Hyperion DeFi (HYPD) Q2 2026 Earnings Call: Bereinigter Bruttogewinn steigt um 20 %

In der Telefonkonferenz zu den Ergebnissen von Hyperion DeFi für das zweite Quartal 2026 wurden ein höherer bereinigter Rohgewinn, niedrigere Betriebskosten und eine rasche Neuallokation von HYPE nach der Einstellung von USDH hervorgehoben. Das Management bekräftigte seine Prognose für das Gesamtjahr und sein Cashflow-Ziel für das Jahresende.

Wichtigste Erkenntnisse

• Der bereinigte Rohgewinn stieg im zweiten Quartal im Vergleich zum Vorquartal um 20 % auf 1,2 Millionen US-Dollar, wovon 50 % in Bar-Erträgen erzielt wurden. Das Unternehmen erzielte das 2,2-Fache der HYPE-Basis-Staking-Rendite.
• Die Betriebsausgaben ohne aktienbasierte Vergütung sanken um 21 % auf 2,3 Millionen US-Dollar. Der bereinigte operative Netto-Mittelabfluss verbesserte sich von 2,6 Millionen US-Dollar im ersten Quartal auf 2,1 Millionen US-Dollar.
• Die Brutto-HYPE-Bestände stiegen von 1,94 Millionen im ersten Quartal auf 2,04 Millionen Token. Das Treasury wurde zum Quartalsende mit 133 Millionen US-Dollar bewertet, verglichen mit einer kumulierten Anschaffungsbasis von 81 Millionen US-Dollar.
• Die Einstellung von USDH beendete die Vereinbarungen mit Native Markets und Felix HAUS, was die DeFi-Monetarisierung um 36 % reduzierte und 800.000 HYPE für eine Neuallokation freisetzte.
• Hyperion setzte in der Folge 1 Million HYPE im Rahmen neuer Partnerschaften mit Skew Technologies und Entropy ein. Das Management geht davon aus, dass die neuen Strukturen die Wirtschaftlichkeit gegenüber den früheren Deployer-Modellen im Laufe der Zeit verbessern werden.
• Das Management bekräftigte seine Prognose für den bereinigten Rohgewinn 2026 von 5 bis 7 Millionen US-Dollar und strebt weiterhin bis zum Jahresende einen positiven bereinigten operativen Netto-Cashflow an.

Wichtigste Finanzdaten

Geschäfts- und operative Entwicklung

Die fünf DeFi-Einnahmequellen von Hyperion entwickelten sich im Quartal unterschiedlich. Die Staking-Einnahmen stiegen um 69 % auf 527.000 US-Dollar, was in erster Linie darauf zurückzuführen ist, dass der durchschnittliche HYPE-Kurs von 30,8 im ersten Quartal auf 51,2 im zweiten Quartal stieg. Das Unternehmen erzielte rund 11.000 HYPE aus Staking und Validierung, was weitgehend dem Stand des ersten Quartals entspricht.

Die Validatoren-Provisionen stiegen um 4 % auf 42.000 US-Dollar. Laut Management stammten etwa 500 der im Quartal erzielten HYPE-Token aus Validatoren-Provisionen, während der Großteil durch natives Staking generiert wurde. Es wird erwartet, dass die Partnerschaft mit Blockdaemon im laufenden und im darauffolgenden Quartal hochgefahren wird.

Ertragsoptimierungsstrategien erwirtschafteten einen bereinigten Rohgewinn von 334.000 US-Dollar, was einem Anstieg um 58 % gegenüber 211.000 US-Dollar entspricht. Das Management führte diesen Anstieg auf die erhöhte realisierte Volatilität von HYPE zurück und betonte, dass die Strategien weiterhin Positionsobergrenzen, einer disziplinierten Strike-Auswahl und dem Schutz der langfristigen HYPE-Position des Unternehmens unterliegen.

Die DeFi-Monetarisierung verringerte sich um 36 % von 245.000 US-Dollar auf 158.000 US-Dollar, nachdem das Auslaufen von USDH die Vereinbarungen mit Native Markets und Felix beendet hatte. Hyperion erzielte weiterhin die Basis-Staking-Rendite auf die betroffenen 800.000 HYPE-Token, bevor das Kapital in neue Möglichkeiten umgeleitet wurde.

Das Unternehmen wies 500.000 gestakte HYPE der geplanten HIP-4-Ereignismarkt-Bereitstellung von Skew sowie weitere 500.000 HYPE Entropy zu, einem künftigen HIP-3-Deployer. Die Vereinbarung mit Skew sichert Hyperion zudem Rechte an 5 % des Eigenkapitals von Skew sowie 5 % der Token zu, falls Skew ein Token Generation Event durchführt.

Ökosystem-Prämien beliefen sich auf insgesamt 90.000 US-Dollar, verglichen mit 150.000 US-Dollar im ersten Quartal. Das Quartal enthielt Erlöse aus MAX-Token, die über einen Airdrop eingingen, sowie einen einmaligen USDC-Zuschuss von Felix. Das Management betonte, dass der Zeitpunkt und der Wert von Airdrops, Token-Events und sonstigen Ökosystem-Belohnungen weiterhin variabel bleiben.

Zu den weiteren Entwicklungen nach Ablauf des Quartals gehörte eine institutionelle Kredittransaktion in Höhe von 1 Million USDC über die Aviya-Plattform von HyperLend mit einer jährlichen Rendite von 8 %, besichert durch nativ gestakte HYPE bei Anchorage Digital. Das kumulierte Handelsvolumen von Silhouette überschritt nach dem Übergang in den Live-Betrieb zudem 40 Millionen US-Dollar.

Hyperion schloss im Juli den Verkauf seines verbleibenden geistigen Eigentums im Bereich Biotechnologie an Arctic Vision ab. Von Juli 2025 bis Juli 2026 tilgte das Unternehmen Altverbindlichkeiten aus dem Biotechnologiesektor in Höhe von 2,7 Millionen US-Dollar ohne Barleistung und agiert nun ausschließlich als DeFi-Unternehmen.

Management-Prognose

Das Management bekräftigte seine Prognose für den bereinigten Rohgewinn für 2026 von 5 bis 7 Millionen US-Dollar, die im Mai von 4 auf 6 Millionen US-Dollar angehoben worden war. Das Unternehmen geht weiterhin davon aus, dass der bereinigte operative Netto-Cashflow bis zum Jahresende ins Plus drehen wird.

Das Management erwartet, dass die DeFi-Monetarisierung im zweiten Halbjahr ein wesentlicher Wachstumstreiber sein wird, wenn die Bereitstellungen von Skew und Entropy hochgefahren werden. Auch Ökosystem-Prämien könnten einen Beitrag leisten, obwohl deren zeitlicher Anfall unvorhersehbar ist. Das Unternehmen rechnet mit einem fortgesetzten Wachstum des vierteljährlichen bereinigten Rohgewinns, wobei das vierte Quartal potenziell stärker als das dritte Quartal ausfallen könnte, wies jedoch darauf hin, dass beide Quartale erheblich abweichen können.

Nach der Abwicklung des Biotechnologie-Geschäfts rechnet das Management im dritten Quartal mit weiteren Betriebskostensenkungen. Ein zusätzlicher Rückgang der Kernkosten-Run-Rate ohne aktienbasierte Vergütung um 10 % bis 20 % wurde als realistischer Erfolgsmaßstab bezeichnet.

Risiken und Beobachtungspunkte

• Die Einstellung von USDH hat gezeigt, dass Veränderungen im Ökosystem Produkte oder Bereitstellungsvereinbarungen rasch beenden und geplante Einnahmen beeinträchtigen können.
• Die Einnahmen aus der neuen Skew-Bereitstellung hängen teilweise von der Roadmap und dem Zeitplan für erlaubnisfreie HIP-4-Märkte ab.
• Die Staking-Einnahmen reagieren empfindlich sowohl auf die Anzahl der gehaltenen HYPE-Token als auch auf den Marktpreis von HYPE.
• Ökosystem-Prämien können schwanken, da Airdrops, Token Generation Events und Zuschüsse keinen vorhersehbaren Zeitplänen folgen.
• Stablecoin-Aktivitäten werden nicht als GAAP-Zahlungsmittel ausgewiesen, was zu Volatilität in den ausgewiesenen Cashflows von Periode zu Periode führt.
• Liquid-Staking-Token von HYPE werden nach GAAP zu einem Low-Watermark-Preis bilanziert. Das Management schätzte, dass die Rückumwandlung aller HYPE-LSTs in HYPE zum Quartalsende den GAAP-Nettogewinn um etwa 33,2 Millionen US-Dollar erhöht hätte.

Höhepunkte der Fragerunde für Analysten

Das Management erklärte, dass der institutionelle Listing-Dienst von Skew maßgeschneiderte Produkte vorbehaltlich der erlaubnisfreien HIP-4-Implementierung relativ schnell auf den Markt bringen soll. Die HIP-3-Bereitstellung von Entropy kann früher beginnen, da HIP-3 bereits live ist und die dazugehörigen 500.000 HYPE bis zum Zeitpunkt der Telefonkonferenz bereits gestakt wurden.

Bezüglich der Dauer von Partnerschaften gab das Management an, dass das Plattform-Minimum von Hyperliquid sechs Monate beträgt, während Hyperion im Allgemeinen längerfristige Vereinbarungen mit Umsatzbeteiligung und Eigenkapitalbeteiligung strukturiert. Dies ermöglicht es dem Unternehmen, wirtschaftlich beteiligt zu bleiben, selbst wenn ein Partner schließlich seinen eigenen HYPE-Stake finanziert.

Auf die Frage nach dem Weg zur Jahresprognose nannte das Management die DeFi-Monetarisierung als wahrscheinlichste Quelle für Erholung und Wachstum nach den Partnerschaftsauflösungen im zweiten Quartal. Staking sollte sich relativ linear zu den HYPE-Beständen und dem Preis entwickeln, während Ökosystem-Prämien wesentliche, aber volatile Beiträge liefern könnten.

Das Management beschrieb HIP-4-Ereignismärkte zudem als eine potenziell größere Chance als HIP-3, da Spot-Assets, Perpetuals und Ereigniskontrakte innerhalb der einheitlichen Finanzinfrastruktur von Hyperliquid betrieben werden können.

Vollständiges Transkript der Ergebnis-Telefonkonferenz

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Ausführungen des Managements

Operator

Greetings. Welcome to the Hyperion DeFi 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Jason Assad, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Jason Assad

Good afternoon, and welcome to Hyperion DeFi's 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Call. Joining me today are CEO Hyunsu Jung, and CFO David Knox.

Before we get started, please note that our remarks today may include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. During this call, we may use words like anticipate, could, enable, estimate, intend, expect, believe, potential, will, should, project and similar expressions, which indicate forward-looking statements. For a more comprehensive discussion of these and other risks, please refer to our filings with the SEC available on sec.gov and in the IR section of our website at hyperiondefi.com.

We'll also reference certain non-GAAP measures today. Please refer to our earnings release and earnings supplement on the website for a full reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures.

We'll start this afternoon's call with prepared remarks from Hyunsu and David, followed by Q&A. I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, Hyunsu Jung.

Hyunsu Jung

Thank you, Jason. To those joining us today, welcome to Hyperion DeFi's Second Quarter of 2026 Earnings Call. A little over a short year ago, Hyperion DeFi was born from what was formerly Eyenovia. What once was is no longer. At Hyperion DeFi, we revamped the company's operating strategy to the accumulation of HYPE and directly building in the Hyperliquid ecosystem. We made a firm commitment that we would be more than just hype, benefiting from not just holding the asset but uniquely building multiple businesses atop it that have the potential to utilize it profitably and most importantly, independent of its underlying price volatility. I'm proud to say that we are continuing to deliver on that promise.

To that end, our focus has been on developing unique products and services that actively support the growth of the Hyperliquid ecosystem and return that value to our shareholders. Our model is no longer a concept that we ask investors to envision. It has become reality.

We continue to lead in designing and deploying strategies that generate differentiated revenues not just on our HYPE Holdings but across key on-chain infrastructure, each compounding alongside the fastest moving ecosystem in the digital asset space. I'm most excited to share these developments, covering not just what was accomplished in Q2 but the updates that are happening in real time, which we believe demonstrates our standalone positioning, unique value proposition and best-in-class business model.

At the same time, this was a quarter that truly tested our model. With rapid innovation often comes changes that are challenging to predict and requires a level of adaptivity that can only be found in agile operation like ours. To address this directly, in May of this year, USDH, the native stablecoin of Hyperliquid, was replaced with USDC, resulting in the wind-down of 2 of our core HYPE deployments, accounting for 800,000 HYPE and impacting our planned revenue roadmap. Regardless, the ability for an operating company to respond to change in real time is exactly what distinguishes it from a passive vehicle. We are proud to have been able to respond and adapt within weeks and enter the third quarter with stronger, more durable platforms, which we will cover today.

I'm grateful for the continued support of our investors and partners as we work diligently to lay foundations that persist and scale with the growth of Hyperliquid. What we're doing has never been done before, and we firmly believe we are asymmetrically positioned to accomplish this, resulting in long-term value creation for our shareholders.

I will start, as always, with the Hyperliquid ecosystem. Hyperion's opportunity surface scales with Hyperliquid's execution, and this is one of the most consequential quarters in the ecosystem's history. We saw Hyperliquid cross a milestone that few blockchains have ever approached. Cumulative protocol revenue surpassed $1 billion, with the overwhelming majority of protocol fees continuing to be returned to the token holders through the Assistance Fund's buyback mechanism.

During the quarter, HYPE reached a new all-time high and the holder base has continued to broaden, especially with institutions via the launch of various HYPE ETFs. This broader global adoption was accelerated by the continued growth of HIP-3 builder-deployed markets. The permissionless perpetuals framework for real-world assets now represents over half of daily network trading activity, and the deployer set continues to institutionalize.

The core team's progress on unified accounts continues, moving the network toward a single account for spot, perpetuals and outcome exposure. We're already seeing the impacts of this design. Just earlier this week, xStocks, the tokenized equity framework built by Payward, the parent company of Kraken, launched native spot equity markets on HyperCore, enabling on-chain trading for 5 major equities and ETFs, backed 1 to 1 by real shares.

The tokenized assets include NVIDIA, the S&P 500 ETF, QQQ, SK hynix, and Micron. This allows on-chain traders to not only access spot equity markets 24/7 but also the ability to use these assets as collateral for DeFi on the HyperEVM, where we have spent an extensive amount of time building institutional infrastructure.

And perhaps most exciting is that Hyperliquid's newest primitive, HIP-4 outcome markets, completed its first full quarter on mainnet. Launched in May, outcome markets generated approximately $100 million in volume in the first month alone and validated the value and structural advantage of a unified financial layer. Outcome contracts and Hyperliquid trade on the same order book in the same account with materially lower fees at market midpoints than incumbent prediction market venues.

In late July, subsequent to quarter end, permissionless HIP-4 deployment reached testnet. Under the framework, each outcome market deployer must stake 500,000 HYPE for the duration of activity. Every new market category on Hyperliquid now creates structural locked demand for the core asset on our balance sheet, which grants us continued opportunities for deployment optimization. Each of these developments compounds the others as Hyperliquid continues to execute its vision of becoming the blockchain to house all finance.

In parallel, Hyperion continues to position ourselves as the premier institutional gateway to DeFi innovation within Hyperliquid. In this quarter, we focused on repositioning our DeFi monetization strategy following the sunset of USDH and a clearer path to permissionless deployment on HIP-4.

May was a massive month for Hyperliquid as the ecosystem aligned with Coinbase and Circle on the AQAv2 standard, establishing the path for 90% of the USDC stablecoin revenue to flow back to the Hyperliquid Assistance Fund, ultimately returning value to HYPE holders.

Although it greatly benefits our balance sheet holdings, the resulting sunset of USDH created unexpected headwinds for our operating businesses. As we announced in June, Native Markets made the decision to sunset USDH, and the Felix Exchange markets also winded down as settlement across Hyperliquid migrated towards USDC. We reiterated our guidance at the time of that announcement, and we reiterate it again today because the financial impact was immaterial, manageable and our strategic response was swift.

This is the nature of operating in a fast-moving ecosystem. Individual products will come and go. What endures is our position as a partner builders come to first, and that position was demonstrated within weeks. Just after quarter end, we announced our agreement with Skew Technologies to launch permissionless markets on Hyperliquid, including an institutional listing service. With Hyperliquid's recent HIP-4 announcements in July, we and the Skew team have determined that Hyperion's 500,000 HYPE stake would be better positioned for HIP-4 outcome markets. This structure succeeds and strengthens our permissionless market strategy, pairing our staked HYPE deployment capacity with a team purpose built for onboarding new market categories to Hyperliquid. We expect these markets to go live in the coming months with economics that improve upon our prior deployer arrangement, in addition to long-term equity and token exposure to Skew. The early metrics are positive, with over 40,000 unique users signed up to access Skew's private beta.

But we didn't stop at just one new permissionless markets deployment. We also announced today, as part of this release, another HAUS agreement with 500,000 of our staked HYPE supporting Entropy, an upcoming HIP-3 deployer. Not only does this provide Hyperion multiple opportunities to both support and scale unique businesses on Hyperliquid, but it allows us to converge the building blocks we are developing alongside our partners in this ecosystem. Hyperliquid aims to become the blockchain to house all finance, offering a unified substrate for all forms of financial products, including RWAs, perpetuals, outcomes, and more.

I wrote at the beginning of the year that tokenization and the adoption of agentic trading would be key components of driving more financial activity on-chain, and that has continued to be the case. Note, for instance, according to the state of Hybrid Finance report from CoinShares and Token Terminal, deposits into lending platforms and DEXs more than tripled year-over-year to $7.4 billion, driven by utilization of RWAs such as tokenized treasuries, private credit and gold tokens as collateral.

We had long been preparing for this shift to occur. Early in the third quarter, we completed our first institutional credit deal through HyperLend's Aviya platform, lending $1 million USDC against natively staked HYPE at a rate of 8% APY, far above the overnight rate found in traditional markets. The HYPE collateral remains in secure custody at Anchorage Digital for the duration of the loan. We expect the Aviya platform to scale as demand grows for institutional borrowing and lending against robust collateral, and we are entitled to a revenue share on a portion of future activity on Aviya.

And the value of natively staked HYPE continues to be demonstrated as our HYPE Asset Use Service scaled across other clients. Silhouette completed its migration to production during the quarter, and we saw monthly volumes step up from the hundreds of thousands toward over $40 million cumulative, consistent with the trajectory we outlined in May. This was driven by Silhouette's support for RFQ trading, which we expect to accelerate on Hyperliquid as more assets become tokenized and move on-chain.

While positioning for this shift, we maintain our pipeline of prospective HAUS clients and continue to be selective, prioritizing structures that return durable, volume-linked value to our supported markets. Yield enhancement saw over 50% growth this quarter, supported by HYPE's realized volatility remaining elevated throughout the quarter, including the run to new all-time highs in June and subsequent consolidation.

Our systematic approach focused on converting volatility into income. The program continued to operate within the discipline and risk framework we have described previously: position caps, strike selection anchored to technical structure and no compromise of our long-term HYPE position. As we operate those strategies internally, we continue to work in parallel with our efforts to expand yield infrastructure built on Rysk, our partner in offering institutional-grade vault strategies known as Rysk Premium.

As a result of these efforts, our accumulated Rysk points continue to grow this quarter, placing us in the top 50 holders and preserving our claim on future protocol incentives. Rysk Premium launched publicly in June, bringing institutional-grade covered call and cash-secured puts vaults fully on-chain while also expanding their smart contract infrastructure to Ethereum mainnet, demonstrating the ability of our partners to not only succeed in Hyperliquid but also distribute products cross-chain.

In addition, Rysk announced support for XAUt, Tether Gold, which is a digital token backed by physical gold, showing the first steps towards support of broader RWAs. We are optimistic for and await rulemaking for on-chain markets, crypto vaults and blockchain settlement infrastructure. We expect additional clarity for on-chain vaults to be critical to driving more institutional adoption of strategies such as Rysk Premium. And with further guidance, we're positioned to open up our vault strategies to other depositors and curators, expanding the availability of our on-chain infrastructure.

Ecosystem rewards remain variable, but we maintain a positive outlook for the ecosystem tokens we will receive through the remainder of the year. As mentioned earlier, our ecosystem engagement efforts have expanded beyond token representation of the protocols we believe have long-term potential. Hyperion DeFi has now acquired equity positions to various protocols for the benefit of our shareholders. We continue to deliver on another core objective: to create long-term value for the Hyperliquid ecosystem while simultaneously providing streamlined and comprehensive access to all the valuable components built there.

Lastly, on our Hyperion Validator operations, in June, we announced our partnership with Blockdaemon to expand institutional Hyperliquid staking. Blockdaemon is trusted by more than 400 institutions, and this partnership opens an additional channel to the institutional HYPE delegation demand we expect as Hyperliquid's profile grows.

Perhaps more importantly, we continue to explore opportunities that generate income by building on top of our existing infrastructure. One that is beginning to emerge is a way to leverage our validator infrastructure to provide data services for traders on Hyperliquid. We will share more as things are finalized.

If it hasn't been clear by now, we will continue to build and pioneer on-chain, uniquely positioning our assets and designing partnerships unlike any other team in this space. Opportunities that didn't exist 3 months ago are real now. Imagine the possibilities of what may come as Hyperliquid continues to dominate on-chain finance.

I'll hand it over to our CFO, David Knox, to give highlights on our financial performance.

David Knox

Thank you, Hyunsu. In June of 2025, we set out to establish a new kind of company, one which is blockchain and DeFi native and shares in multiple frontiers of value creation at the same time. Those 3 frontiers include our growing HYPE treasury, our scalable DeFi businesses and our embedded economic upside in the Hyperliquid ecosystem, and we call this our HYPD "Triple-Dip" Strategy.

In our 12 months of operating performance, we have redefined what it means to be a digital asset treasury. Not only have we substantially grown our treasury position in HYPE, but we have launched multiple businesses and built new products and services on Hyperliquid, all while reducing our costs over time. As promised since day 1, we are well on our way to becoming a profitable, positive cash-flowing operating company by year-end.

Here's our 12-month highlights. Since June of 2025, our gross HYPE tokens have increased 56% from 1.31 million to 2.04 million HYPE tokens. From Q3 '25 to Q2 '26, our quarterly adjusted gross profit has grown 162% from $0.4 million to $1.2 million as our DeFi businesses have begun to ramp. We have consistently earned 2 to 3x base HYPE staking yield over several quarters. Meanwhile, our core operating expenses have declined 46% from $4.3 million to $2.3 million as our legacy biotech segment has been wound down.

Also, our quarterly operating cash outflows have declined from $2.8 million to $2.1 million, both as a function of reduced costs and ramping DeFi businesses. Our adjusted gross profit over the past 2 quarters has been 40% to 50% denominated in cash. And we've received equity or token upside in 4 early-stage builders on Hyperliquid, including Kinetiq, HyperLend, Silhouette and Skew.

We are also pleased to announce today that we executed a sale of our remaining biotech IP assets to Arctic Vision in July. Our promise on our first call was that we would pursue the monetization and resolution of certain no longer core assets, and that is now accomplished. From July 2025 through July 2026, in total, we extinguished $2.7 million of legacy biotech liabilities, not from us paying down liabilities with cash but from actively working with partners, including Arctic Vision, to release what we owed without cash consideration. With the past behind us, we are now solely a DeFi company.

Now on to our Q2 results. Our Q2 adjusted gross profit grew 20% quarter-over-quarter from $960,000 to $1.2 million. 50% was earned in cash, and we achieved 2.2x base staking yield. The 20% quarterly growth rate in Q2 compares to 17% growth achieved in Q1 versus Q4.

This quarter demonstrated the benefit of our 5 diversified DeFi income sources, where headwinds in some areas were offset by tailwinds in others, and the overall growth trajectory remains positive.

I'll now go through each of those 5 segments. Starting with staking yield. In Q2, we earned $527,000 from staking our HYPE to our Kinetiq x Hyperion Validator. This was up 69% quarter-over-quarter, driven by the increase in the price of HYPE from an average of 30.8 over Q1 to 51.2 over Q2.

Next, validator commissions. In Q2, we earned $42,000 in validator commissions from third-party tokens delegated to our validator, up 4% versus $40,000 last quarter. In Q2, consistent with Q1, we continue from a GAAP perspective to present our validating activities on a net basis in accordance with the treatment that we are agent of the validator.

As Hyunsu mentioned, we recently announced a partnership with Blockdaemon, one of the largest institutional crypto platforms, where they have chosen us to be their staking partner on Hyperliquid. We continue to see multiple opportunities for validator growth driven by the products and services we are creating, plus demand from institutions for world-class validator infrastructure. In total in Q2, we earned about 11,000 HYPE tokens from staking and validating, in line with what we earned in Q1.

Next, our yield enhancement strategies, which primarily monetize volatility on HYPE, including in our vaults with Rysk, generated $334,000 of adjusted gross profit in Q2, which is plus 58% quarter-over-quarter versus $211,000 in Q1. Our DeFi monetization segment captures a host of products and services we are building on Hyperliquid together with our partners.

This quarter we had a 36% decline in DeFi monetization from $245,000 in Q1 to $158,000 in Q2, largely driven by the sunset of the USDH stablecoin announced in mid-May, resulting in our HAUS agreements with both Native Markets and Felix being terminated in June, and opening up 800,000 of our HYPE tokens to be redeployed into other business opportunities. While we still earned base staking yield on these 800,000 tokens, these wind-downs resulted in a Q2 decline in DeFi monetization.

Despite this headwind, in June, we chose to announce that we stood by our existing guidance based on our robust pipeline to redeploy our HYPE. As outlined by Hyunsu, we have regained momentum since then. We have already redeployed 1 million HYPE tokens into new HAUS partnerships in Q3, and we expect our new deployments over time to position us better than before.

And finally, ecosystem rewards generated $90,000 of adjusted gross profit in Q2 versus $150,000 in Q1. We stated previously that we expect the quarter-over-quarter change in ecosystem rewards to be volatile, given the unexpected timing of airdrops, token generation events and other rewards activity. However, this is now the third consistent quarter of activity in this segment, and it continues to be a core part of our Triple-Dip Strategy. The Q2 figure reflects 2 pieces: first, our receipt and subsequent sale of MAX tokens received in an airdrop; second, a onetime grant from Felix, denominated in USDC due to the sunset of USDH. We are also announcing that as part of the July HAUS agreement with Skew, we have a right in the future to 5% of Skew equity and 5% of tokens should they choose to pursue a Skew TGE.

Our list of ecosystem positions we've accumulated over the past year continues to grow. In Q4, we received 1.92 million KNTQ tokens from Kinetiq. Since then, we have been liquid staking our KNTQ recently at annual yields exceeding 7% and have accrued over 40,000 additional KNTQ tokens thus far in 2026. Since we continue to earn Kinetiq points, we expect to be eligible for their next airdrop, which has been announced for Q4 this year.

In Q1, we received 10 million HPL tokens from HyperLend as part of our various partnerships previously discussed. In Q1, we also gained the right to receive 1% future token or equity in Silhouette. We are also earning Rysk points from our vault activity and may become eligible for future Rysk tokens. And we expect this list to continue to grow as we deepen our partnerships and relationships across the Hyperliquid ecosystem. And as a reminder, we didn't pay anything for these tokens. We have only paid for HYPE, and we believe the upside we have to the broader Hyperliquid ecosystem is unique among any other U.S. public company.

Moving on to our Q2 expenses. Operating expenses excluding stock-based compensation declined 21% quarter-over-quarter from $3.0 million in Q1 to $2.3 million in Q2. As a reminder, the Q2 figure of $2.3 million is about half the $4.3 million we spent in Q3 2025, our first quarter since adopting the new DeFi strategy. The reduced costs speak to our light operating model, offering strong earnings leverage. We substantially wound down all operations related to our legacy biotech segment in the second quarter. With the past behind us, we continue to be laser focused on all cost components as our DeFi businesses evolve and scale.

On the treasury side, our gross HYPE tokens increased from 1.94 million in Q1 to 2.04 million in Q2. The price of HYPE increased from 36.6 at the end of Q1 to 65.0 in Q2. This compares to our aggregate purchase price on HYPE tokens of 39.7, meaning the value of our HYPE treasury at $133 million as of Q2 exceeded our cash basis of $81 million by approximately $52 million.

Our net asset value, which adjusts our treasury value for net cash and debt, increased from $70 million as of Q1 to $134 million as of Q2. Treasury gains was $54.8 million in Q2 as the price of HYPE increased versus a gain of $21.5 million in Q1. In totality, Q2 net income of $31.0 million, another record for the company, compares to Q1 net income of $8.8 million. Q2 adjusted EBITDA of $53.7 million compares to Q1 adjusted EBITDA of $19.5 million.

As with Q1, the primary Q2 reconciliation of net income to adjusted EBITDA is our HYPE liquid staking tokens, or LSTs, for which the GAAP carrying value is the low-watermark price of HYPE. If all our HYPE LSTs were converted back to HYPE at the end of Q2, we believe that would have increased our GAAP net income by approximately $33.2 million.

Regarding our cash flows and cash position, as a DeFi company, we have been and expect to continue to be very active with on-chain stablecoin activity, which involves USDC, historically USDH, deposits into our vault, and potentially other activity in the future as we grow. However, stablecoin base balances and activities are not presented as GAAP cash, and this has caused some period-to-period volatility in our GAAP presentments of cash flows. Starting today, we are now also presenting 2 new non-GAAP metrics, adjusted net operating cash flow and adjusted net investing cash flow, with the goal of removing the volatility caused by our stablecoin forward operations. These are all more fully defined and reconciled in our earnings release and earnings supplement available online.

Adjusted net operating cash flow was $2.1 million of outflows in Q2, which compares to $2.6 million outflows in Q1. Adjusted net investing cash flow was $6.2 million in Q2 versus $1.5 million in Q1 as we continue to grow our HYPE treasury position. Net cash provided by financing activities was $11.0 million in Q2, primarily from our May public offering, versus $6.6 million in Q1. As of Q2, we hold $11.8 million in cash, cash equivalents and stablecoins versus $9.1 million as of Q1. As of August 10, our common share count is approximately 15.5 million shares.

Looking ahead, in our first earnings call under the new DeFi strategy in November 2025, along with our ambitious goal to create a new kind of operating company, we set out ambitious financial goals, which we continue to stand behind as we innovate and grow our businesses. We originally gave guidance of $4 million to $6 million of adjusted gross profit for 2026 and raised that guidance in May to $5 million to $7 million. In addition, we anticipate our adjusted net operating cash flow to flip positive by the end of the year, and that's what we have been communicating since day 1. We continue to be confident in achieving that guidance based on our delivery of consistent quarterly performance, including growing businesses, declining costs, and improving cash flows. We believe we have the right team, partners and resources and the right chosen blockchain in Hyperliquid to achieve these goals.

Every day, we remain squarely focused on continued execution, driving value for shareholders over time while helping to build Hyperliquid into the blockchain to house all of finance. As Hyunsu said earlier, our model is no longer a concept that we ask investors to envision. It has become a reality that stands alone among public companies. We believe the results will continue to speak for themselves.

With that, we look forward to answering your questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Gareth Gacetta with Cantor.

Fragen und Antworten

Gareth Gacetta

You were very quick to kind of reallocate your HAUS deployment to Skew and Entropy. So I was wondering if you could talk about how much of a ramp you're expecting from those new deployments in the back half of this year and if any of that might be baked into guidance and then also how we should think about the pipeline going forward, if you guys have any additional HYPE kind of sitting idle to do more deployments or if you'd have to kind of find a new allocation for that.

Hyunsu Jung

Thanks for the questions. So I would say that our -- one of our core functions is to continuously have conversations with teams that are either directly building on or looking to come to build on Hyperliquid. And a large part of our ability to pivot so quickly was maintaining those relationships and ensuring that our diligence was robust to ensure that these were the right products to launch through our deployment product, HAUS.

We expect them to ramp relatively quickly with Skew. Their institutional listing service that we're calling partner markets is designed to onboard more bespoke products that are not yet listed on Hyperliquid and have them trading relatively quickly. And that's obviously contingent upon the roadmap for permissionless HIP-4. And then with Entropy, HIP-3 is already live, and we expect that -- the team to start very, very quickly. We have actually staked the 500,000 HYPE today, and we'll be working on getting the deployment -- deployer set up.

In terms of the longer-term roadmap for this year, we want to see these teams scale their revenues and obviously directly contributing to Hyperion. And we'll continue to have conversations either through our listing service or bespoke deployments for individual permissionless markets.

Gareth Gacetta

And then just a quick one on your validator business. I'm wondering if you could provide how much of the 11,100 total HYPE you guys earned was from the validator business? And did you guys see any uplift from the early days of the integration with Blockdaemon? And how are you thinking about potential future integrations?

David Knox

Thanks so much for the question, Gareth. In terms of the commissions earned from validating in isolation, it was about 500 tokens from validating, meaning the majority of our tokens earned in HYPE were from our own native staking. The partnership with Blockdaemon, while announced, is expected to ramp throughout the quarter and into next. And I think that the platform that we have set up, we believe to be world-class for a number of reasons, right? Kinetiq is the #1 liquid staking protocol on Hyperliquid, which means that it's functionally attractive for multiple reasons. And the partner that we have on the infrastructure side, Pier Two, who was purchased by MAVAN, owned by Bitmine, is one of the largest players in validating across multiple blockchains and a very, very large player among institutions.

And essentially what happens, and this is what happened with Blockdaemon, like every other financial service product, institutions really care about who they're working with, why they're working with them. They care about the track record, the compliance, the reporting, of course, economics and overall reliability and dependability. And Blockdaemon is just the first institutional partnership that we have, and we are expecting others to follow.

And it's part of the broader trend on Hyperliquid more broadly, where of course it's achieved such a large market share of overall crypto activity and financial activity, but so much is still not yet accomplished of institutional adoption. And when that shifts, even more balances will flow, even more institutions and other participants will be active. We think and we believe and core to our thesis is that they will want to be active with world-class institutions such as ourselves.

Operator

Our next question is from Brian Vieten with Siebert.

Brian Vieten

Nice job at the summit in July. I wasn't able to catch it online. Sorry, I missed it. But in the past, you guys spoke to HIP-4 as kind of a potentially larger opportunity than HIP-3. Is that still how you guys see it?

Hyunsu Jung

Hey, Brian, great to hear from you. Yes, absolutely. We think that the trend -- I mean, there's obviously so much that's going on right now, both in the political sphere and the financial sphere with regards to prediction markets, perpetuals and the changing nature of financial systems moving on-chain, but net-net, we think that there are so many ways to not only directionally express beliefs through markets, and prediction markets or outcome markets captures that the best. And the advantage with Hyperliquid as a unified settlement layer for all financial services or systems is the fact that you will be able to not only access spot for perpetuals and outcome markets all in that same settlement layer.

And our belief from the Hyperion perspective is that we can not only support perps, which we have already, but also find teams on the outcome market side as HIP-4 moves to permissionless and basically establish infrastructure that enables all of these to functionally grow as a result of volume generally increasing.

The other trend that we're seeing is the tokenization of real-world assets and that continuously drives more utilization not only to the HyperCore platform but also to HyperEVM. And that means that you have many verticals that are using these financial primitives to not only satisfy the use of DeFi in addition to having that collaboration to utilize it for outcome markets. And so net-net, we think that there's just only the -- we're just beginning to scratch the surface of what's possible when you have infrastructure like Hyperliquid.

Brian Vieten

That's great. And we'll see some elections or something like that later in the year. But just 2 other quick ones, hopefully. So great to hear the quick pickup from winding down the Felix relationship. And I guess, could you guys contextualize the pipeline a little bit more? It seems like the longer, the better; the more volume and activity, the better. So long as the pipeline is there, it's a relatively costless, painless switch. That's the beauty of the tokens themselves.

But I guess how sticky are these folks? Like how long might someone be in the pipeline ready to go before maybe they go try and find another avenue? Do you guys have a couple months or some amount of timeline to be able to find a way to work together? Does that make sense?

Hyunsu Jung

So it varies by each deployer. We take our diligence process very seriously. And I would say that both Skew and Entropy have been well capitalized. They've been participants in the markets for a long time. And we looked at their methodology both for perps and outcome markets and felt very confident in their ability to create products that traders want to trade both at the retail and institutional level.

When it comes to deal structures, I would say the base minimum requirement at the Hyperliquid platform level is 6 months, but we do design longer-term deal structures and again, have revenue share and equity exposure to our partners. So if they are able to generate substantial revenues and use it to allocate to their own HYPE stake, then that's perfectly fine. We still have exposure to their long-term success.

But realistically, for teams that are building new infrastructure, they should be allocating that capital towards the growth of their own product and distribution. And so that's why we feel very confident in our ability to not only position Hyperion as the bonded capital layer for these deployers, but with products like partner markets with institutional listing services, we can scale both horizontally and vertically. So that's how we think about long-term deployments of HYPE.

And again, our unique offering in this market is that we're not just a HYPE holder and provider, but we've also built primitives across the HyperEVM and have services like the HYPE Asset Use Service for fee reductions to offer to traders. So we offer this cohesive partnership-based product. That is what enables us to not only engage with but work long term with the best builders in the ecosystem.

Brian Vieten

Okay. That's great. That kind of answers this next one but just quick housekeeping. I think you guys might have hit on it. But how much of the token holdings are ready to rock as far as deploying to new strategies? And then can you just talk about the balance between, hey, let's get out there and track down more tokens to marry them with all the folks in the pipeline versus, hey, it's more about getting the right partnerships, sort of I guess quality versus quantity? Like just talk about the balance a little bit.

Hyunsu Jung

Sure, so I guess it should be relatively clear, right? We faced a headwind, unexpected event with USDH sunset, and within a month, we were able to deploy more HYPE than we had actually had to undelegate and have built better economic structures. So there is a lot of flexibility that we have, and it's the same thing that attributes to our increasing cost efficiency in terms of our operating structure. We are able to use these digital assets most optimally and are able to find the best deal structures that enable long-term growth.

So when it comes to, again, going to market, most of these times, the teams are coming to us, and we have a lot of privilege to be able to identify the best teams and work with them closely to support the growth of the Hyperliquid ecosystem but also generate and establish long-term revenue opportunities. So it's about maintaining the flexibility around the asset, and then obviously it's critical for us to be able to continue to accumulate and redeploy HYPE and optimize the yield that's possible in the ecosystem.

Brian Vieten

That's great. You guys are leading the charge there, so I had to ask.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Jim McIlree with Chardan Capital Markets, LLC.

James McIlree

I'd like to figure out how you get to the adjusted gross profit guidance. You did to 2 in the first half, so you need 3, 4 in the second half, and it's a pretty big jump from Q1. The staking is -- it looks like it's really driven by the price of the token more than anything else, so the delta's got to come from something else. And I'm assuming that it's DeFi monetization. Is that true? And then secondly, it sounds like it's really going to be more fourth quarter loaded than third quarter loaded. Is that true?

David Knox

Thanks so much, Jim, for the question. I think when you consider that we had 2 major partnerships wind down in the second quarter, both impacting DeFi monetization, yes, it's certainly logical to extrapolate that, that is where we will have the most recovery and growth following through, both from the partnerships that we've announced and potentially future activity through the remainder of the year. So DeFi monetization should be a large source of growth.

Ecosystem rewards, to the extent that there are airdrops or other awarded tokens and equity positions, could contribute quite a bit. Your point on staking is correct. That is fairly linear to the number of tokens that we have and the price of HYPE. I think that sitting here today, we certainly continue to feel very, very confident in the guidance that we have. I think that we expect to continue to grow every single quarter. There's reasons why there could be variability, but we expect Q3 to be strong and Q4 to potentially be stronger, but there's a lot of reasons why Q3 might end up stronger than Q4 and vice versa.

As you can imagine, as part of our broader Triple-Dip Strategy of owning tokens and sharing the upside in businesses and sharing the upside in the equity of the various protocols and companies that we support, it supports a long-term way of operating, and that is how we aim to position ourselves for the benefit of shareholders.

So quarter-to-quarter numbers are going to continue to be volatile. It's the nature of the way that we operate, and it's the nature of the broader digital assets and crypto space. But I think that how you've described it is a fair overall sense for where things could land.

James McIlree

Great. And just 2 more. I'll ask them at the same time. So one is, is the Kinetiq staking yield, is that reported in ecosystem rewards. And then secondly, with the sale of the legacy health care to Arctic Vision, do you get any significant reduction in operating expenses from the Q2 levels?

David Knox

Great questions. The additional staking on Kinetiq where we have our KNTQ staked into sKNTQ and are continuing to earn yield, we view that as DeFi monetization. As I mentioned earlier on the call, we've accumulated about 40,000 tokens, while these tokens continue to be liquid staked. So that is where that is and will continue to be.

In terms of the sale to Arctic Vision, we -- Q2, obviously, we saw a substantial decline in our costs from $3.0 million to $2.3 million. However, that doesn't reflect a full quarter of the legacy segments being run off. So we would anticipate even further declines, Q3 versus Q2, to have a full quarter of lower personnel costs, patent IP maintenance and things of that nature.

James McIlree

Is it -- can you just frame that in terms of how big that decline might be, maybe a range?

David Knox

Sure, I think that a incremental reduction of anywhere between 10% to 20% versus the run rate of the core expenses, excluding stock-based compensation, I think would be a good measurement of success for us. And again, keeping that in context, the first quarter that we started Q3 last year, it was $4.3 million, Q3 2025. So we've already reduced to close to half, and getting under half of where we started of overall run rate cash is -- would be a great success.

And then going to an earlier question. We can do all of these activities with a fairly low enduring cost base. It's infrastructure that we've built. It is legal frameworks that we have developed that we've obviously cleared through all of our reporting infrastructure and governance procedures. And this kind of growth can happen only because of scalable blockchain technologies and in particular the blockchain that we've chosen, which is Hyperliquid. So yes, you should continue to see declining costs, as we saw this quarter, quarter-over-quarter and continue to see further optimization from here as we're laser focused on how we scale.

Operator

There are no more questions. We will now turn the call back over to Hyunsu Jung for closing remarks.

Hyunsu Jung

Our second quarter was defined by 2 things: resilience and expansion supported by sound operating processes and flexible pioneering partners. When the ecosystem shifted, we adapted within weeks and came out with stronger economics and better infrastructure than we had before. That is the core mandate as a true operating company, and today's results reflect it.

But what excites us most is what's to come. Hyperliquid crossed $1 billion in cumulative revenue this quarter and opened an entirely new frontier in outcome markets, 1 where existing perpetual infrastructure operates in a unified financial system and where Hyperion is positioned at the forefront.

From validator operations and the HYPE Asset Use Service to institutional volatility and credit products on the HyperEVM to the next generation of markets on HyperCore, the foundations we spent the past year laying are becoming the infrastructure this ecosystem runs on. Each business line feeds the flywheel, revenue tied to utilization, rising value across our partner protocols and more HYPE bought back and burned. As that flywheel accelerates, so does the global adoption of Hyperliquid, bringing new users, new products, and new capital to the ecosystem we serve.

While passive treasury experiences Hyperliquid's evolution as price volatility, Hyperion experiences it as a pipeline.

That is the difference we set out to build, and our objective is to keep proving that each quarter to come. And again, as large shareholders ourselves, our goals have been and always will be directly aligned with yours. We only win if you win. Every decision we make, every partnership, every deployment, every dollar of capital is optimized for that outcome. To our investors and partners, thank you for your continued support as we build the premier institutional gateway to Hyperliquid. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect.