Bakkt Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:BKKT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Peter Christiansen: Good morning. Thanks for the question. A quick one on the Webull disruption. Just curious, was that throughout the quarter or halfway or towards the end? Just a sense there. And then on the re-launch of the custody product, just curious if you’re seeing incremental value added, generating value-based pricing. We continually hear that custody pricing has been under pressure. Just curious if the re-launch and some of the new capabilities is helping you drive pricing? Thank you.

Karen Alexander: Yes. Hi, Pete. I can certainly take the first part of the question on Webull Pay. So Webull started their migration of customers over to the new Webull Pay experience at the beginning of Q3, so in July. So we started to see that impact on engagement levels at the beginning of the third quarter. And the adjustment to the rev share agreement that we executed with them is retroactive to July 1st. In terms of the custody product and what we’re seeing in terms of pricing. Most of the pricing that we’re executing is AUC fee model that is scaled to the amount of AUC that we bring out to the platform. There are some minimums, so it’s not completely volatile, but there are other elements of custody type services that have a more of a subscription component as well.

So, for instance, disaster recovery is something that we’ve talked about as a capability that we see the market coming to us for. That is more of a monthly subscription amount. So, I would say, mostly fee on AUC with some opportunities for the additional subscription-based revenue. And certainly as we expand those capabilities, we see that opportunity for subscription or AR type revenue to increase.

Peter Christiansen: Great. Thank you, Kevin. Appreciate it.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Next question comes from John Roy from Water Tower Research. John, your line is open. Please go ahead.

John Roy: Sure. Great. I got two questions. And with the unchained network, I’d love to get a little more color on that and anything on timing would be useful?

Gavin Michael: Hi, John, I’ll take the unchained one. Being part of this network is really an added dimension to what we’re doing for custody. So if you think about, you know, as Karen said earlier in responding to Pete’s question that we have the assets under custody model, but what we’re seeing of these valuated services that are coming into the market. And the partnership with unchained is one of those where we’re holding part of the key, as I said in the prepared remarks. And then we’re acting as one of the key signers in the transaction. We like this model a lot. It’s hugely scalable. We anticipate being active in that network by year’s end.

John Roy: Great. And then maybe transitioning a little bit to the international, I was curious, obviously the U.S. market needs some regulatory clarity to say at least. Which markets do you see having the best setup or the least barriers for you outside the U.S.?

Gavin Michael: John, I think it’s the ones that we’ve spoken about this morning where we see strong regulatory clarity. We see a strong pathway for our entry. We’ve already demonstrated with markets like Spain where we’re live today together with some of the LatAm markets that we’re working with regulators who have provided good guardrails for how the assets and the trading should operate. And we’re working with partners who really want to take advantage of that shifting sentiment within the market. As we see regulatory clarity, we see the consumer sentiment return to a very positive level. So the ones that we’ve spoken about this morning, those in LatAm, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia are all markets that we like a lot together with the UK and parts of Europe.

And as Karen also mentioned, the shift to an ARR model to a subscription model as we are growing and evolving the business, I think provides good underpinnings to the forecast and outlook that Karen gave as part of the presentation. I think us being able to take advantage of that good regulatory clarity, consumer sentiment together with strong backlog against a recurring revenue model is really giving us great confidence as we move into 2024.

John Roy: Great. Thanks so much.

Operator: We have no further questions. So I’ll hand the call back to the management team for any concluding remarks.

Ann DeVries: Thank you everyone for attending our earnings call this morning. We look forward to connecting with you again soon.

Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you very much for your attendance. You may now disconnect your lines.

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