Hyperion DeFi - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Transcript

Speaker 2

Ladies and gentlemen, greetings and welcome to Hyperion DeFi Inc. second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. If anyone requires operator assistance during the conference, please signal the operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Eric Rybna from Lifesci Advisors. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Thank you and good afternoon, and welcome to Hyperion DeFi Inc.'s second quarter 2025 earnings conference call and audio webcast. With me today are Hyperion DeFi Inc.'s Chief Executive and Principal Financial Officer, Michael Rowe, and Chief Investment Officer, Hyunsu Jung. This afternoon, we issued a press release announcing financial results for the three months ended June 30, 2025. We encourage everyone to read today's press release as well as Hyperion DeFi Inc.'s quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2025, which was just filed with the SEC. The company's press release and quarterly report are also available on our website at www.hyperiondefi.com. In addition, this conference call is being webcast on the company's website and will be archived and available for replay there for future reference.

Please note that certain information discussed on the call today is covered under the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. We caution listeners that during the call, Hyperion DeFi Inc.'s management will make forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those implied or stated by these forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with the company's business. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, which are described in more detail in our annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. This conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of this live broadcast, August 13, 2025. Hyperion DeFi Inc. undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call, except as may be required by applicable securities law.

With that said, I'd like to turn the call over to Michael Rowe, Chief Executive. Michael?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Eric, and welcome everyone to our second quarter 2025 results conference call, and our first as Hyperion DeFi Inc. As reflected in our corporate rebranding and name change that we implemented last month, we have some truly exciting updates to share. I'd like to start today by reminding all of our shareholders that we have an annual meeting coming up on Monday, August 18th. As we move forward with our new strategy, which has already received an overwhelmingly positive response from many of you, we have several important proposals up for vote that are essential to executing on our new vision. With such a large and engaged retail shareholder base, every vote truly matters to ensure we can keep our momentum going. If you haven't yet cast your ballot, I encourage you to do so as soon as possible.

Your participation will help us advance these initiatives efficiently and cost-effectively, allowing us to remain fully focused on delivering the growth and value that we all believe in. If you're not sure how to make yourself heard and cast your vote, please send an email to [email protected]. Eric will make sure that you get those instructions, and thank you. The transformation that we have undergone over the past two months has been nothing short of remarkable. Recall that earlier this year, we embarked as Inovia on a process to evaluate a broad range of strategic alternatives to drive shareholder value. In June, we announced that we have entered into a $50 million private placement with accredited institutional investors for the purpose of launching a cryptocurrency-based treasury reserve.

I, along with my fellow board members, concluded that the establishment of a cryptocurrency-based treasury reserve was by far and away the most attractive alternative for the company. This innovative strategy, which is gaining traction and has been adopted by dozens of companies across many industry verticals, provides us with the exposure to the growing adoption of digital currencies and the accelerating pace of related innovation. We gained diversification and liquidity and the potential for significantly enhanced returns as compared to traditional cash reserves. The private placement financing enabled us to acquire more than 1.5 million HYPE tokens to date, piping the native token to the decentralized digital asset exchange and layer one blockchain Hyperliquid.

I will let our new Chief Investment Officer and Board Member, Hyunsu Jung, provide more detail in a moment, including why we believe HYPE and the Hyperliquid platform will play an important role in next-generation decentralized financial infrastructure. Suffice it to say, this has been a very exciting development for our team and our shareholders, and we are pleased to be the first U.S. publicly listed company to establish a strategic treasury reserve based on the HYPE token, which, as you will hear from Hyunsu momentarily, highly differentiates us from other companies adopting a range of digital asset treasury reserve strategies. On July 29th, we hosted a very successful webinar where we went into quite a bit of depth on our strategy and engaged in a fairly technical discussion of all of the aspects of HYPE and the Hyperliquid platform that are unique and innovative.

If you missed that, I would encourage all of you to listen to the replay, which is currently available on our website. Our pioneering cryptocurrency-based treasury strategy has also provided the necessary resources for the advancement towards completion of our Gen 2 OptiGen User Filled Device. This advanced digital drug delivery platform is designed to be agnostic as to which products and sprays immediately open up opportunities in the multi-billion dollar ophthalmic eye drop market. We are excited to report that we are still on track to register the UFD with the FDA as soon as next month. Further, we continue to consider strategic alternatives for the device that could potentially result in the commercialization of the OptiGen with a medical device or ophthalmology partner and/or as a newly established private company spin-off.

Lastly, as part of our continued commitment to enhance execution and unlock long-term treasury growth, value, and influence in the Hyperliquid ecosystem, we are actively engaged in an effort to fill our open Chief Financial Officer and Board Chair roles. We believe that bringing in seasoned leaders with deep digital asset expertise will significantly improve our operational focus and strategic direction. Additionally, we are evaluating opportunities to further strengthen the organization by aligning both board composition and executive management with individuals who have a proven track record in this space. We view these efforts as critical to positioning the company for sustainable growth and improved shareholder outcomes. At this point, I'd like to turn the call over to Hyunsu Jung, our Chief Investment Officer and Board Member. Hyunsu?

Speaker 1

Thank you, Michael, and thank you again to everyone who has taken the time to listen to our call this afternoon. Hyperion DeFi represents innovation in the democratization of finance, providing almost anyone with the opportunity to participate in the next-generation decentralized financial infrastructure. While we have made a significant amount of progress in just two short months, we are really just beginning to execute our strategy, which is very different from passive buy-and-hold strategies, mostly like we've seen with Bitcoin that we have seen in the recent past. We believe that we are in the right place at the right time. There have been strong signals from major institutional players like BlackRock and JPMorgan with the deployment of real-world assets such as U.S. treasuries on-chain, or with companies like Circle and Tether receiving regulatory clarity and validation for stablecoins in the recently approved Genius Act.

All of this serves as a tailwind for Hyperion DeFi, adding to our conviction that our strategy will generate significant and enduring revenue for our shareholders. Taking a step back, I would like to start with a moment on my background. Prior to joining Hyperion DeFi as CIO, I spent four years at Dharma Capital, a $1 billion plus asset manager registered with the CFTC and the NFA. During my time there, I designed and deployed the first asset use product built on Filecoin, which enabled over 50 data center teams globally to access the pledge required to store data on their hardware with verification provided by the blockchain. We were able to deploy over $300 million in assets through this product, all of which was managed via smart contract with physical contracts signed with each counterparty.

I saw numerous parallels between my previous work to what could be done on Hyperliquid, more so because it is already a powerful revenue-generating product that could grow even faster with Hyperion's involvement. To that end, we quickly deployed more than $50 million of capital invested in Hyperion DeFi by long-term supporters of the Hyperliquid platform and acquired more than 1.5 million HYPE tokens to date at an average price of $36. More importantly, a HYPE position of this size gives us not only a meaningful treasury asset, but also the capacity to stake to and run our own validator. This was foundational because it enabled us to participate directly in the economics of Hyperliquid, aligning our success with the network's growth. In addition to establishing our vast HYPE treasury, we also recently launched a co-branded validator with Kinetic, the leading institutional liquid staking solution for Hyperliquid.

These first two steps enabled us to immediately begin generating a staking revenue on our HYPE position by contributing to the liveness and security of the Hyperliquid blockchain. This is a key differentiator between what we are doing with Hyperliquid versus previous buy-and-hold digital asset treasury strategies, as we have a blockchain-native mechanism to compound our HYPE position. Our efforts now are focused on implementing additional strategies to generate further returns on our HYPE. These include deployment of HYPE into the HyperEVM, which is generally understood as DeFi, as well as using technology unique to Hyperliquid to provide seamless financial services within the ecosystem environment to the benefit of shareholders as well as institutional partners. Hyperliquid, as a layer one blockchain, is optimized for high-frequency transparent finance and is built on top of the Perpetual DEX platform.

It is unique in the sense that no other layer one blockchain has been built on top of an existing revenue-generating product, Hyperliquid's Perpetual Exchange. There are several aspects of Hyperliquid that stand out as unique and hardened our conviction for backing this ecosystem. The platform often earns more daily fees than any other blockchain. There is an automatic mechanism that moves 97% of platform fees to purchasing HYPE off the open market. It has lower fees than other centralized exchanges such as Coinbase, and there is a very nascent DeFi application ecosystem that is just starting to burgeon.

For example, we recently announced that Hyperion DeFi will be piloting the iHype, or Institutional Hype, liquid staking token offered by Kinetic, which enables us to earn a passive staking yield in our HYPE while also having a liquid derivative that can be used as collateral on the HyperEVM or with off-chain partners. It provides a path to earn an additional return on our assets, which ultimately produces value for our shareholders. As of last week, Hyperion DeFi was the first institution to stake HYPE through Kinetic's compliant liquid staking infrastructure, receiving the liquid staking token iHype, Hyperion Institutional Hype, which can be used for various yield generation strategies on top of the base staking yield. One question that has been asked frequently is, why purchase HYPE D shares? Why not invest in HYPE directly? It's an excellent question. Currently, HYPE is not broadly listed on U.S.

regulated centralized exchanges, and direct participation in the ecosystem or validator layer often requires technical sophistication and substantial capital. Hyperion offers public market investors regulated exposure to the Hyperliquid ecosystem without having to manage keys, wallets, or validator operations. We currently custody our HYPE with Anchorage Digital Bank, the only federally chartered digital bank, because we prioritize the protection and security of the assets we hold on behalf of our shareholders. It is also more advantageous to access HYPE through HYPE D instead. For those here today that have managed their own personal crypto portfolios, they are likely familiar with the headache of monitoring their cost basis, accounting for their own staking income, and tracking any activities done on-chain, such as swaps or lending. Hyperion abstracts all of that away for our shareholders.

We focus on identifying the best opportunities and taking them, all of which accretively returns to investors in their total HYPE per share. For example, participating in decentralized finance involves going on-chain, identifying and vetting various strategies that may only be periodically available, implementing them, and accounting for the returns. Hyperion DeFi's advantage is having both the required asset, HYPE, and a close knowledge of the opportunities that are available on the HyperEVM, tied to the team's previous work with DeFi and other ecosystems like Ethereum, as well as deep relationships with several teams building on Hyperliquid today. Before turning the call back over to Michael, I would like to quickly summarize key feature catalysts.

These include the growth in Hyperliquid trading volumes and total open interest, the expansion of ecosystem partnerships such as the Phantom Wallet integration, and more recently, the availability of Circle's native USDC, as well as new on-chain primitives that further drive demand for Hyperliquidity. From my perspective, the most interesting component about being a public vehicle for Hyperliquid is that we can play an active role in supporting Hyperliquid's growth and adoption. Because most of our balance sheet is allocated to HYPE, there's a very powerful flywheel effect, not just for Hyperion, but also for others involving other builders and participants on Hyperliquid. On the corporate side, we're exploring various partnerships, not just within Hyperliquid, but other platforms and applications that may benefit from porting over to the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

We want to continue broader industrial outreach and find innovative ways to deploy our treasury for both on and off-chain strategies. With that, I will turn the call back over to Michael to go through the financial results. Michael?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Hyunsu. Let's turn now to our second quarter results highlights. For the second quarter of 2025, net loss attributable to common stockholders was $8.8 million, or $2.50 per share. This compares to a net loss of $11.1 million, or $16.65 per share for the second quarter of 2024. Research and development expenses for the three months ending June 30, 2025, totaled $0.7 million, a decrease of $3.9 million, or 85%, compared to $4.6 million recorded for the three months ending June 30, 2024. The decrease was driven primarily by the termination of the company's chaperone study in November 2024. We expect that these costs will decrease further later this year after we register our Gen 2 OptiGen User Filled Device with the FDA.

General and administrative expenses for the three months ending June 30, 2025, totaled $7.7 million, an increase of $3.9 million, or 104%, compared to $3.8 million recorded for the three months ending June 30, 2024. This increase was due to higher non-cash stock-based compensation due to a one-time inducement grant, as well as higher professional fees as a result of our assessment of strategic options earlier this year, concluding with our $50 million financing and establishment of the treasury strategy in June. These costs were offset by decreases resulting from cost savings initiatives that we implemented beginning late last year with the termination of the chaperone study and commercial operations in November 2024. We anticipate that our general and administrative costs will decrease considerably as we further realize the cost savings implemented earlier this year and focus on our cost-efficient treasury strategy and maximizing related available investments.

Interest expense for the second quarter of 2025 was $0.5 million, compared to $0.7 million in the same period of 2024. The decrease reflects a reduction in our outstanding debt and the successful restructuring of debt terms earlier this year, which has strengthened our liquidity position going forward for our treasury strategy. As of June 30, 2025, the company's unrestricted cash and cash equivalents were $7.5 million as compared to $2.1 million in unrestricted and restricted cash as of December 31, 2024. Before we wrap things up, I want to again encourage all shareholders to take a moment to cast their vote on the proposals now underway. Your participation ensures that we can move forward quickly on the exciting initiatives that we have discussed today that are central to our strategy and long-term success. With that, I'd like to thank everyone on the call today for taking the time.

This is an exciting time for Hyperion DeFi Inc., notwithstanding our significant progress over the past two months. We are still in the very early stages of executing this pioneering cryptocurrency-based treasury reserve strategy that provides multiple opportunities for long-term value creation through the underlying performance of the HYPE token, as well as the various ecosystem engagement initiatives that we are executing by accumulating the native token of the Hyperliquid blockchain. We also remain committed to bringing the Gen 2 OptiGen User Filled Device across the finish line, and once registered with the FDA, we will be working to find it a good home. Thank you again. Let me turn this back to the operator for some concluding remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference of Hyperion DeFi Inc. has now concluded. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.