Earnings call transcript: MDB Capital Holdings Q2 2025 sees stock dip post-earnings

MDB Capital Holdings (MDBH) reported its second-quarter 2025 earnings on August 27, revealing a challenging period with negative earnings per share (EPS) of -0.83 and a revenue loss of 1.9 million USD. The company’s stock reacted negatively, dropping 7.69% to 3.36 USD during the trading session. The current stock price is 3.45 USD, representing a 63% decline from its 52-week high of 9.42 USD. According to InvestingPro data, the stock has lost over 58% in value over the past year, with particularly weak price momentum scores.

Key Takeaways

• MDB Capital Holdings reported a negative EPS and revenue for Q2 2025.
• The stock price declined by 7.69% following the earnings release.
• The company is focusing on the lucrative metabolic health market.
• MDB plans to spin off its PatentVest operations in February 2026.
• Strategic partnerships with angel investment groups are being strengthened.

Company Performance

MDB Capital Holdings faced a challenging quarter, with significant cash utilization of $3.4 million in the first half of 2025 and no completed financings. InvestingPro analysis indicates the company is quickly burning through cash, though it maintains a strong current ratio of 42.56, suggesting ample liquidity to meet short-term obligations. The company is shifting focus towards more profitable ventures, particularly in the metabolic health sector, while reducing emphasis on early-stage life science companies without revenue momentum.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: -1.9 million USD (decline)
• Earnings per share: -0.83 (negative)
• Enterprise value: Approximately $35 million
• Holdings: 4 million shares of ExoZyme (valued at $40 million), over 2 million shares of HeartBeam plus warrants

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, MDB Capital Holdings’ stock fell by 7.69% to 3.36 USD, reflecting investor concerns over the negative financial results. Despite the recent decline, the stock trades at a P/E ratio of 6.02, suggesting a relatively low earnings multiple compared to peers. For deeper insights into MDBH’s valuation and 8 additional key metrics, investors can access the comprehensive Pro Research Report available on InvestingPro.

Outlook & Guidance

MDB Capital Holdings is targeting 2-4 deals per year and plans to distribute equity holdings to shareholders. The company is expanding its investor community and focusing on companies with near-term inflection points. An investor summit is scheduled for September 4th, which may provide further insights into future strategies.

Executive Commentary

CEO Chris Marlette emphasized the company’s strategic direction, stating, "We’re not throwing the baby out with the bathwater," highlighting a balanced approach to innovation and traditional investments. President George Brandon remarked, "Public venture has become the new thing that’s been around 28 years," underscoring the company’s long-standing presence in the public venture market.

Risks and Challenges

• Continued negative financial performance could impact investor confidence.
• The lack of completed financings may affect cash flow and operational capabilities.
• Low trading volume for portfolio companies might indicate limited market interest.
• The transition towards metabolic health markets poses execution risks.
• Macroeconomic pressures and market volatility could affect strategic initiatives.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about potential "vulture" opportunities in life sciences, the low trading volume of portfolio companies, and the PatentVest spin-off plans. The company reassured that MDB shareholders remain a priority in future offerings.

Full transcript - MDB Capital Holdings LLC (MDBH) Q2 2025:

Tony, Moderator/Conference Operator, MDB Capital Holdings: Update conference call. We appreciate you joining us this afternoon. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. Before we begin with our formal presentation, I’d like to remind everyone of several important things. First, a question and answer session will follow the formal presentation.

If you have questions during the presentation, you can type them into the chat to be answered during the q and a session. Questions can only be seen by the moderator. And as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Please remember that statements made on this call and webcast may contain provisions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward looking. These forward looking statements represent our current judgment on what the future holds, and they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.

You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward looking statements, which reflect our opinions only as the date of this presentation. Please be aware that we are not obligating ourselves to revise or publicly release results of any revision to these forward looking statements in light of any new information or future events. Throughout today’s discussion, we will attempt to present some important factors relating to our business that may affect our predictions. You should also review our most current Form 10 Q for a more complete discussion of these factors and other risks, particularly those under the heading risk factors. A press release detailing these results, which crossed the wire this afternoon, is available in the investor relations section of our website, mdb.com.

Also, a replay of this call will be provided on mdb.com. Your host today is Chris Marlette, chief executive officer and cofounder of MDB Capital Holdings, and he’s joined by George Brandon, MDB Capital president and head of community development. Chris will lead the update on our second quarter ending 06/30/2025. So at this time, I’d like to turn the call over to Chris Marlette. Alright.

Thank you, Tony.

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: Well, thank you all for joining today, and I wanted to, welcome George to the call. George is gonna be, talking to what we’re doing on community development and other areas. And so I’ll kick it off with the financial perspective. So as you all know, our revenue is largely from financings, and we didn’t complete any financings this quarter. So we had some revenue from from Pat Invest as we are, you know, starting to scale those operations.

And our goal is really to offset operating expenses with financings, and then the equity in the finance companies and our big idea companies is really the up upside for for shareholders. And so we we incubate as we incubate more of these, you know, the current revenue from launching more developed companies really offsets any sort of the cash operations of of the company. And there’s always this balance of, you know, how much equity, are we looking to generate versus fee income. And it’s a balance, and we’re trying to be cautious. We’re also trying to balance, making sure we have enough companies so that our our our community can effectively build a public venture portfolio.

For the first six months of twenty twenty five, we had cash utilization of $3,400,000, And we expect to be closing some financings in the February ’25 to reduce or eliminate that cash usage. So let’s talk about where we’re headed, not so much where we’ve been, because it’s been a challenging last sort of year for all of us as shareholders. And I think that what’s happening and what we’re feeling is very different from what’s being reflected in the stock price right now. So all I can tell you is that public venture is the momentum is really building, and we’re super confident in what we’ve built. And we really do have the most sort of unique and capable platform to curate and deliver these market leading companies that really have this sort of 10 to 100 bagger potential.

And we’ve been doing it for twenty eight years, we recently published a report that talks about the 17 companies we’ve kind of conceptualized and taken public. And I think it gives a really good overview, which we’ve been, really, you know, presenting to a whole new group of investors that have never seen public venture before, and we’re really getting a great response. And, yeah, what what we’re really finding is is that they see this as an unbelievable asset class to position investing you know, their investments in going forward. But we also recognize the key bottlenecks that we really have kind of, you know, realized what’s happening over the last, you know, year. And and and quite frankly, the investor hesitation towards deep tech life science investments right now has been, you know, quite obvious.

What’s happened is is that this this has been the absolute worst segment of the market, and we, you know, we understand that that’s where we’ve basically made you know, created billions of dollars of wealth for investors and for founders and for people who have worked in MDB over the years. And that’s just not been the place to be. The other thing we’ve recognized is that as we start to scale the number of companies we bring out, we need to scale up our investor community to really, you know, support, you know, these high quality opportunities we’re creating. And I can tell you that our team has done a phenomenal job on on all fronts, and we’re you know, our our our analyst team as far as curating and and standing up new opportunities, which I wanna talk to you about in a second, and then really expanding our investor community. George and his team has been doing a phenomenal job, and so we’ll get into that.

So to really realize the promise of what we build as a platform, we really need to bring investors what they wanna invest in now. And and I think that the opportunities in profitable growing early stage companies that still have an asymmetric return potential, and public market liquidity is really what we’re hearing people want. And thankfully, we’re very well positioned to add value to these opportunities beyond life sciences. And in addition, obviously, we need to expand our distribution as I touched on. And we’re reaching out to these new investors and partners, and you’ll hear more about that from George as we get into it.

But that’s going incredibly well. And what we’ve realized is we provide a really attractive alternative for allocating capital versus sort of traditional venture or angel investing. So the product mix, what we’ve learned is, again, life early stage life science companies lacking revenue, momentum, or profitability are really struggling. You know, these companies that we’ve done are taking longer to develop, as is many times the case, but in different markets, the markets were a lot more forgiving. We funded these companies at what we believe super attractive valuations, but you know, obviously the market has to you know, value that, and right now it’s just not that’s just not been the case.

And so investors want to really balance, you know, quicker returns with their venture bets, and I think that that’s why we’re starting to expand the universe of companies we’re looking at. The other thing we realized is that profitable growing companies with revenue momentum are super highly valued in the current market. And that’s really good news, because I think that that’s gonna have a profound impact on how companies look to raise capital or to see their companies highly valued. That’s not happening in the private venture world today, or in private equity. And so we think more and more of these kind of exciting growth companies are gonna go public.

And so we see a big opportunity on the horizon, and our team has done a great job of sort of curating more and more of those companies. So, as we expand our product mix to include these profitable companies with revenue momentum, we think that, you know, we’re gonna get a lot better, you know, reception from all the various investor groups that we’re talking to. And, you I think that today, we announced our first profitable company that we’re going to be taking public. It was filed with the SEC, which we’ll talk to a little bit here in a bit. But we’re still continuing to focus on companies that can become new leaders and create new categories.

We’re not just doing companies that are profitable. These are still companies that still have that 10 to 100 bagger potential that are blazing new, you know, new trails and and creating new businesses. So it really we believe will enable us to get more deals done by expanding the investor interest beyond life sciences. So to that end, today, we filed prospectus for what I think is gonna be potentially the next, you know, monster beverage type opportunity in the in the beverage space. And what these what Buddha Juice has done is created this new category called ultra fresh.

Today, grocery stores don’t have, don’t have fresh juice because, they have to juice inside the stores. There’s a shelf life issue, and these guys have figured out how to do centralized juicing, and they’re getting big traction with big chains. It’s it’s super exciting. They’re growing rapidly, and we expect great things from them. I don’t wanna spend too much time on it, but it’s been a it’s been a great sort of experience in working with the CEO who I’ve known, and they were very much looking forward towards going into or being, you know, partnering with private equity.

And they had some, you know, experience with private equity in the past, and I think they really saw that the public markets are a better place for them to really grow their company, raise additional capital to meet the expansion that that they see coming in the, you know, the very near future. So look forward to talking to you more about that company as we take the company out and complete the IPO. So again, we really believe that the public market is the place to be, and we see a dramatic shift occurring away from private equity and traditional venture, and we’re hearing that more and more from the RIAs and family offices and other investors that we talk to. You know what’s happened over the last twenty years is we’ve seen up to 35% of these portfolios of these family offices allocated to private equity and public venture, excuse me, traditional venture, and we see that as being, they’re all coming to the same conclusion at the same time that that’s not the place to be. And so they’re all looking, you know, they all see the benefits of having liquid securities that are priced at you know, transparent pricing as opposed to the opacity that exists in in in private markets.

And I also think that the entrepreneurs who run the companies are recognizing the drawbacks of private equity and traditional venture. And we’re, you know, we’re helping them to understand that they can go public and actually do it in an efficient way and and and not believe all the things that have been said to them, which is it’s super expensive to be public and and companies die when they get in the public markets, The companies that are growing and and and profitable are doing incredibly well in the public markets right now. And what’s what’s really encouraging is not many underwriters have the process or platform to take these real stage companies public like we do. So we think we we represent a really unique opportunity for these companies to go public, and we’re we’re having great conversations with these people. And and I think that they’re in companies, and they’re finding that that this is a very exciting alternative for them.

We also you know, we’re not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and we really started to think about what are we gonna do in life sciences, and how are we where are we going to focus our efforts, and where is really the big upside. You know, we’ve had you know, oncology got very, very overinvested, there were too many companies and and became very, very difficult in oncology. And and so we really have started to think about, you know, where is the future in life sciences? And we really believe that metabolic health is really the biggest opportunity of our of of our time. And metabolic health is is such a, you know, gargantuan opportunity that is now just being scratched upon the surface with what we’re seeing with GLP one drugs.

And, you know, I can’t overemphasize enough that if you look at the drugs for both diabetes and for obesity, and other therapies, we’re looking at probably 2 to $300,000,000,000, which dwarfs all of the other pharmaceutical markets. And so we see this as one of the greatest opportunities. Obviously, there’s a lot of other people investing in things like crypto and AI and other things. We think that AI is going to be a big driver in healthcare, but we really believe that what’s gonna happen in metabolic health is perhaps the biggest opportunity we’ve ever seen, and our team has done a great job of curating what we believe could be really some of the greatest opportunities in metabolic health. And we’re really focusing on this area, which we call the metabolic switch for these 100 bagger potentials.

These are all, you know, kind of companies that we think can represent multibillion dollar valuations, and we’re bringing them to, you know, to our community at at, you know, very modest valuations. So we’ve been out introducing Pollux Bio, which was built by a team that we worked with at prevention that, you know, we had a great, you know, result with that got a drug approved for type one diabetes and was purchased by Sanofi for 2,900,000,000.0. They came back to us with something that we find very exciting, that could be the first small molecule drug to really regenerate beta cells, which are the pancreatic cells that that generate insulin. So this could be a first of its kind drug that would be, you know, a massive win. All these things, all these companies have, in our mind, very near term potential.

These aren’t long term, you know, propositions that take a long term to figure out if they’re valuable. So with a a modest amount of money, we believe that PollEx can can generate, hopefully, positive data that can generate, you know, a significant readout and significant value. As some of you may know, ExoZyme, we we launched and took public, has launched a new subsidiary called NCTX. And NCTX is is a unbelievable potential value driver in that they have figured out how to bio manufacture NCT. And that has not been done.

And we see that NCT is one of the most promising platforms, both as a nutraceutical and a pharmaceutical, to mobilize pathogenic organ fat and both in the liver and the pancreas. And it works via a completely new approach using mitochondria to to effectively mobilize fat as opposed to basically, you know, preventing people from eating like the GLP-one drugs do. And then lastly, GT Metabolic is a company that has what we think is an unbelievable metabolic switch through magnets that basically does incisionless, very faster laparoscopic procedure to do what they call a duodenal bypass. You swallow a magnet, it basically enables what we call an anastomosis, and they have super impressive patient data that basically, you know, in early patient studies, switches off diabetes, and also, causes sustained weight loss. We’re super excited about all three of these, and we think all these have multibillion dollar potential.

And I really wanna thank the analyst team for all the hard work they’ve done to not only discover these, but, you know, put them together, and we’ll be presenting all of these at our September 4 event. Now talking bit more about expanding our community, and I’m gonna let George maybe talk to this a little bit. Or do you want you want me to talk to it, George? You wanna go ahead?

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: Well, I mean, you know, I one, I it’s something I work with every day, and I I think what Chris is is alluding to, and it’s very obvious, is that what what we’re seeing in venture and private equity is there is a confluence of of moving to liquidity. Their their venture right now is constipated. We just put out a paper that Will Rossellini and Javier of Pat Invest put out yesterday about the the AI and the rise of deep tech and really the decline of the SaaS model software. And, you know, AI is doing a number on a number of different areas. It’s really positive to what we’re trying to do and where we’re going.

And so I think family offices, RIAs, they’re figuring it out. They figured it out, you know, couple years ago, and they’re not willing to really look for the what was a seven to ten year hold going to ten to eleven to twelve. And so public venture has become we’re kind of the new new thing that’s been around twenty eight years. And so we’re coming up with a number of different models to help not only these angel groups, but really RIAs and family office to be able to to invest and and play along with our model over and above just being a shareholder in MDB and being able to participate in everything we do. That said, Chris, why don’t you go ahead and talk a little bit about, I mean, the very fact that, you know, you got invited to a family office conference.

I don’t wanna give all the details on that because I don’t have them all. Is that something you can and I’ll come back and talk about this the Karatsu announcement we just announced.

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: Sure. No. It’s it’s it’s interesting. George and and team has really been out talking to a number of RIAs, and, really, we’re just figuring out, you know, how do how do people look at what we’ve done, our track record, etcetera. And it’s great when, you know, when your stocks are down, you don’t feel so good.

Right? And we haven’t felt so good about, you know, MDB stock being down and and our stocks being down. But when we really look at critically at ourselves, and we looked at it and we said, you know, we’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, our job is to be in the right place at the right time. And so but as we talk about what we do and the logic behind it, we’ve been getting unbelievable reception.

We have a, I think, a $150,000,000,000 RIA that’s invited me to come talk about public venture in a couple weeks. And and as we talk to them, they’re you know, all of their clients have been allocated towards traditional venture and and private equity, which has been just as bad as being in biotech in the public markets the the last, last couple years. And so they see public venture as the future, and so it’s pretty exciting. And, you know, I think that we’re gonna be out, you know, talking to a lot more of these folks, and we’re getting just unbelievable reception, which is, you know, feels good, when your stock’s down. So, George, I’ll I’ll turn it over to George to talk about our new our new partnership, which I’m super excited about.

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: Yeah. We’ve been working on this for a while, and and, we just made the announcement earlier today around noon eastern. So if you haven’t seen the press release, it’s certainly available. It’s you can you can find it. It’ll be on our website, but also on really any PR site, financial site.

You can you can get more details. Koretsu is is really one of the largest. They’re unusual. And we’re talking about Karetsu a Karetsu Mid Atlantic. MST is Mid Atlantic, Southeast, and Texas.

Karetsu is probably one of the largest angel groups in the world. They’re unusual in the fact if you take a look at the dollars they put into early stage investments, it’s it dwarfs really all the others by a factor of about six or seven times. And so the the the gentleman who runs Cretsu is a a former Safeguard Scientific employee. Safeguard Scientific, if if you don’t know Safeguard, we really stand on the the shoulders of the founders of Safeguard, which was really one of the first public venture, publicly traded models. And Howard Lubert is the the the Crexu director.

When I found out, he actually came out of Safeguard, found the first big deal for Safeguard, which was Novell, and they put in somewhere between $1,920,000,000 dollars and pulled out a billion and a half. He gets public venture. Really, the first angel director, and I’ve talked to a lot of them, that really understands how public venture can work. So we he they’re very excited about this partnership. They’ve formed a new group called IPO IPO Angels.

We’re gonna look at somewhere between two to four deals a year. They’re gonna help build a syndicate of angel groups. You know, in in the nation, North America, and and includes Canada, and we’re talking to some Canadian groups as well, There are 15,000 active angels less than there were five years ago. But and out of those 15,000, I think there’s 200 groups that are associated and affiliated with the Angel Capital Association, ACA, which is the overall association. And really to try to go out and hit each one of those up is a is a is it would be a big effort.

Try done some of that, emailed some of that, sat on a podcast with a group that we’ve been working with, Tech Coast Angels out of Orange County, and it’s been a great relationship. We’ll continue that relationship. But to have someone who understands public venture and Crestu, you know, MST and Howard that really is gonna put his efforts in building out a syndicate of launching, you know you know, the companies that really Chris Chris is talking about expanding to, companies that are near profitability or or or profitable that we can take into the public markets. Those angels are are holding those investments that they make for, I think, the average is twelve years. And no one’s got twelve years anymore.

We’re all getting older. And when you can take a look at where we’re going from, you know, a round to IPO within, you know, twelve, eighteen months, they don’t they they think that’s miraculous. And so we’re gonna work with them very closely. It’s now we’ve got one group that helps build that quilt of angel groups. I think this is a great group.

There’s a confluence going on where they’re moving later, and then we’re talking to a a couple of groups on the micro cap public space that is looking for not only companies that can be in the in the micro cap space and do well, but that they could take advantage of QSBS 12 o two. And if you’re not familiar with QSBS 12 o two, you need to write it down. You need to look at it. You need to tell your accountant about it because everything we do usually is QSBS 12 o two. And the big beautiful bill just changed the rules and the benefit of these type of investors.

They’ve moved the the the target from you got to have a minimum of $50,000,000 or a maximum of $50,000,000 of assets, not market cap, assets. They moved it to 75,000,000 to qualify. That is really gonna qualify pretty much everything that we ever look at. And they’ve changed from what was a five year hold for 10 the greater of 10 times your money or $10,000,000 to a three, four, and five year opportunity for tax benefits. This is a major situation that’s really plays into into our hands and certainly will cause family offices and wealth managers to take it very serious.

So that’s about all I got. I mean, that’s you know, we are gonna continue to expand the community. It’s really important. When you’re doing one deal every eighteen to twenty four months, it was pretty easy to take the community we’ve had and put those deals up. When you’re gonna go to, you know, two, three, four, five, six deals a year, we’ve gotta expand our community multiples.

And we’ve got some things in place, obviously. Today’s announcements is one of those opportunities. I’ll kick it back to you, Chris.

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: Sure thing. You know, I think we touched on RIAs and and, you know, their their eagerness to talk to us and try and figure out how to fit what we do into into their platforms. Obviously, some of these guys that are managing, you know, multibillions, we’re not putting that much to work. But I think that what they see is that this is something that you don’t have to allocate, you know, 35% of someone’s net worth to. You can allocate a very small percentage and and make a meaningful make it a a meaningful investment for for their for their clients, and they’re really in the business of curating the best stuff.

They can’t be left out of, you know, stuff that’s working. And so they’re they’re they’re really curators of investments and managers of investments in in general. And we’re really the what we believe is the best curators of these of these the leaders of tomorrow, these potential 100 baggers that we’ve focused on for our entire, you know, existence, if you will. So, the other thing that we’re looking at quite, you know, quite closely and we’re we’re there’s been a lot of discussion with our group is sort of these new age distribution platforms. And and what’s happened is regulation we we made a bet when we first went public that we needed to be a clearing firm because regulation was going that they were gonna, you know, shut down micro cap.

Well, obviously, things changed dramatically. Now we’re talking about tokenization of equities, and we’re you know, regulation the you know, as a result of the election, regulation’s gone exactly the other way. Reggae plus, which I never thought was gonna survive, because I just didn’t see that advertising offerings online and on TV and things like that, we’re gonna we’re gonna work long term. Exactly the opposite’s happened. And what’s happened is Reg A plus is is happening.

We’re seeing, you know, very large offerings happen using Reg A plus. And and what we’re we now realize is that Reg A plus is is quite frankly, it’s a reality. And there’s no reason why we can’t, you know, utilize Reg A plus and other distributions like platforms like that going forward. And and then there’s also things like Robinhood and all these other, companies who are starting to participate in IPOs that other underwriters are are doing. And so we we historically have never worked with any of those kind of folks before.

We’ve never looked at it as a as a real opportunity. But now we’re out actually talking to these people, and, again, we’re having a great reception in the sense that they look at what we do as being, you know, sort of master creators of, or curators of these opportunities that they see the the logic of partnering with us. So we’re hoping to see that we can also partner with what I call these new age distribution platforms, and, we’re making a lot of progress in on that as well. So the last major theme that I wanna communicate before, before, you know, we we get to summation is is basically, we’ve, as we’ve been scaling up PatentVest and, you know, getting that operational as a law firm, you know, our revenues are starting to scale. We’re getting a lot more momentum from from companies.

Now that we sort of figure out exactly how to position the firm, we’re we’re starting to add clients at a much more rapid rate. And what’s, you know, become, you know, very clear to us is that the practice of IP law is gonna change dramatically. And, the emergence of AI is not just impacting IP law, but I think it will have potentially more impact on IP law than than any other space in in law. And luckily, we we did, become this, Arizona business, you know, law firm, which enables us to have non lawyer ownership, but also enables us to partner with, not only companies, but lawyers and also partnering litigation as well as IP development like no other law firm can. Traditional law can’t do that.

Also, law is very much wrestling with what do they do with AI. And the old law firm models of the billable hour is not what companies really wanna hear anymore. The companies wanna hear about value creation. They don’t wanna hear about how many, you know, how many hours you work for them. So we think there’s a massive transformation happening in law, but specifically IP law.

And so we’ve made the decision that as that sort of new big idea of this law firm is developed, it’s ready to be spun out as its own independent public company. We really really believe that this is a a transformational shift, and so we are now making preparation to spin that off as its own company and take it public sometime in 02/1926. And and and while we’ll still be connect very connected to PatentVest, well, obviously, the the processes that we developed to, you know, to really develop sort of IP and technology leadership for these companies, we’re still gonna be employing within MDB, but we really believe that Patvest, is gonna be a very valuable entity in its own right, and we wanna spin that off to shareholders and develop that as its own independent business separate and aside from what we’re doing in public venture. So we’re super excited about it. We’re putting together the the plans, the team, etcetera, to to, you know, also monetize that as an investment for the shareholders, which currently, you know, is is certainly not being recognized in the in the in the value of the shares of m d of MDB currently.

So so all of this, we we really we’ve now we’ve I’m sure you’ve heard about our investor summit that’s happening next week at Old Parkland in Dallas. We have I think what what what is the number of seats we have for the for the

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: We have a 140, and we’re we’re right there.

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: Mhmm.

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: So it’s

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: So we’re gonna are we gonna record the conference? I I guess I should ask.

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: Well, we’re gonna record parts of it. It’s not gonna be streamed live. And and, you know, it there’ll be an opportunity to go back and listen to presentations from a recording.

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: So we’re gonna have all of our existing companies are gonna be there as well as these new opportunities, and we’re gonna talk about what we’re doing in metabolic health. We’re we’re gonna have a a special presentation from Buttigieg to kick off their roadshow, and we’re also gonna have our new friends from the and, you know, IPO angels be there. And I think it should be a great event. So for, you know, those shareholders, if if you haven’t already, you know, registered, you should go ahead and register. And I think we’ll look forward to seeing you next week, and I think it’ll be a great event.

And any other words about the event, George?

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: Well, we also have Matt Burris. If you’re not familiar with Matt Burris, it’s b u r r I s. It’s the Venture Studio Forum. What’s happening is these Venture Studios, which you may not be aware of or familiar with, I know we weren’t, he is one of the lead leads in that. He’s creating a Venture Studio kinda Morningstar report.

We our back test our our track record puts us at up at the top of any deep tech venture studios. And a venture studio really is a firm that finds an idea, puts the board together, puts the management together, puts the financing together, and help these companies get commercialized and and to an exit or to a liquidity event. You know? We’ve we’ve been a venture studio all along. We just didn’t know what a venture studio was.

So once we found out we were one of the top venture studios in the world, we thought, yeah, we’re a venture studio. Love venture studios. We’ll always be a venture studio.

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: So

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: he’ll be there and presenting. He’d be great. If you’re if you’re gonna be there, you wanna meet Matt Burris as well as as Howard of Koretzu. Other they’ll they’ll have some visibility of where we’re going in both of those areas.

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: Alright. So to sum up, we are, really, you know, the team has done a a great job of of really figuring out how we want to move forward, expand our our the potential, and really leverage our platform, you know, that we’ve built now. And so, you know, our team has done a great job of expanding our product mix to really understand and meet, you know, sort of investor demand. We really, Georgia’s team has done a great job of of really positioning ourselves well with not only, you know, these angel networks, but RIAs. And as we, you know, curate these the best early stage companies, you know, that have really market leading potential, I think we’re, you know, we’re gonna con we’re gonna have, you know, great success, you know, going forward based upon what you know, the way the optics of the way things are looking right now from all the companies that we are working with currently.

And then lastly, really leveraging our unique asset and patent vest. And as it becomes an independent public company, I think it’s gonna create a lot of value for the m to b shareholders. So, with that, I’m gonna turn it over to, back to Tony for questions.

Tony, Moderator/Conference Operator, MDB Capital Holdings: Okay. Well, thanks, Chris. If you would like to ask a question, please type your question into the chat. You can find the chat down at the bottom of the Zoom window. Use that button and and go ahead and type it in.

Remember, only the moderator can see the questions, so, we’ll be able to take them from there. We’ll give you just a second for those of you who haven’t taken a minute to, to bring a question in. And, Chris, give me one sec. Let me queue them up. And here we go.

So, our first question, are there vulture opportunities in your core life science market?

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: You know, vulture’s a as they say, an ugly word. Maybe not ugly, but it it’s, I I think listen. What happens in tough markets is the opportunities get better. Right? When when there’s hot money around like there was when interest rates went to zero, there was too much money around, you know, so you didn’t really have great opportunities.

And that’s why, you know, after COVID and all the stocks ran up, we kinda took our foot off the the gas pedal in life science. We I get you know, we got back too we got back in too early. We thought it had had dropped enough. And, you know, I think we were a bit early, and, you know, some of the companies we backed, you know, are again, it was just it was the companies are doing phenomenal, from a from a technical perspective, but, it’s not reflected in in in the market price. So being too early is the same as being wrong.

You know, we love the technology that they’re doing a great job, but if the stock goes down, you’re wrong. Right? Well, now, you know, what we’re seeing is valuations are super reasonable. So, yes, you know, if if you wanna look at it from a vulture perspective, I I think there’s there’s some great opportunities. If you look at what we’re doing with Pollux, we’re take you know, we’re basically doing this funding at a 20,000,000 pre money valuation.

That’s super cheap. If we get a readout you know, we if if that you take that pill and you produce a bit more insulin, you know, you’re you’re talking about elephant country. That could be a multibillion dollar valuation. Again, there’s no promises here, but you at least have that asymmetric upside. That asymmetric upside did not exist, you know, three or four years ago and and before.

And so that asymmetric upside is really available today where it wasn’t available back then. Same thing with NCT and and what we’re gonna be doing with GT Metabolic. These are these valuations based on where they’re at are are super reasonable. And so, yes, I mean, in in a sense, there are. I don’t think that you know, the most important thing that you have to look at investing in life sciences, you know, is it gonna work?

That’s the most important thing. If it if it works, then it covers up a lot of things. But before, there were some things even if they worked, you wouldn’t make money. And, and so that’s changing. And so, yeah, I think there’s a huge opportunity, and we’re we have our finger on the pulse, and and I think we’re gonna continue to curate some of the best ones possible in that sector.

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: Hey, Tony. Let me pose the next question because, actually, you could be part of the answer for this question. I’d a really good question regarding, you know, IRPR, whether it’s MDBH or Exozyme or our portfolio companies. What’s What’s the plan? I mean, we’re seeing these companies, our companies, we’re seeing very little volume.

What’s the plan in order to as we execute on the model, what’s your thoughts, Chris? You’ve got a lot of experience in small cap, micro cap, low volume companies. What’s your thoughts on that, you know, that for the street to to learn about them, to get behind them, support them, and so we could see volume and liquidity go up in these names?

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: Yeah. Well, listen. I think the first thing you have to do right as any public company is you have to have your narrative correct. Right? In other words, you you have to recognize the environment that’s changed.

It’s it’s a different environment than what it was before. And so a lot of times, these companies have to come up with different strategies to basically say, hey. Listen. We’re gonna get through to the other side. We’re gonna get through to either commercialization or we’re gonna get through to a major inflection point technically.

And these companies are are doing that, and I think you’re gonna see them, you know, position themselves for success. In some cases, they may be cutting their budget down to to deal with this current market environment. In some cases, they’re gonna look to partner maybe a bit earlier than they normally would. They’re gonna adjust their business models and their narrative to reflect the environment. That’s that’s that’s job number one.

Number two is they’ve gotta focus on things that are that are near term. Right? They’ve gotta focus on, you know, inflection points that are super near term, and make it super clear to investors. And I think, strategically, all of our companies are doing that, and they’re I think they’re they’re doing a super good job. And I think over the next, you know, ninety, hundred and twenty days, you’re gonna see evidence of that.

As far as getting it on the radar screen, that is, you know, as you reposition it, you open it to a different, you know, audience of investors as well. And so I think it’s starting to happen. I mean, I think you can see, you know, volume really is a function of money coming into the asset class. Low volume, a lot of times, is a good is a good sign. It means that you might you’re you’re you’re you’re near the bottom.

Right? And then, you know, they they say price begets volume. And so I think that as you know, we’ve seen a couple of these, small biotechs that have good news go up dramatically. You know, one, one that we, you know, we were tracking and we almost did a financing for went up, like, 11 times in the last, you know, last month because they on on good news. So I think that some of these things are prime, and then the volume goes parabolic.

So some of these things are trading no volume, trading at very low prices, and then all of a sudden something happens. And next thing you know, you’ve got a ton of volume. So that’s the way I see it. I think that’s what’s what’s gonna end up happening. IR is, in my mind, has been overrated.

It’s it’s have a good narrative, get it in front of the people that you should that that care about it. I would tell you over the last two or three years, the problem major problem has been people don’t care about it. And, and that’s in venture and traditional venture and, you know, public venture in in the life science sector.

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: So let me go then to Tony because you’re, you know, on the marketing community side. Some of the efforts and what we’re doing is to get the story out. You know? I we’ve tried a lot of different things, and we’re gonna continue to try a lot of things, whether it’s influencers and on a particular name. But can you speak to that a little bit, Tony, what we’ve been doing?

Tony, Moderator/Conference Operator, MDB Capital Holdings: Yeah. I sure can. I I I think a couple things are are really important for us. Recognizing, as Chris just said, that that media loves success stories. Right?

And as the companies that we’re financing have their own success stories and are creating newsworthy newsworthiness in the marketplace, it it certainly helps MDB. But for us, being able to to have speaking opportunities like the one Chris is about to do in Boston in a couple of weeks, George, you’ve been out on the circuit speaking with with angel groups and and Matt Hayden being out there with RIAs and and big family office groups and things, getting in very highly targeted selected audiences where we get the opportunity to tell the MDB story at at a greater length than, you know, a fifteen second blurb blast on social media or whatever, I think is a really quality over quantity in that sense is really important to getting our story out there. Podcast that that the two of you have been on recently is another great example of an opportunity in a setting where we know we have interested investors and interested financial writers and financial media. Listening is another great place that we continue to mine, and we’re finding success in that. And then always, we’re working to find and create our own content.

And right now, George, you mentioned at the top of the the broadcast, PatentVest has been terrific about creating reports and really helping to give investors education and information that demonstrates the breadth and depth of what MDB does and what PatentVest does that really separates us in our diligence and our curation, and we fully intend to continue to do more of that and distribute it. So I would say those things are really the bedrock of what we’re doing. Obviously, the block and tackling among press releases, social media posting, things, of course, we’re gonna do that. But it’s really the quality and the depth, to our story that sets MDB apart.

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: So just the last part here, Chris, and we didn’t really talk about it, but I got a question. And we get questions on it all the time about what does the holding company own? What’s the kind of the plan to, you know, harvest, whether there’s, you know, assuming there’s gains there? And what’s the what’s your plan on a distribution? I think it’s always gotta be reviewed and kind of what you’re thinking and how we’re gonna, you know, proceed going forward as these companies some of, you know, some of these companies go to where we think they could go.

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: You know, I I think that listen. What we said when we went public and we’ve said consistently is is that, you know, I can tell you as a larger shareholder, I’d love to get a distribution. So, from my perspective, Exercise is our biggest position, and and I think that we’d like to distribute that out. We just made an announcement right now that we’re gonna spin out patent vest, you know, in some form or fashion and take it public. So, you know, our our my sense is is that 2026 is the right year for that.

I think that the trading volume in Exozymes has been so low that I think distributing it out right now before there’s really a big sort of event to happen with, Exozymes is probably I think the best time to do it is when when there’s good news on Exozymes.

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: And And you off the cuff just kinda give the holdings of the various holdings of the holding company right now?

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: Well, we have, we have roughly 4,000,000 shares of ExoZyme. So at current market, that’s, you know, close to $10. So, what, $40,000,000. And then we have, a numb don’t know the exact number of shares, but a couple million shares, I think, of

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: Yeah. It’s north of two.

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: Of of HeartBeam plus warrants. So and we have, and then we have, you know, patent vest as a we own a 100% of it, and that’ll be spun out. And and then, we have some smaller warrant positions that are not meaningful, but I think those are the the major positions. And so if you add up that, you know, it’s it’s a substantial number, and the idea is to, not keep that buried. I mean, right now, our our enterprise value at current market is, like, 35,000,000.

So it’s below, you know, significantly below our our the value of Exerzymes and our cash and and and other securities. And so, you know, I we don’t I think going forward, we’re not gonna really need much capital to operate as we do more financings that offsets our operating costs. So, really, it’s distribute out as much equity as we possibly can. And so, hopefully, in 02/1926, I think that’s kind of the year, makes sense. Yeah.

I think do it into a a stronger environment for mark microcap. And when these companies have a sound footing, then it’s you know, makes all the sense in the world to distribute it. We’ve always you know, I always tell people we started MDB with, when we, you know, when we started in 1997, we started with, like, you know, a few $100,000 and an idea. And I always tell people the rest is profit. You know?

We we we created, you know, multibillion dollar companies, with no capital. And so, you know, what we did do is scale up our operations to do more than more than, you know, one company every 18 months, and scaling up took, you know, it it increased our operating expenses. But, you know, we should be able to offset those operating expenses with, you know, fee income and and what have you. And and so I think that and and also becoming a clearing firm increased our OpEx a bit as well. So combination of scale, the clearing firm, and scaling up PatentVest, you know, it it increased our OpEx from, you know, roughly $5,000,000 a year to $10,000,000 a year.

But the great news is that intellectual capital created, like I said, multibillion dollar companies. And I don’t think we’re getting stupider. I think we’re getting smarter. So, but I can tell you, I I I felt pretty stupid the last few you know, last couple years, being involved in deep tech and biotech. And so, certainly, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like I said, or being too early is the same as being wrong.

So we gotta pivot to being right, and, that’s what we’re, we’re we’re hoping to do right now.

Tony, Moderator/Conference Operator, MDB Capital Holdings: So, Chris, to follow-up on your comments about PatentVest, the question here says, are you planning to take it public in the same way you have done all the others? Will MDBH remain a controlling or large shareholder in PatentVest? Again, we’re our our goal would be to, again, is, yeah, take it public. I think that, from my perspective, again, I’d like

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: to get it into the hands of the shareholders as fast as possible. There’s no real reason for MDB to control it, going forward. You know, if we spin it out, I’ll still have a pretty you know, existing shareholders also have a pretty good interest in it. And and so the goal would be to get as much of it into the shareholders’ hands as possible. But the exact plans as far as, exactly how we’re gonna take it public, whether it’s through through an IPO or through maybe just a distribution to shareholders.

That hasn’t been fully fully baked yet, but we’ll we’ll be announcing, you know, those plans as we develop it later this year.

Tony, Moderator/Conference Operator, MDB Capital Holdings: And here’s a pipeline question that came in. Are there other companies like Buddha Juice, being a nontraditional big idea type company currently in the MBB pipeline?

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: Yes. So, you know, what’s what’s what’s kind of fun is, you know, I’ve been feeling down. I’ve been feeling pretty you know, as our socks are down, I’m, like, not feeling so smart. But we we’ve had, you know, we’ve had a lot of calls from people. And, you know, the way Buddha came in, it was a relationship, and someone just asking me for advice, and that’s how it turned into an IPO.

Had one of our community members call me recently, and and he’s got a really exciting company. I can’t tell you the the the sector or what they do, but I’m super excited about it. It’s, it’s got, you know, significant revenue momentum and really exciting space. And, you know, he said to me, you know, Chris, listen. I you know, I think taking this company public makes all the sense in the world, and there’s nobody else I would take it to except MBB to take it public.

And that made me feel really good that, you know, twenty eight years of of of of working, doing what we’re doing, that people recognize that, you know, our reputation and and the value we can bring. But also GT Metabolic that’s gonna be at the conference. What an unbelievable story and opportunity. And, you know, someone like me that’s battled metabolic disease my whole life, you know, like, you know, roughly fifty percent of the country now is it’s a it’s a wicked, wicked, wicked. It is a disease.

Yeah. You know, you eat too much, right, and you’re overweight, but it’s way more complicated than that. And and GT Metabolic, again, Terry Tor, who’s the CEO of of GT Metabolic, he we he had been on the board of Pulse Biosciences that we took public. And, you know, he said, Chris, he goes, public venture. He goes, man.

He goes you know, he he’s talking to VCs. He’s talking to other people and what have you, strategics. And he said, you know, I think going public is the best thing for us. You know? And and, again, a relationship and an experience with our form of public venture is why he came to us.

And so it makes me feel real good that our reputation and our experience and, know, and rep and relationships that we’re seeing a lot of really cool things. So stay tuned. Whether it’s, GT or or or others, I think we’re gonna end up, having a deep pipeline. But more importantly and I think, I’m super excited because I believe you know, I’ve been hearing for the last twenty years, why would I go public? Why would I go public?

Why would I go public? I it’s for the first time in a long time that I’ve you know, these companies are walking in going, jeez. You know, everybody’s saying we should go public. And and so it’s it’s really it’s all changed. Right?

And it’s really what I see is kind of the death of traditional venture, at least in the small company space. You’re still seeing billion dollar deals happen in the big you you know, the big funds doing huge AI deals and things like that. But for these smaller opportunities where they where they don’t need a 100 or $200,000,000, those companies are struggling. You know, the v and the VCs are coming to us. Ironically, the VCs are coming to us also bringing Us deals.

So the whole game has changed from my from my perspective. And I think that, you know, we went from 8,000 public companies at the end of the Internet boom to 4,000 public companies today. It’s been the worst thing you could ever imagine for going public. But I think that, I’m a big believer that’s that shift is occurring. I sense it.

I’m not you know, I’m only right half the time. So, hopefully, this half, I’m right. And, and so, I think that, going public is gonna be the thing to do, and so we’re crazily we’re so well positioned for that wave that I think is gonna come. So You

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: know, there’s a there’s a question here about it. Are you looking locally in as we expand our focus, are we looking locally in the Dallas DFW area, which is an incredible area, and there’s a lot of venture studios here in venture? And the answer is absolutely. And I think, you know, the fact that we have our own fully clearing broker dealer, we’re not only looking at venture studios locally and Angel Groups locally in the Dallas area, but internationally that are coming to us that have a portfolio and are going like, we have mature companies. Could you help us take them public?

So I think the pipeline’s not an issue. For me, I’m all community. I’m about building the network. So that’s to me where the biggest issue is and the biggest opportunity for us to do. Once we build it, they they’re already here.

They aren’t even coming. They’re here. And, you know, certainly in the Dallas area, I think the fact that we’re taking a local company that’s very well known in Dallas public when it could have been private equity in Buddha Butter Juice, I think it’s gonna help it kind of expand our following and interest in what we’re doing in in the DFW area. Any comments on that, Chris? Does that sum it up?

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: No. You know, listen. I think that, you know, Dallas has traditionally not been a hotbed for life science or companies, but there’s there’s a lot of great companies in in Dallas. And I think that, you know, the there’s been a huge transition in the Dallas community. There there are, you know, some life science companies that have that have started to percolate in in the DFW area, but there’s so many other companies, and it’s a dynamic field.

I mean, you’ve got what’s happening in Dallas is is crazy from, you know, Goldman Sachs opening up and bringing in, what is it, 800 employees to Dallas. You’ve got, you know, so many people moving to Dallas. And you’re also seeing hedge funds, private equity. All these guys are sort of congregating in Dallas, and so it’s become, you know, a hotbed. I think we’re gonna see a lot of activity.

You know, we we’ve been very specific about what we do. So for the most part, you know, Dallas has not been a biotech community. So quite frankly, there wasn’t a lot of things to talk about with Dallas people. And, so I think that going forward, though, that’s gonna change, and and I think that we’re excited that we have a platform based here that I think can serve the market, but, you know, not just the Dallas market, but beyond.

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: Chris, we’re we’re at the end of our time here, and I wanna get this one question out. You know, it’s a question about, you know, in the future, do you see you have to be an MDB shareholder in order to participate in offerings, which would certainly be a great place to be for, you know, shareholders existing shareholders to MDB? How do you see that playing out?

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: Well, I I think it’s still the same thing. Right? In other words, we we’ve always you know, we’ve we’ve told everybody that, this is a community based effort. And and so, being a shareholder in MDB is you’re always gonna have priority over outside people to participate in offerings. That’s it it it hasn’t been a huge you know, when you’re when you’re doing life science companies that, you know, that are, you know, not the hottest part of the market, you know, being an MDB shareholder hasn’t been that critical.

But, you know, for those of you that have known MDB and participate in MDB historically, there were times where, you know, I was in the very uncomfortable position of getting phone calls from people begging me to get into offerings. Right? And

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: I like those days better, by the way.

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: And so, hopefully hopefully, there it’s it’s it’s coming around the corner again. And but you know, and so part of the reason for going public was we anticipated that to be the case. Right? And it hasn’t turned out that way in the short run. But, you know, going forward, that was the whole idea.

And so we’re you know, we have we have a long memory. We’re not gonna we’re not gonna go back on what we said. So, you know, being a shareholder is gonna be important to being, you know, for that.

George Brandon, President and Head of Community Development, MDB Capital Holdings: So Lastly, we’re leaving and that that was lastly, but now really lastly, we’re we’re there’s a number of patent vest questions. I am assuming as we get further down the road, we’re gonna have a a call just on the patent vest and this AI law firm to answer what the model is, how that works, how what we see the value drivers to be. Is that accurate?

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: Yes. I mean, the the the team you know, we’ve all been working on, you know, the business strategy for it, and it’s it’s pretty well developed. And I think you’ll we’re you know, I think we’re gonna be ready to present that to shareholders so they understand the value that that PatentVest represents. And and I think we’ve had a lot of discussions with patent lawyers that wanna join. We’ve had a lot of, you know, discussions with strategic partners to, you know, come in and be part of the fold.

So it’s it’s developing quickly, and and so I expect that we’ll be able to give some color on that here shortly to the shareholders.

Tony, Moderator/Conference Operator, MDB Capital Holdings: Okay. Alright. Chris, any, any closing remarks?

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: No. Thank you guys for hanging in there. It’s been it’s not been a a wonderful, you know, start to being a public company. Like I said, we’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I think, you know, we’re working real hard to be in the right place at the right time. And I think we’re, we’ve you know, the team has done a phenomenal job.

We you know, our from our team that you know, our analyst team and banking team that’s putting together deals and teaming these things up, they’re doing an awesome job, and I couldn’t be more proud of the work they’re doing. And, and I take total responsibility for being in wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not their fault. And and as far as community development is concerned, you know, George and Tony and and and and the whole the whole team as far as what’s going on there has done a phenomenal job, and we’re, you know, really expanding, beyond our historical MDB community and and really getting out there and seeing how do we really scale so that we can bring, you know, several investments to people a year. And the whole team at Pat Invest that’s really catalyzed and figured out how to to create a real opportunity with that.

So I couldn’t be prouder of all the efforts of everybody, but it’s time to go put some points on the scoreboard. We gotta go win. So, again, I appreciate all of you for sticking in there and, over, you know, what’s not been a great time. So

Tony, Moderator/Conference Operator, MDB Capital Holdings: thank you, everybody, and this will conclude our call today. Thank you.

Chris Marlette, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MDB Capital Holdings: Thanks. Bye bye.

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