CoinShares' Nasdaq Debut: A $1.9 Billion 'Loss' That Wasn't
A 25% drawdown in assets, positive client flows, and a 25%-of-shares buyback ask — the digital-asset manager's first call as a US-listed company.
CSHR · Earnings Call · 2026-09-14
A drawdown dressed up as a blow-up
CoinShares PLC reported on 2026-09-14 for the first time as a Nasdaq-listed company, and the headline numbers look ugly: assets under management fell from $7.4 billion at year-end to $5.5 billion, GAAP revenue halved to $51.4 million, and the firm swung from a $75.9 million operating gain to a $5.1 million loss. Crypto did that — “Bitcoin, indeed, the period down approximately 32% since the beginning of the year” — Jean-Marie Mognetti, CEO · 2026-09-14. But the actual story the company wants the market to internalize is the distinction between losing assets to market correction versus losing them to clients. CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti framed it bluntly: “Our AUM declined because market declined, not because clients were leaving the platform.” — Jean-Marie Mognetti, CEO · 2026-09-14 Interim CFO Richard Nash put numbers to it. Of the roughly $1.9 billion AUM decline, “approximately $1.9 billion of the reduction in AUM was attributable to market movements, while the group generated approximately $28 million of positive net flows” — Richard Nash, Interim CFO · 2026-09-14. That divergence is the whole thesis: in a half where “most of our major peers experienced significant redemptions during the same period... there were more than $7 billion of net outflows” — Richard Nash, Interim CFO · 2026-09-14, CoinShares stayed in net flows territory. The net inflow was small, but the sign was right, and the physical platform — the growth engine — pulled in roughly $156 million. The balance sheet reinforces the point. CoinShares ended June with roughly $453 million of net assets, available capital of $413.9 million, and long term debt of zero after repaying its Intesa Sanpaolo facility. Against a ~$738 million market cap, that implies the market is valuing the operating business at only ~$324 million — which is precisely why the board is asking shareholders for authority to repurchase up to 25% of shares outstanding. “the board believes the current share price does not fully reflect the value and earnings potential of the business” — Jean-Marie Mognetti, CEO · 2026-09-14.The mix problem is a feature, not a bug
The most intellectually honest part of the call was the fee yield discussion. Blended yield fell from ~156bp in 2025 to 128bp in H1 2026 — the kind of number that usually screams pricing pressure. Nash decomposed it: ~25bp from the rising weight of the BLOCK Index (a listed-equity product), 7bp from mix within CoinShares Physical, and only ~4bp from actual rate changes. “Had our product mix remained unchanged, our fee yield would have been approximately 163 basis points.” — Richard Nash, Interim CFO · 2026-09-14 That is diversification showing up as an optical headwind, not a structural one — Block was up ~18% in the half while crypto fell, and its share of AUM went from 18% to 28%, cushioning the whole platform. Segment Segment EBITDA came in at $21.6 million, or ~$26.5 million stripping ~$4.9 million of one-off listing and US-GAAP conversion costs. Both Asset Management and capital markets stayed profitable even as management deliberately pulled back risk. That discipline is a choice, not a weakness: capital markets revenue fell to $14.9 million because the firm reduced lending when spreads turned unattractive. A genuinely under-appreciated nugget came from the Q&A. Press coverage flagged ~$285 million of accrued XBT fees sitting on the balance sheet, and Nash clarified they are “already recognized through the P&L... It sits in accrued fee on the balance sheet” — Richard Nash, Interim CFO · 2026-09-14 — a revenue stream elected to be held in digital assets until redemption, and one that rebounds as prices recover. The post-period data bears this out fast: AUM climbed to ~$6.9 billion by August 31, a 25% two-month recovery, with accrued fees and treasury marks reversing alongside.Tokenization: the global wave CoinShares is betting on
Here is where the company's trajectory meets the market's. CoinShares' own keyword gainers this quarter lean heavily on capital structure and reporting — available capital, U.S. GAAP, High fee generating products — the vocabulary of a newly public, balance-sheet-rich firm. But the one forward-looking theme that ties CoinShares to the broader editorial tape is Tokenization, which spiked as a company keyword this quarter and shows up globally in this period's market keywords such as tokenized fund and, a quarter earlier, stablecoin adoption. Mognetti's answer to Canaccord's Joe Vafi is the clearest evidence that this is real, not buzzword compliance:The company is explicit that it won't become a tokenizer itself — it names Securitize, Superstate, Ondo — but positions itself as a composability layer for tokenized asset management, citing a Kiln/Railnet partnership. That is a differentiated stance versus the wave of data-center and AI-infrastructure names dominating the tape. One caution worth flagging: the M&A question. Mognetti admitted the board is looking hard but that targets are rarely clean, often packaged with preferred stock. So while available capital is huge, the deployment path (buyback vs. acquisition) is genuinely undecided until tomorrow's AGM. And the caveat on August AUM — “please do not read the August 31 AUM position as a representation of what the entire quarter will be like” — Richard Nash, Interim CFO · 2026-09-14 — is a useful sanity check on anyone extrapolating the recovery.Capital market has been at the forefront of tokenization in the sense that we trade in more RWA in general in H1 than we trade in Bitcoin or Ethereum, as an example.