire credit spectrum but also we as we mentioned on our Analyst Investor Day back on September 25th, we want to help you elevate your brand message utilizing our brand, creative storytelling, and marketing capabilities. So again, the majority of our revenue generated through payments is actually with merchants who are also using our credit offering and the suite of marketing services that we leverage. And to go a little bit further on that, you asked the question of kind of what that does to retention. This makes our product incredibly sticky because we are far deeper ingrained in your business and in the operations layer of your transaction than a typical payments company would be we are meeting with your cfo we're having conversations with your marketing department about how to drive conversion and when you as a consumer go to checkout on these sites these merchants that we work with you actually see multiple payment options that are all housed underneath our umbrella, and it leads to a deepening of a relationship with our merchants and ultimately a stickiness that is hard to replicate without that bundled service. So, Darren, I just reaffirm that this is truly key to our success as we move forward. Regarding revenue for 2026, I would say that the guidance that we have issued is really focused on our business as it stands today. We don't want to factor in too much of new verticals that we've talked about over the last two months. We're conservatively projecting those into our revenue guidance for 2026 and really want to feel confident in issuing guidance that is based on the foundation of the business as it stands today.

James, I don't know if there's anything else you'd add there. but yeah I would I would reiterate that our 32 million dollar 2026 guidance is based on kind of the product set and revenue sources that we have today related to private label credit cards and some of the development in those areas we'll update forecasts accordingly in the quarters ahead as we have better visibility but that's not really baked into the current forecast Appreciate it. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Francesco Marmo with Maxime Group. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my question and congratulations on the quarter. Kind of like a big picture, you already kind of touched on this, but I was curious if you could give us a bit more color around the momentum in top line. I was wondering whether it is primarily new customer addition, new customer being onboarded, or is it more higher transaction volume from existing customers or greater adoption of your bundle offering? Great question.

Thanks, Francesco. Great to hear from you. I would say that the majority of our top line growth, the strong majority, is from new customer acquisition. We've really turned onboarding on in the second half of the year. We've gotten far more efficient in our ability to move folks through the pipeline in a much more expedited manner. So the growth in top line that we have seen over the last two quarters, as well as the growth we anticipate seeing in 2026 that we've guided towards, is largely an effect of our expedited onboarding capabilities. And we are grateful that we've barely scratched the surface on our pipeline. So being able to move through that pipeline more efficiently is going to be key to our success over the next 12 months. And thankfully, we've already started to see that prove itself out. The only other thing I'd add here is that, you know, obviously in Q4, many of our merchants are in the retail sector. So it's exciting that we get to have these newly onboarded merchants as we head into Christmas shopping season, and help them elevate their brand and some of the deals they're offering for events like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, Christmas shopping season. This is sort of their Super Bowl, and so we're honored that they would invite us into the transaction layer with our bundled offering to help them drive sales toward the end of the year here, another reason why we anticipate a strong Q4. So that's how I'd answer that, Will, James. Thank you, Francesco.

Thank you.

At this time, I will be handing the call over to Mr. William Kent for submitted questions.

Thank you, Angela. As of quarters past, we've taken questions through the State Technologies Platform before the call, and we'll answer a couple of the questions that were submitted. The first question is, what is the utilization level of PSQ's payment processing service? Has there been growth, and is the client base mostly staying with niche, i.e. firearms dealers, or are you seeing more diverse businesses that are making a switch over?

Yeah, I love this question. Thank you to whichever shareholder asked this. We're grateful you're on the journey with us. I would say resoundingly that our base of merchants that have joined us in our FinTech offering is actually more industry diverse than I would have anticipated at this stage. We've had a wide-ranging network that has joined us in this mission, primarily focused on retail. So online retail, e-commerce is our bread and butter, certainly. But we've really expanded into more B2B SaaS services as well. We've focused a lot on our ACH product, allowing for these business-to-business relationships to strengthen. Um, we've really, uh, focused on the nonprofit space and we've been able to provide a bunch of value there. Uh, we've had great opportunities in firearms, adjacent verticals as well that have been referred to us by the firearm space. So our pipeline and existing merchant mix is more diverse than I would have anticipated at this stage. And I think that's a testament to the, um, the scalability of our payment stack and our multiple payment methods bundled into the checkout offering, and the expansion of our TAM ultimately. We are really excited about the merchants that we get to serve, and we've built a strong foundation that we believe will catapult us to reaching that broader audience. So stay tuned on this too. We'll continue to update the street as we onboard new material merchants from these other verticals to kind of showcase what's possible in these spaces, and so far we're really pleased with the progress.

Thank you. Next question. Public Square's stock has been volatile, suggesting investor uncertainty around long-term strategy and profitability. How is management balancing new initiatives such as crypto treasuries of service with the goal of achieving steadier earnings and long-term growth?

This is a great question. Thank you for asking it. So we certainly acknowledge that, as we mentioned on the analyst day back on September 25th, that from our perspective, our stock is undervalued. We really believe in the upside potential of our equity as our business continues to execute. And regarding new initiatives, our focus is to maintain the principles that guided Q3 to success. And ultimately, we believe will guide Q4, all of 2026, and our future to success, which is operating efficiency that is tied with an executional focus to drive this fintech business forward in such a way where we are able to substantially increase revenue while actually decreasing our losses and expenses this is what we proved out in q3 and it's what we anticipate proving out in the quarters to come so our focus is anything that complements those principles tight execution lean efficiency of our operating business constantly finding ways to improve our offering in order to drive an increase of revenue while reducing expenses. That is our focus. And to the extent that these new initiatives help to complement that and the investments we can make in these new initiatives drive value for our shareholders in alignment with those principles, those are the things that we prioritize. And so as I mentioned earlier on in this earnings call, in my comments, we are packing a ton into Q4. We've been strategically placing investments incrementally that will complete the full picture of our fintech offering, and we'll have quite a lot to announce over the next seven weeks regarding those new initiatives, but know that all of those initiatives are being deployed on the foundation of sound unit economics and a tight operational focus.

Thank you, Michael. And for our last submitted question, back on August 12th, which was our second quarter earnings, you said that you were monetizing every life via strategic sale and either selling or repurposing the marketplace IP. Later, you announced crypto treasury as a service and partnership with IDX and said you'd include it for your own treasury. Do you have an update on those?

Absolutely. So James touched on this a little bit in his comments, but everything we articulated on August 12th, as well as September 25th, is humming right along. We are indeed in the process of monetizing every life via strategic sale, and we anticipate that we will be in the purchase agreement stage by the end of the year, as previously affirmed, and we are pursuing the path of either selling or repurposing the marketplace IP. We are talking to multiple interested parties and also exploring the world in which we repurpose the marketplace IP and technology for the go-forward fintech business, and we'll provide announcements or updates on that process as relevant. And then regarding IDX and our overall positioning on crypto, absolutely, we are in the process of establishing our own treasury via our strategic partnership with IDX. And that ball is rolling right along anticipated timelines. So we're happy with the progress that we articulated six weeks ago. We've made leaps and bounds since then. And as I mentioned Q4 is going to be big for us as we leverage these different strategies and updates to do two things. Number one, end 2025 on an incredibly high note, but also set up for a clean 2026 where our fintech focus is dialed in and that we have these monetization efforts significantly progressed upon so that we can focus on the go forward business as we head into Q1 and q2 james anything you'd add no thank you covered it well all right well uh ladies and gentlemen i believe that concludes our questions so with that uh we can't tell you how much we appreciate you joining us this morning we are grateful that you're on the journey with us we appreciate your interest in public square and we hope you have a fantastic remainder of your thursday thank you all

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now discuss...