Fold Holdings, Inc. (FLD) Earnings Call Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Fold's second quarter 2026 earnings call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would like now to turn the conference over to Samir Jain, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for Fold Holdings' second quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining me on the call today are Chairman and CEO Will Reeves and CFO Wolfe Repass. Before we begin, please note that the information reported on this call speaks only as of today, August 11, 2026, and therefore any time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the time of any future replay, listing, or transcript reading. A replay of today's call will be available by webcast on the company's website at https://investor.foldapp.com and more information on how to access this replay feature will be included in the company's earnings release. Comments on this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws. These statements are based on our current expectations and beliefs and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, products, activities, or timeframes to differ materially. For example, statements suggesting or implying the company's ability or positioning for growth, as well as any statements which indicate future dates or timeframes, are forward-looking statements and inherently uncertain. In some cases, you may identify forward-looking statements by terms such as believe, expect, potential, should, plan, or similar terminology. But any statement that is not a statement of a historical fact may be a forward-looking statement. These statements reflect the current views of Fold's management and are not guarantees of future performance. Please refer to Fold's Form 10-K and other filings within the SEC for discussion of risks and uncertainties that may affect our upcoming results, future plans, and product rollouts, among other things. We will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures during this call. These measures should not be considered a substitute for GAAP results. A reconciliation of comparable GAAP measures is included in our earnings release and SEC filings. With that, I'll pass the call to Fold CEO, Will Reeves.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Fold is entering an important new chapter. Over the past year, we've invested across consumer credit, banking infrastructure, merchant distribution, rewards, and new revenue engines. Today much of that foundation is in place, and over the next few months investors will begin to see those investments come together. Our credit card is performing well in early access. We've eliminated our secured debt and increased our financial flexibility. We've established the banking infrastructure to participate in the economics of customer deposits, and we're preparing to bring a much broader Fold platform to market. Everything we've built has been in service of one objective, build the most rewarding financial platform in America. That progress is especially important given the environment we've been operating through. The second quarter remained challenging across the broader bitcoin industry. Lower bitcoin prices continue to pressure transaction activity, trading volume, and consumer engagement, and those conditions are reflected in our financial results. But we believe the more important story is how different Fold is becoming as a business. Historically, our economics have been heavily dependent on transaction activity. Going forward, we're building a broader financial platform designed around deeper, longer-term customer relationships and more durable sources of revenue. We believe the next generation of financial platforms won't be defined by the best individual products, they'll be defined by the strength of the customer relationship. That's the platform we're building, one that rewards customers not just for how they spend, but for how they save, build wealth, and manage their financial lives over time. At its core, Fold is expanding from solely a transaction business into a broader financial services company. Historically, Fold generated most of its revenue from payment transactions, card products, merchant offers, and exchange volumes have driven nearly all of our historical economics. Going forward, we are expanding beyond payments into additional traditional financial services, primarily those that encourage users to deposit and hold assets on the Fold platform. This strategy allows us to participate in the economics of those assets and is intended to grow our investable cash, earn yield on that cash, and to use that yield to provide richer rewards to our customers. We believe that focusing on deepening the customer relationship can fundamentally change the economics of Fold. They create more predictable recurring cash flows, stronger customer relationships, greater customer lifetime value, and ultimately a business that's less dependent on transaction activity alone. We believe that's the economic foundation that allows us to sustainably deliver better products, stronger rewards, improved cash flows, and long-term growth. Delivering that strategy required infrastructure we simply didn't have a few years ago. Our recently announced partnership with Lead Bank provides the foundation that enables us to bring expanded banking capabilities to more customers, participate in deposit economics, and support the next generation of the Fold platform. Additionally, over the past year, we have been building a proprietary bank-grade core ledger, purpose-built for a multi-asset world. We believe this infrastructure is one of the most important long-term competitive advantages we have. The second major update is who Fold will be serving. Historically, Fold primarily served bitcoin-native customers. Going forward, we're building a platform for anyone who wants to be rewarded for managing their financial life. We believe expanding our addressable market to a broader audience will increase the value of the distribution, partnerships, and infrastructure we've already built and lead to better growth opportunities for our business. Our conviction in bitcoin hasn't changed, and we continue to believe it's a strategic long-term asset and will continue to grow in importance within financial services. Our strategy is simple: build the best financial platform first, provide optionality to customers, and create more opportunities for customers to discover the long-term benefits of bitcoin over time. Of course, strategy only matters if you can execute. Our credit card has been the proving ground for the broader platform. Today, over 2,000 customers are participating in early access. The objective was to validate underwriting fraud systems, servicing, financing, and the customer experience before scaling and the results have reinforced our confidence. Interchange and lending economics continued to meet or exceed our expectations and our per-swipe economics are profitable as it currently stands. We've improved underwriting, expanded approvals for qualified customers, and built the operational confidence to support our broader rollout. During the quarter, we also de-risked our balance sheet in order to support these launches and our overall business. Specifically, we eliminated all of our secured debt to reduce treasury volatility and increase financial flexibility and kicked off initiatives to lower operational costs. Together, these milestones give us confidence that Fold is entering its next chapter from a position of strength, with the platform, capital structure, and operational foundation needed to pursue the opportunities ahead. The next few months don't consist merely of additional product launches. It's the period where investors will begin to see the foundation we've been building come together. We look forward to sharing more as those products come to market and discussing our progress with you on our next earnings call. With that, I'll turn it over to Wolfe to review our financial results.

Thanks, Will. As anyone that follows our space already knows, the second quarter continued to be a challenging environment for the broader bitcoin ecosystem. Lower bitcoin prices have continued to weigh on retail engagement, and that has been reflected in our numbers through the first half of the year. During the second quarter, we generated revenue of $6.1 million, a decrease of 26% year-over-year. Our GAAP operating expenses during the period were down 4% to $13.9 million compared to $14.5 million in the second quarter of 2025. Net loss in the quarter was $9.7 million compared to a net income of $13.4 million in the prior year period. Consistent with prior quarters, we look to adjusted EBITDA as a key barometer of core business operations. In Q2, adjusted EBITDA was negative $5.5 million compared to negative $4.7 million in the prior year period. The principal drivers of the increased loss related to increased payroll and contractor expenses as our headcount expanded year-over-year. Our numbers for the first half of 2026 reflect both the challenges posed by current headwinds in the bitcoin space, as well as the increased investment we have made over the past 2 years to improve our infrastructure, our team, and to support the rollouts of major new product lines like the credit card. Looking ahead, we expect our financial profile to evolve as we expand into yield on assets held, which we believe will result in higher and more recurring revenues, better margins, and less dependence on transactional volume. We believe our broader strategy will also improve both the quality and predictability of our earnings over time. We are also focused on reducing operational expenses, including the elimination of certain vendors and contractors that were used to support our investments over the past year. During the quarter, we also eliminated $20 million in bitcoin-backed debt under our facility with Two Prime, thereby reducing our monthly interest expense by nearly $145,000 going forward. We retained an additional $25 million of unrestricted capital for use in the business. This move was made primarily to improve financial flexibility and reduce the volatility associated with our treasury. As it currently stands, Fold is self-financing all of the receivables on our credit card product. This is by design, as we do not currently require a third-party financing vehicle. However, as receivables grow, we expect to expand financing capacity through strategic financing partners. Despite the challenging quarter, we believe the product foundations we have in place are well positioned to scale to larger audiences. Our priorities now are to scale the credit card responsibly, execute on our newest product initiatives, continue managing costs carefully, and to continue to look for areas to acquire new users and expand margins. With that I'll turn it back to Will.

Thanks, Wolfe. Before we open the line for questions, I'd leave you with one final thought. The investments we've made over the past 2 years weren't about improving 1 quarter. They were about building a fundamentally different company, 1 that's evolving from a transaction business into a full-featured financial services business, one serving a much larger market, and one with the foundation to become what we believe can be the most rewarding financial platform in America. We're looking forward to sharing more as our strategy unfolds over the next few months. So with that, operator, we'd be happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question will come from Dave Storms with Stonegate. Your line is now open.

Hello, good afternoon. This is Maximus. I'll be asking questions for Dave today. Just wanted to start off with, I guess, beyond account growth, are you seeing any other early signs that customer activity is accelerating, especially in the current challenging bitcoin price environment?

Hey, Maximus, thanks for jumping on here. So as most of the traditional metrics that we're looking at, transaction volume, the trading volume, obviously down. I think we're seeing that across the broader industry, but really what this is about is looking at, where the company is going next and as we're positioned for a reversal here in the market. And so when I look at positive signs, we've really looked at the credit card program. We've seen transactions per user increase 4x since a customer begins using it to as they establish themselves into the program over a few months, now that we have several months of data. All of this is suggesting that the card is performing exactly as we hoped it to, which would be the primary card, transaction card for our customers. So while we are seeing trading in bitcoin definitely depressed in this period, we are seeing bright spots in some of the early kind of new growth products that we are teeing up. And a lot of it is Fold has been building towards a more robust platform, not so tied to bitcoin sentiment or volatility, where that will always be a boon for us in strong bitcoin markets, but really Fold is here to serve the entire customer. And so we are seeing increases in transactions on the credit card. The spend per user is outpacing even what our projections were. We're very excited to increase -- continue the rollout of the credit card to the wider MTU base, to the waitlist and to the new growth segment customers where we're looking to target with our upcoming launches in a few weeks.

I appreciate that, great color. And then I wanted to move forward with the bitcoin gift card. You guys have lowered the customer fee. I wanted to see, are you seeing that drive higher customer activity and I guess overall retailer interest? And then also want to touch on the expanded distribution through TikTok Shop and what the early results are there and if you're seeing a meaningfully different customer than your existing distribution.

What we've been noticing with this card program is, the strategy of the bitcoin gift card is to lay distribution lines, physical distribution and digital distribution into some of the largest networks or marketplaces in the U.S. We believe that these distribution lines we're laying today are going to make us top of mind and very accessible for when bitcoin's price reversal occurs. And Fold will be everywhere. And one of the things we've learned is as we gain distribution to new partners, they bring different types of customers. I think our first flagship customer obviously was Kroger and being sold in a grocery context. That is a lot of gifting where people are looking at primarily as a gift. And what we are very excited to see is, I think the TikTok Shop that just opened up, number one, primarily a digital environment, and one with a very different customer base than Kroger. And we are seeing incredible results. This is one that has some of the biggest momentum we've seen of any distribution channel, and that's all happening in a very depressed bitcoin market. You can see even -- what's even more interesting is as it made an appearance into TikTok, you're starting to see creators create content around this, and these videos are posting 20,000, 50,000, 60,000 views per video. And these are all driving customers, not just to the gift card, but to Fold in general. And we believe that these lines are only going to get more valuable as market sentiment returns, but it also is helping us guide where are the most valuable distribution channels for us to focus on. And I think TikTok, you're going to see is an example of what more of the names that we're going to be adding to this distribution line. We love the engagement post-redemption. We love the profile of customer. And as we mentioned in the earnings call, our upcoming launches are going to allow us to speak to a much broader customer that is not necessarily just here to earn bitcoin. We're going to be speaking to customers that look a lot like TikTok creators. And those that are consuming not just bitcoin content, but regular personal finance. And we think that this upcoming summer launch is going to just make these distribution channels even more valuable, not just allowing us to capture more bitcoin demand, but also just capture the 80% of Americans who are searching for really just the best rewards program out there. And Fold's going to be top of mind because of these distribution lines.

Good luck the second half of the year.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Mike Grondahl with Northland Capital Markets.

Hey guys, this is Kiyan Phelps on for Mike Grondahl here. Just 1 or 2 from us on credit cards. I think last quarter you stated the credit card pipeline was roughly 80,000 people. Any updates on the size of that going into the back half of the year?