Earnings call transcript: Coincheck Group sees Q2 2025 revenue surge 58%

Coincheck Group's earnings call for Q2 2025 revealed robust financial results, with significant revenue growth and a return to profitability. The company reported a 58% quarter-over-quarter increase in total revenue, reaching JPY 133.1 billion ($899.5 million), while net profit rose to JPY 355 million ($2.4 million) from a net loss in the previous quarter. The earnings call highlighted Coincheck's strategic acquisitions and product innovations as key drivers of performance, amidst a volatile cryptocurrency market.

Key Takeaways

• Coincheck's revenue surged 58% quarter-over-quarter to JPY 133.1 billion.
• Net profit reached JPY 355 million, reversing a previous quarter's loss.
• Customer assets increased by 78% to JPY 1,189 billion.
• Ethereum staking revenue grew 108% from the prior quarter.
• The company completed strategic acquisitions and partnerships to enhance market position.

Company Performance

Coincheck Group demonstrated strong performance in Q2 2025, driven by substantial revenue growth and a return to profitability. The growth in customer assets and marketplace trading volume underscores the company's effective strategies in navigating the volatile cryptocurrency market. The acquisition of Aplo SAS and a strategic partnership with Mercoin Inc. are expected to bolster Coincheck's competitive edge and broaden its market reach.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: JPY 133.1 billion ($899.5 million), 58% quarter-over-quarter growth.
• Net Profit: JPY 355 million ($2.4 million), compared to a net loss of JPY 1.38 billion in the previous quarter.
• Gross Margin: JPY 3.9 billion ($26 million), a 92% year-over-year increase.
• Customer Assets: Grew 78% to JPY 1,189 billion ($8.04 billion).
• Marketplace Trading Volume: Increased 72% to JPY 94.7 billion ($640 million).

Outlook & Guidance

Coincheck is optimistic about future growth, driven by strategic acquisitions and collaborations with Japanese financial institutions. The company anticipates market expansion with upcoming regulatory changes and plans to continue evaluating acquisition opportunities to enhance shareholder value. Future EPS forecasts project a gradual improvement, with a significant positive turn expected by FY 2027.

Executive Commentary

CEO Gary Simanson stated, "We continue to execute on our plan," highlighting the company's strategic focus. He also noted, "We believe these changes will ultimately enhance market transparency, increase institutional participation," reflecting confidence in the company's direction. CFO Jason Sandberg expressed satisfaction with the results, stating, "We are pleased with our results."

Risks and Challenges

• Market Volatility: The cryptocurrency market's inherent volatility could impact future performance.
• Regulatory Changes: Anticipated Japanese tax reforms in early 2027 may affect operations.
• Competition: The growing number of players in the cryptocurrency market could pressure margins.
• Integration Risks: Challenges in integrating newly acquired companies may arise.
• Institutional Participation: Despite growth, increasing institutional participation remains a challenge.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the strategic rationale behind the Aplo acquisition and how it aligns with Coincheck's long-term goals. Questions also focused on how the company plans to navigate market volatility and ensure ecosystem stability, as well as the composition of gross margins and the contribution of staking revenue to overall growth.

Full transcript - Content Checked Holdings Inc (CNCK) Q2 2026:

Conference Call Moderator, Coincheck Group: Through September 30, 2025. With us today are Gary Simanson, Chief Executive Officer of Coincheck Group, and Jason Sandberg, Chief Financial Officer of Coincheck Group. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I'd like to remind everyone that our discussion today will include forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors. These factors are discussed in more detail in our filings with the SEC, including our filings related to the second quarter of fiscal 2026. Such factors may be updated from time to time in our periodic filings with the SEC, and we do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements.

Additionally, throughout this conference call, we will also present and discuss non-IFRS financial measures. Reconciliations of our non-IFRS financial measures to their most directly comparable IFRS financial measures appear in today's earnings press release, which are available on our investor relations website and on the SEC website. Our functional currency is the Japanese yen. During today's call, we'll be referring to certain rounded figures and certain figures that we've translated from yen to US dollars solely for the convenience of the reader into the US dollar. For more details on these figures and the convenient foreign currency translation we have used, please see our earnings release that was issued earlier today and furnished on Form 6K, as well as our fiscal 2026 second quarter financial statements and MD&A, which we will furnish with the SEC on a Form 6K.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker for today, Gary Simonson. You may begin.

Gary Simanson, Chief Executive Officer, Coincheck Group: Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for our fiscal 2026 second quarter earnings call. I am pleased to report that we had a strong quarter of operational excellence and financial performance. Coincheck Group delivered total revenue of JPY 133.1 billion, or $899.5 million, for the quarter ended September 30, 2025, representing 58% quarter-over-quarter growth. This growth was driven primarily by a 54% increase in marketplace trading volume, combined with consistent spreads throughout the quarter. We also had solid customer growth, with our verified user accounts growing 15% year over year. This represents strong annualized growth and demonstrates the continued expansion of our customer base and validates our platform's market appeal. Most important, we made money.

Our disciplined approach to operational efficiency, combined with increased revenue, has yielded positive results, with net profit reaching JPY 355 million, or $2.4 million, for our fiscal 2026 second quarter, as compared to a net loss of JPY 1.38 billion, or $9.3 million, in our fiscal 2026 first quarter. A net improvement of JPY 1.73 billion, or $11.7 million, or an approximately $12 million improvement on an adjusted EBITDA quarter-over-quarter basis. This strong increase in profitability reflects not only the growth in our core marketplace trading volumes and revenue, but also a strategic focus on cost optimization, as evidenced by our quarter-over-quarter reduction in selling, general, and administrative expenses. Our Ethereum Staking award initiative represents a significant strategic milestone and continues to demonstrate strong momentum.

Revenue for this growth vertical reached JPY 794 million, or $5.4 million, for the quarter, more than 108% growth from the prior quarter. This performance was driven by increases in our custodied Ethereum, as well as a higher average percentage of staked Ethereum. As we've communicated in previous quarters, continued expansion in Japan, as well as international expansion, remains the focus of our growth agenda. We continue to execute on our plan. Building upon the successful closing of our acquisition of Next Finance Tech Co., Ltd. in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, we recently successfully completed our previously announced acquisition of Aplo SAS, a leading digital asset prime brokerage headquartered in Paris, France, serving institutional cryptocurrency investors globally. Aplo has grown rapidly and today serves more than 60 active institutional clients, including hedge funds, asset managers, banks, and sovereign funds.

This acquisition represents the first step of an important and ongoing component of Coincheck Group's stated mission: to be a disciplined global allocator of capital and to make strategic acquisitions of retail and institutional crypto businesses outside of Japan, including Europe. The transaction was completed through the issuance of 5,007,500 common shares of Coincheck Group ordinary shares, reflecting our commitment to strategic equity-based growth. We continue to evaluate acquisition opportunities consistent with our stated growth plans while seeking to create strong alignment with potential acquisition counterparties and to structure potential transactions in such a way as to provide further opportunities for institutional and retail investors to have greater access to and enhance liquidity in shares of our publicly traded common stock. We remain excited about our strategic partnership with Mercoin Inc., a group company of Mercoin, Japan's largest marketplace app.

Mercury is one of the most recognized C2C platforms in Japan. By combining Coincheck's strong trading system with Mercury's large user base, this collaboration will enable Mercoin customers direct access within the Mercury app to open a Coincheck account and trade a wide range of crypto assets through our platform. We will have more to share regarding this partnership in the coming months. We continue to actively pursue additional strategic collaborations across Japan's institutional landscape. Our objective is to enable leading financial institutions to integrate Coincheck's cryptocurrency solutions into their existing service offerings, thereby expanding digital asset accessibility throughout the Japanese market. We are particularly encouraged by our ongoing discussions with other Japanese institutions, which represents a significant opportunity to broaden Coincheck Group's market reach and accelerate our growth trajectory.

Finally, we continue to monitor Japan's proposed comprehensive tax reforms and the reclassification of select cryptocurrency assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act. While implementation is anticipated in early 2027, we view these reforms as a significant catalyst. We believe these changes will ultimately enhance market transparency, increase institutional participation, increase overall trading velocity, and create substantial growth opportunities for well-positioned market leaders like Coincheck. With that, I now turn it over to Jason Sandberg, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide commentary and more color on our numbers for the quarter.

Jason Sandberg, Chief Financial Officer, Coincheck Group: Thank you, Gary. Let me take you through our second quarter of fiscal 2026 performance. I will start with some year-over-year comparisons. Total revenue increased 89% to JPY 133.1 billion, or $900 million, in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, up from JPY 70.3 billion, or $475 million, in the second quarter of fiscal 2025. Gross margin increased 92% to JPY 3.9 billion, or $26 million, in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, up from JPY 2 billion, or $14 million, in the second quarter of fiscal 2025, as a result of an increase in our verified user accounts, customer assets, and overall increases in our marketplace trading volume. Our verified accounts increased 15% to 2.4 million accounts as of September 30th, 2025, up from 2.1 million accounts as of September 30th, 2024.

Our customer assets increased 78% to JPY 1,189 billion, or $8.04 billion, as of September 30th, 2025, up from JPY 669 billion, or $4.5 billion, as of September 30th, 2024. Our marketplace trading volume increased 72% to JPY 94.7 billion, or $640 million, for the second quarter of fiscal 2026, up from JPY 55.1 billion, or $373 million, for the second quarter of fiscal 2025. Please note that fluctuations in marketplace trading volume are usually driven by crypto asset industry market volumes and conditions generally, and the size and level of trading activity at Coincheck specifically, as well as market price fluctuations in the crypto assets frequently traded. Net income increased to JPY 355 million, or $2.4 million, in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, compared to a net profit of JPY 15 million, or $0.1 million, in the second quarter of fiscal 2025.

The primary drivers of this increase were the improvement in our gross margin, which was driven by higher trading volumes, as well as a higher average of custodied Ethereum staked. These improvements were partially offset by higher year-over-year selling, general, and administrative expenses. Adjusted EBITDA was JPY 1,486 million, or $10 million, in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, compared to JPY 250 million, or $1.7 million, in the second quarter of fiscal 2025. As I mentioned, our total revenue increased 89% year-over-year. We saw our verified user accounts grow by 15%, and our customer assets grew by 78%, which we believe helped drive our total revenue growth despite the market volatility throughout the year.

Our staking revenue for the second quarter increased to JPY 794 million, or $5.4 million, versus JPY 381 million, or $2.6 million, to the second quarter of fiscal 2025, with JPY 523 million, or $3.5 million, of related costs for this quarter, those costs essentially being the amounts remitted to our customers. Staking revenue is primarily driven by the amount of Ethereum our customers elect to be staked and the existing market rate for staking rewards. As Gary mentioned, we increased the average Ethereum staked from JPY 53.2 billion, or $360 million, during Q1 to JPY 113.1 billion, or $764 million, during Q2. During the first quarter of fiscal 2026, we acquired Next Finance Tech, a staking platform service company, and are currently working towards utilizing Next Finance's staking platform to reduce the amount of the staking rewards currently shared with a third-party provider.

Additionally, we are in ongoing discussions with various third parties exploring separate revenue-generating business opportunities for Next Finance Tech. Moving on now to our operating expenses. Total selling, general and administrative expenses increased to JPY 3.4 billion, or $23 million, in the fiscal 2026 second quarter, compared to JPY 2 billion, or $14 million, in the fiscal 2025 second quarter. Selling, general and administrative expenses in the fiscal 2026 second quarter increased year-over-year primarily as a result of additional professional fees and other costs associated with being a public company, as well as share-based compensation expense of JPY 321 million, or $2.2 million, for the fiscal 2026 second quarter, compared to zero expense for the fiscal 2025 second quarter and JPY 298 million, or $2 million, for the fiscal 2026 first quarter.

We ended the fiscal 2026 second quarter with cash and cash equivalents of JPY 9 billion, or $60.6 million. In summary, we are pleased with our results, including having successfully completed our second acquisition, our enhanced earnings and profitability, continued progress in expense control, steady growth of our customer accounts and customer assets, the revenue traction of our relatively new staking rewards program, and our new strategic partnership with Mercoin, which should help us expand our customer base and customer assets further. I would now like to hand the call back to Gary.

Conference Call Moderator, Coincheck Group: Thank you, Jason. Before I conclude my comments and open it up for questions, I would like to take a moment to welcome our new team members from Next Finance Tech Co. and Aplo and share my deep appreciation for the strong depth of talent and industry expertise, shared common vision of excellence, sense of teamwork, and the energy and enthusiasm that they have brought to our group as we continue to build a global crypto financial services holding company and explore further synergies and opportunities for growth. A final note about this quarter's performance and recent accomplishments. As many of you may have observed, there has been a tremendous amount of volatility, uncertainty, and market pullback in the crypto markets lately, combined with some specific market-moving events.

While we cannot predict the future or believe when taking into account our second quarter fiscal 2026 financial performance, as well as our recently released October KPIs, as well as what we are currently seeing, I continue to be encouraged and hopeful about our progress in both our near-term and long-term future. Having worked with many financial institutions in my career and seen firsthand the challenges and complexities of being a newly publicly traded company and all that that entails, while also focusing on operating and growing a business profitably and sustainably in a space as fast-moving, dynamic, and at times volatile as any new and emerging technology, in this case, crypto, I'm especially proud and deeply appreciative of the entire global Coincheck team for having accomplished so much at both the holding company and subsidiary levels in such a short period of time.

The professionalism and steady thoughtfulness and execution that they have brought and continue to bring to everything we do, I believe, bodes extremely well for the company's continued success and delivering on our paramount mission of being a leader in the industry and consistently enhancing shareholder value. Thank you again for your support and for joining our call. We now open it up to questions and look forward to continuing the dialogue.

Operator: At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press Star 1 now on your telephone keypad. To withdraw yourself from the queue, you may press Star 2. We will take a question from Alex Markgraf of KeyBank Capital. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, Gary. Hi, Jason. Nice to speak with you both. A few questions, if I can. First, Gary, just on Aplo. Would you mind maybe talking about what the acquisition brings to Coincheck and how you think about integration priorities with the deal recently closed? Maybe just speak to sort of competitive positioning of Aplo versus some of the other digital asset prime brokers out there.

Gary Simanson, Chief Executive Officer, Coincheck Group: Sure. It is clearly our first entry into Europe. We deemed it as a highly compelling and lower-risk opportunity. We believe it is an incredibly experienced, sophisticated, and committed team that knows the space very well, has very deep relationships with their customer base and with banks in France, institutions, and that means a lot to us. Where we see that area going in crypto, which is really the prime brokerage area at institutional servicing, is all about liquidity and capability in executing better than anyone else. We think that they have got a tech stack that is highly competitive and capable in that regard. We are more focused right now on synergies than integration. When people talk about integration, they typically think about integrating data systems or different parts of the back office. We believe they are a quality standalone company that offers synergies with CCI and NFT going forward.

One of the areas, of course, to look at is further liquidity providing. We do believe there will be some other synergies between the companies and also perhaps a sister company, 3iQ of Monex. That is kind of the rationale. You ask where their competitive advantage is. It is really the relationships they have. The quality of what they bring is a word of mouth. Having the close relationships with Sovereign Fund in France and other banks, we think bodes well for future opportunities.

Thanks, Gary. Maybe just to follow up on one of the comments you ended with around the volatility in October, the liquidation event. Curious to get your perspective on any sort of learnings or changes that you think need to sort of work their way through the ecosystem, having done a postmortem around that event, or if things sort of function properly in your view.

Yeah. It's interesting. One could probably write a book or talk for hours on what occurred in a couple of these different events. It's always disconcerting when someone experiences a cyber breach or other penetration of their network, and everybody needs to be just continuously vigilant. You wish that some of the entities out there were doing that, perhaps with more vigilance. With respect to the other event that occurred that led to, you could say, liquidity issues and liquidations, there's still a lot of conversation going on whether DeFi handled it better than the traditional, centralized, still postmortem, where exactly what happened. There's a question of how much transparency there will fully be with how some participants in the market handled the event.

Clearly, there's further work to be done to make sure that things that are supposedly stable and won't break the par don't break par. With respect to our companies directly, when I say our, whether it was NFT, Next Finance, or CCI, Coincheck, or Aplo, we really saw no impact from those events, which I think is part of why I made the comment about the quality of people and professionalism of the company. Also, one could look to perhaps, while every market has its volatility, because of the regulatory structure in Japan, there might be more stability in some areas than you might find in other markets.

Great. I appreciate the color there. Maybe just if I can squeeze one more in for Jason on gross margin %. Just looking at the sort of sequentially lower level, help me understand that, Gary. I heard your comments on, I think, consistent spread through the quarter, also presumably some benefit from staking in there, but did see that % step down. Just maybe help me understand the nuance or the mechanics of that in the second quarter.

Jason Sandberg, Chief Financial Officer, Coincheck Group: Yeah. To answer one of the questions or at least a component, our average stake rate for the quarter was 3.3%. Pretty consistent quarter over quarter. We have a little bit of noise if you're looking at our total revenue number versus kind of the marketplace trading volume figure. The revenue number might have some hedging transactions and other zero-margin transactions, which we really do not consider as part of our sort of our gross margin and sort of our net revenue amount. We had a relatively consistent take rate, really just a composite of the coin mix for the quarter.

Okay. Great. Thank you. I appreciate all the color here.

Operator: There are no further questions at this time. This does conclude our question and answer session, as well as our conference call for today. You may now disconnect your lines. Everyone, have a good evening.

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