管理層發言
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fold First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Samir Jain of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Fold Holdings First 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, May 12, 2026, and therefore, any time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the time of any future replay, listening, or transcript reading. A replay of today's call will be available by webcast on the company's website at 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 time frames to differ materially. For example, statements suggesting or implying the company's ability or positioning for growth as well as any statements which include future dates or time frames 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 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 with 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 to comparable GAAP measures is included in our earnings release and SEC filings. With that, I'll pass the call to Fold's CEO, Will Reeves.
Thanks, Samir, and good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Q1 was a challenging quarter across the broader Bitcoin industry. Lower Bitcoin prices pressured transaction volumes, trading activity, and consumer engagement, and Fold saw that pressure in our results. But as with past drawdown cycles, we believe the fundamental value proposition, technological value, and network effects of Bitcoin remain very strong. We are focused on what we control, and we continue to put our energy and focus into building our products and serving our customers. Over the last several quarters, we have laid the foundation for Fold's next phase. We launched the Fold Credit Card, expanded Bitcoin access across retail platforms, advanced our infrastructure, simplified our capital structure, and strengthened the acquisition and rewards engine we believe can scale Fold significantly from here. That foundation is now in market. In that vein, let's talk about some of the important developments this quarter. The Fold Credit Card is a foundational product for us. If Fold is going to become the primary financial platform for Bitcoin-minded consumers, we need to be present across savings, rewards, exchange, and everyday spending. The credit card completes what we believe is already one of the strongest consumer Bitcoin platforms in the market, and materially expands both our growth opportunity and our relationship with customers over time. As of today, the Fold Credit Card is live with more than 1,000 cardholders. A reminder that this product officially launched into early access in March and that we are intentionally throttling access through a phased rollout. This allows us to validate systems, economics, underwriting, servicing, and risk assumptions as we scale. We remain on target with the rollout expectations and plan to continue expanding access through the quarters ahead as we work through our existing wait list of more than 8,000 potential users and our existing user base. We are extremely pleased with both the early demand and customer response. What is especially encouraging is the cohort behavior. Cardholders are already engaging with the multiple products in our ecosystem, validating our belief that the card can become both a powerful acquisition engine and a major driver of ecosystem engagement over time. Importantly, this cohort includes both entirely new customers and existing Fold users, deepening their engagement with the platform. We are also seeing strong signals that this is becoming a true primary card for users, exactly as we intended. Customers are using the card across everyday purchases as well as larger spend categories like travel and major transactions, reinforcing our belief that the card can compete as a mainstream financial product, not simply as a niche Bitcoin card. And importantly, this rollout only represents the early foundations of the experience we intend to bring to market. The current release does not yet include the full reward structure, merchant experiences, benefits, and broader platform integrations that we anticipate in the future. Given the timing of the launch, the credit card did not materially contribute to Q1 results. But as access expands, we expect the card to become an increasingly important contributor to the transaction volume, customer acquisition, engagement, and revenue growth. In parallel, we have also been working diligently on securing additional capital facilities to support larger scale growth of the credit card program. While we cannot discuss specifics today, we expect to share additional updates in the near future. The Bitcoin Gift Card also remains an important part of our growth strategy and continues to perform strongly. Through this product, we have onboarded thousands of new customers and reengaged existing users through a familiar retail experience. Many of these users are now engaging across the broader Fold ecosystem exactly as we expected. These are high-quality customers that we believe can create significant long-term value for Fold. And our flagship relationship with Kroger has been a success. We believe this model can scale nationally across additional retailers, and we intend to move aggressively to capture that opportunity. To support that growth, we are restructuring our gift card economics with distribution partners to materially reduce customer friction and improve retail placement opportunities. From a financial perspective, you should increasingly think about the gift card business as cost neutral on the front end, with the value compounding over time as users move into credit, exchange, rewards, debit, and additional Fold products, just as we've seen from the existing program. Another important milestone this quarter was the launch of Fold's Bitcoin bonus program with Steak 'n Shake and others. And we are already seeing meaningful interest from additional businesses exploring similar programs. Through the program, employees earn Bitcoin bonuses alongside their normal wages, turning everyday work into long-term savings and ownership. This is not a payroll replacement or a speculative trading product. It is a retention and savings tool built around long-term alignment. We believe what begins with Steak 'n Shake has the potential to expand from here, and we believe the Bitcoin bonus program has the ability to become the beachhead into a much larger business platform opportunity for Fold. In many ways, this is Fold extending the value already proven on the consumer side of the platform into businesses and employers at scale. The same infrastructure behind this product can naturally expand into payroll, employee benefits, corporate treasury, corporate rewards, and corporate spending tools over time. The credit card, our retail distribution, and the business offerings launched this year are becoming the foundation of Fold's core platform going forward, and what we believe can drive meaningful scale over time. We are already well into the next phase of product development and expect to provide additional guidance on upcoming launches soon. As these products come to market, we believe Fold is increasingly positioned to emerge not only as one of the best places to acquire Bitcoin, but also one of the strongest platforms for consumers to be rewarded for their financial activity overall, not just within Bitcoin, but across the broader rewards industry. Because of the timing of the credit card rollout, many of our upcoming launches will now occur in closer succession rather than across a longer staggered timeline, making for what we expect will be a very active and exciting period ahead for Fold with multiple launches, platform expansions, and additional developments still to come. With that, I'll turn it over to Wolfe.
Thanks, Will, and thank you to everyone for joining today. As Will mentioned, Q1 was a challenging quarter for the entire industry. In February, the price of Bitcoin was down nearly 50% from its all-time high in October, representing a significant drop in a short period of time. These pullbacks caused many consumers to risk-adjust their spending and investment behaviors, and neither Fold nor many of our competitors were immune to that behavioral shift. We saw that impact both in our transactional volumes, which were down 31% year-over-year for the same period, and in our revenues, which were down 21% year-over-year for the same period. February 2026 marked the bottom across most of our core KPIs over the last year, and we are already seeing signs of a rebound as the price of Bitcoin shows signs of recovery. Overall, our Q1 operating expenses were $13.4 million compared to $16.6 million in the first quarter of 2025, a decrease of approximately 19%. The primary drivers of this decrease were lower direct costs associated with revenue, which were also down 21% year-over-year for the same period, lower share-based compensation expense, and lower professional services fees. Net loss in the quarter was $29.2 million compared to a net loss of $48.9 million in the same period. A reminder that our net loss is impacted by nonoperating items, including the change in fair value of our Bitcoin investment treasury and various entries related to financing structures like SAFE notes and convertible debt. Therefore, consistent with prior quarters, we look to adjusted EBITDA as a better barometer of our core business operations. In Q1, adjusted EBITDA was negative $5.8 million compared to negative $4.2 million in the prior year period. The principal drivers of the increased loss relate to increased payroll expenses of $1 million as our headcount expanded year-over-year and increased expenses related to product development and marketing, including net new branding efforts that are currently underway. On the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $11.5 million in cash and cash equivalents compared to $7.7 million at year-end. Net cash used in operating activities was $6.6 million compared to $5 million in the prior year period. As previously announced, in Q1, we extinguished both of our previously existing convertible notes, eliminating the overhang, simplifying our capital structure, and improving optionality with our financing options. As of March 31, we held 826 Bitcoin in our investment treasury, which today is valued at nearly $67 million, of which 430 Bitcoin is currently held as collateral under our Two Prime credit facility. Despite the challenging quarter, we believe the product foundations we have in place are now well positioned to allow us to scale to larger audiences. As a reminder, all of our products currently generate positive contribution margins for the company. So our priorities now are to scale the credit card responsibly, continue managing fixed costs carefully, and continue to look for areas to acquire new users and expand margins. With that, I'll turn it back to Will.
Thank you, Wolfe. Despite a challenging market backdrop, we believe Fold made significant progress in the first quarter and, more importantly, laid the foundation for what comes next. What is becoming increasingly clear to us is that Fold's opportunity is far larger than simply Bitcoin rewards. We believe Fold has the opportunity to evolve from a niche Bitcoin platform into a leading financial rewards platform for the Bitcoin era, competing directly against entrenched incumbents across rewards, payments, savings, credit, and broader financial services. Many of those incumbents are built on aging systems, poor alignment with customers, high fees, weak experiences, and reward structures that increasingly fail to deliver meaningful value. We believe Fold can win by offering something fundamentally better: better Bitcoin access, better rewards, better value, better products, and better alignment with customers. The integrated platform we are building combines Bitcoin access, rewards, spending, saving, credit, and business services into a single ecosystem where every product strengthens the broader platform. And importantly, we believe we can compete head-on on fees, rewards, and experience while we simultaneously build a powerful margin, revenue, and cash flow engine for Fold over time. We believe the foundation is now in place, and we believe upcoming releases will begin making that vision unmistakably clear. We are incredibly excited for what lies ahead. Thank you to our team, our partners, our customers, and our shareholders for your continued support. Operator, let's open the line for questions.
分析師問答
Our first question will come from the line of Dave Storms with Stonegate.
Just want to start with the rollout. I know you mentioned that things seem to be going well. Just curious as to if you're seeing anything that would make you want to or be able to go faster or cause you to slow down in that rollout.
Hello, Dave, thanks for jumping up and asking the question here. We're very excited about the pace of the rollout. I think last time we spoke, we discussed the rollout happening in phases of a few hundred, then a few thousand, and then tens of thousands. We're already at well over 1,000 now. That's a reflection of both the team's ability to execute and our assumptions proving out correctly: our ability to manage fraud, underwrite, and service properly. What we're doing now is taking that cohort through a full billing cycle where we will have a 360-degree view of the entire program so that we can confidently scale into the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands, which I think this program ultimately leads to. So I'm very excited about the 1,000 cardholders we're at today. We are accelerating that rollout. Any card program is ultimately throttled by your ability to manage fraud, and the team has an incredible handle on that; we're seeing very encouraging results. As we expand into new capital partners, and as we bring more facilities to market, that's going to help us build on the foundation we have and really start to scale this to a much larger cohort. Right now, the most important thing is to confirm we have a product that people love and are using in ways that confirm our hypotheses: are people using multiple products, and are they using it as their primary card? All of those things are being confirmed in real time now, with both existing customers and new ones. The ability to control fraud across the full billing cycle with this level of cardholders, and then bringing more credit facilities to the table, is a recipe for scaling this much faster than we thought. I believe we are already ahead of schedule.
I wanted to turn to maybe some of the institutional interest on the Bitcoin bonus program. What are you seeing towards the top of that funnel? And I guess as you start to bring more corporations on board, how are you seeing that sales cycle evolve? Is that shortening? Are there things you're learning? Maybe just any more color here would be great.
I think we're early. To be very honest, this program launched a little less than a month ago, but feedback from employees participating and from employers like Steak 'n Shake and other businesses has been very positive. We have seen an incredible response from businesses who want to add this to their benefits package. It runs the gamut from small businesses to publicly traded companies with thousands of employees. Something interesting we've found is that selling corporate Bitcoin treasury or Bitcoin rewards often requires leadership-level belief in Bitcoin. But when packaged as a bonus in an employee benefit, many operators evaluate it on a different basis: can this program recruit better employees and will those employees stay longer? This program is starting to unlock a whole new set of businesses for which Bitcoin is relevant. That expands the top of the funnel significantly. We are working through various business sizes that have come through the sales funnel, and we're excited to announce more participants. We built this program to scale to large businesses, and I think that's where a big impact will be—not only adding more monthly transacting users to our ecosystem but also larger contracts with these businesses. Over the next few quarters, you'll start to see the program grow and display a diverse mix of demand.
Our next question will be coming from the line of Mike Grondahl of Northland.
First, on the Bitcoin Gift Card, can you kind of explain the economic change to promote distribution partners? Did the fees go from like A to B? If you could just walk us through that to start.
Yes, Mike, it's good to hear from you. Fold is in a position where all of our product lines contribute positive contribution margins—every customer is accretive to the business. The Fold Credit Card is live and will begin to scale rapidly over the coming months. All we need is to increase our scale. That leads to a company generating cash flows and consistent growth, especially if market conditions improve and Bitcoin performs. We wanted to gear our business for maximum scale. What we learned from the Bitcoin Gift Card pilot with Kroger is that it brings in thousands of customers. One favorite example is a top-five spender at Fold who came onboard via a gift card. It has become an incredible area for referrals. Looking forward, we want to remove any impediment to growing this program for new customers and for retailers carrying it. The number-one area of friction we heard was the fee, which is a function of the costs associated with getting these physical cards into store doors and which varies by retailer. When we ran the numbers and looked at what these customers do once they're in—are they engaging with our other products—we quickly concluded that removing the fees would generate more customers and attract more retailers. Ultimately, that's good for Fold and will scale the user base faster. So when we talk about the fees, the customer will see significantly reduced fees upfront; we've worked with retailers to reduce their fees. Reducing that built-in cost and seeing the payback period on some of these cohorts supports this change. It still depends on the retailer, but for customers, making the product maximally available and reducing friction means those fees are going to go to zero in many cases.
So you might still have to pay Kroger a small commission. But if I'm buying $50 of Bitcoin off a Bitcoin Gift Card, I'm not paying a commission to you anymore. Is that fair?
Yes, correct. A lot of it was previously passed on to the customer. Ultimately, it made a great gift, but it wasn't necessarily a great way to continue to buy. By making this change, we expect a different set of customers to come to the product and to use it more often. We view the Bitcoin Gift Card as turning a wider segment of the population into future Bitcoin investors through Fold. Many of these customers eventually move into our other products—credit, debit, exchange—and become long-term users. We recently received a note from a customer who said they came to Fold via a gift card, then started earning rewards, and became a Bitcoin investor. They said they wouldn't have done that without this type of on-ramp product.
Do you have any goals for the credit card business: number of cards by September 30 or year-end 2026? How should we think about that going forward?
For me, the objective is to scale as quickly as responsibly possible to as many people as possible. We have 1,000 cardholders right now running on credit lines that extend upwards of $20,000. We are seeing strong spend. We need to see a full billing cycle to understand charge-offs, how many are revolving, and the average spend rate. That data will inform not only how much we can scale within our existing credit facility but also what additional facilities we might need. All this data is making a very attractive value proposition for more credit facilities to participate. This next month is critical for seeing the full lifecycle. I believe we can scale through the wait list and our full customer base within the year, possibly more. I'll leave it to Wolfe to discuss constraints and how he's thinking about balancing customer behavior with available credit facilities.
And Mike, yes, like Will mentioned, we do have internal targets, though we have not disclosed them publicly. We must ensure the systems are working first. A key piece of scaling a credit card program is securing a capital facility to scale. This is not a dilutive equity-style facility; it's a revolving warehouse that we can pull down on to float customer receivables. We've been working diligently on that process for quite some time, and hopefully we'll have more updates in the near future. As soon as we get that locked in and our processes are up and running and we feel confident, I think we'll scale this as big as we can with the appropriate risk lens in mind.
And I would now like to turn the conference back to Will Reeves for closing remarks.
Thank you all. I want to thank specifically the team at Fold who's been able to keep building through a bear market. These bear markets come and go; we've been building in Bitcoin for a while. What Fold's team has demonstrated is that we're shipping some of the most important products that will have the biggest impact, and we're shipping at a higher velocity and with higher quality than ever before. First and foremost, thank you to the team, investors, partners, and analysts for participating and following the Fold story. We've waited longer than we wanted to get the credit card to market, but now that it's here, there are many products and launches we haven't discussed that were placed secondary while we achieved this milestone. Now that we're past it, I think this summer will mark the beginning of Fold emerging as a clear leader—not just in Bitcoin, but in financial rewards overall. That will be due to some of the big product launches, announcements, and partnerships we're planning to release this summer. I'm incredibly excited for what's ahead. We truly believe Fold has been making the right investments even when Bitcoin is down, which shows our belief and confidence in where we're going. I think we'll see returns not only as the Bitcoin market recovers but as Fold moves beyond a company specifically tied to Bitcoin into broader financial rewards. I think that will be a paradigm shift. Thanks, everyone, for participating in the journey. Finally, a happy birthday to my dad today. Thanks, everyone, and have a great rest of the day.
This concludes today's program. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.