SUI Group (SUIG) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Chairman of the Board - Marius Barnett
• Chief Executive Officer - Douglas Polinsky
• Chief Financial Officer - Joseph Geraci
• Investor Relations Advisor - Aaron D'Souza

TAKEAWAYS

• Net Income -- $47.7 million, representing a significant increase compared to a net loss of $44.3 million in the third quarter of 2025.
• Diluted EPS -- $0.59, compared to a loss of $0.72 per share in the prior year period.
• Net Gains on Digital Assets and Receivables -- $54.7 million, consisting of $82.7 million in net unrealized gains and $28 million in realized losses.
• Realized Losses on Digital Assets -- $28 million, primarily attributed to high-frequency trading activities and characterized as almost entirely noncash losses.
• Total SUI Holdings -- 109.3 million tokens as of Nov. 2, 2026, which includes digital asset loans and receivables.
• SUI per Common Share -- 1.35 tokens, remaining flat compared to the figure reported on Aug. 3, 2026.
• Total Revenue and Other Income -- $557,000, decreasing from $2.6 million due to lower interest income from the legacy loan portfolio and lower staking revenue in dollar terms.
• Estimated Daily Staking Yield -- Approximately 4,000 SUI, generated from the staking of a significant majority of the company's holdings.
• Annualized Staking Yield -- Approximately 1.5% during the third quarter.
• Total Operating Expenses -- $5.2 million, excluding gains and losses on digital assets, compared to $3.9 million in the third quarter of 2025.
• Cash and Cash Equivalents -- $700,000 as of Sept. 30, 2026, reflecting a decrease from $21.9 million as of Dec. 31, 2025.
• Cash and Stablecoin Holdings -- Approximately $10.7 million as of Sept. 30, 2026, which includes stablecoin assets.
• suiUSDe Holdings -- Approximately $10 million as of Sept. 30, 2026, reflecting the company's commitment to supporting Sui-native stablecoin infrastructure.
• Bluefin Loan -- 6 million SUI tokens, lent under a corporate agreement that entitles the company to participation in certain platform revenues.
• Legacy Investment Repayments -- Approximately $250,000 received during the third quarter, totaling $900,000 for the first nine months of 2026.
• Legacy Portfolio Fair Value -- $0 as of Sept. 30, 2026, following the markdown of a nonperforming loan.
• Market-to-Net Asset Value (mNAV) -- 0.72x as of Nov. 2, 2026, based on a share price of $1.03 and a SUI token price of $0.90.
• SUI Treasury Value -- Approximately $98.4 million as of Nov. 2, 2026, calculated using the Coinbase reported price of $0.90 per token.

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RISKS

• Barnett stated, "We have to look at lending on a risk-based approach because lending in today's world is especially in DeFi has its particular risk," noting why the company prioritizes corporate lending over decentralized finance protocols.

SUMMARY

SUI Group Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:SUIG) reported a transition to a blockchain-native treasury management strategy following its shift from specialty finance on July 31, 2025. Management stated that the company is prioritizing the expansion of its SUI token holdings and the productivity of its balance sheet through staking and institutional lending. The company is also allocating capital to growth themes in financial technology and artificial intelligence, including investments in financial intelligence models and AI research systems. Management indicated that cost-reduction initiatives have been implemented to maintain a disciplined capital position and provide operational runway during periods of market volatility.

• Management focused on overhead reduction, with Barnett stating, "Our focus has been cutting costs. And I think we've done a great job in terms of getting the overhead cost of running the business down so that we've got enough cash to continue to run the business."
• The company is expanding its AI portfolio, as Barnett noted that its investment in Nof1 provides exposure to "advanced financial intelligence models specifically designed for financial markets."
• Ecosystem expansion continued through new infrastructure developments, with management citing Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol V2 going live on Sui to enable native USDC transfers.
• SUI Group is supporting the integration of blockchain into consumer finance, including a partnership with Samsung to integrate USDC transfers into Samsung Wallet with SUI as a blockchain partner.
• Technical advancements included the introduction of quantum-resistant cryptography, with support for the ML-DSA-65 signature standard added to the Devnet in October.
• Management highlighted the launch of Hashi, which Barnett described as infrastructure "designed to expand Bitcoin's utility within decentralized finance" by enabling Bitcoin holders to participate in on-chain applications.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• SUI: The native cryptographic token of the Layer 1 Sui blockchain used for transactions and network security.
• mNAV: Market-to-Net Asset Value, a financial ratio comparing a company's market capitalization to its estimated net asset value.
• Staking: The practice of committing digital assets to a blockchain network to support operations and earn rewards.
• Hashi: A Bitcoin finance infrastructure product designed to bridge Bitcoin liquidity into the Sui ecosystem.
• suiUSDe: A stablecoin asset operating natively on the Sui blockchain.
• TVL: Total Value Locked, representing the total amount of assets currently being held in a specific protocol or network.
• Layer one: A primary blockchain architecture that settles transactions without relying on another network.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Operator: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss SUI Group's financial and operating results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2026. Joining us today are Sui Group's Chairman of the Board, Marius Barnett; Chief Executive Officer; Douglas Polinsky; Chief Financial Officer, Joseph Geraci; and the company's Investor Relations Advisor, Mr. Aaron D'Souza with Elevate IR. By now, everyone should have access to the company's third quarter 2026 earnings press release, which was issued this afternoon at approximately 4:05 p.m. Eastern Time. The release is available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.suig.io. This call will also be available for webcast replay on the company's website.

Following management's remarks, we will open the call for your questions. I'd now like to turn the call over to Mr. D'Souza for introductory comments.

Aaron D'Souza: Thank you, operator. Please be advised this conference call will contain statements that are considered forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can often be identified by the use of words such as believe, expect, intend, continue, will, may, should, estimate, potential, evaluate, pursuing, plan to, design to, positioned, capable, can play, aim, or similar expressions. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain known and unknown risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions, that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in these forward-looking statements.

These forward-looking statements are also subject to other risks and uncertainties that are described from time to time in the company's filings with the SEC, such as the inherent volatility and risks associated with investing in SUI. Do not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which are being made only as of the date of this call. Except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. For important risks and assumptions associated with such forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's SEC filings. During this call, we will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures.

Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in the back of today's earnings press release. They're also available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.sui.io. I will now turn the call over to the company's Chairman of the Board, Marius Barnett.

Marius Barnett: Thank you, Aaron, and good afternoon, everyone. The third quarter was another important period of development for the SUI blockchain as the ecosystem continued to expand its institutional presence, advance its underlying infrastructure and attract new applications across decentralized finance, payments and tokenized real world assets. We believe these developments will support SUI's position as one of the leading layer one blockchains designed to support the next generation of global financial infrastructure. Across the digital asset industry, we are seeing a broader shift towards real world adoption as financial institutions increasingly explore how blockchain technology can improve the efficiency, accessibility and functionality of traditional financial products.

This evolution is creating significant opportunities for high performance blockchain networks capable of supporting institutional scale activity, and we believe SUI is particularly well positioned to benefit from these trends due to its speed, scalability and innovative technical architecture. During the quarter, we saw several meaningful developments that demonstrate the growing maturity of the Sui ecosystem. In particular, Securitize introduced a tokenized high income investment fund with Neuberger serving as sub-advisor, while tZERO announced plans to integrate its regulated digital securities infrastructure with SUI. These initiatives represent important steps towards bringing traditional financial products on-chain and expanding the infrastructure available to institutional investors. We also saw progress across stablecoin adoption and payment infrastructure.

In September, Gaia integrated Sui into its cross-border payment platform, expanding the network's utility for businesses seeking more efficient international transactions. Subsequent to quarter-end, Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol V2 went live on Sui, enabling native USDC transfers across supported blockchain networks. Samsung also announced plans to integrate USDC transfers into Samsung Wallet, with SUI among its blockchain partners. Collectively, these developments underscore the growing role that SUI can play in facilitating digital payments, improving liquidity and connecting traditional financial services with decentralized infrastructure. Another notable development was the continued advancement of Hashi, Sui's Bitcoin finance infrastructure, which is designed to expand Bitcoin's utility within decentralized finance.

Following its public Testnet launch in July, SUI outlined plans for a phased Mainnet rollout supported by a coalition that includes Anchorage Digital. We believe initiatives like Hashi have the potential to bring additional liquidity and financial activity to the network by enabling Bitcoin holders to participate in on-chain financial applications. Beyond these ecosystem developments, SUI continued to advance its underlying technology and security infrastructure. In August, SUI outlined its approach to quantum-resistant cryptography, including plans to introduce new signature methods designed to protect accounts and digital assets against emerging security threats. In October, support for the ML-DSA-65 signature standard was introduced on Devnet, enabling developers to begin testing these capabilities ahead of a broader deployment.

We believe this forward-looking approach to security is important as blockchain technology becomes more deeply integrated into institutional financial infrastructure. Taken together, these developments demonstrate the breadth of innovation taking place across Sui, the network is evolving beyond a platform for digital asset transactions into a broader financial ecosystem supporting payments, tokenization, lending and other institutional use cases. While we are still in the early stages of adoption, we believe the continued expansion of these capabilities will create a compelling foundation for long-term growth and reinforces our conviction in Sui's potential to become an important component of the global digital economy. Turning to SUI Group.

Our strategy continues to be centered on maximizing the value of SUI Group through scalable, transparent and long-term value creation, enhanced balance sheet productivity by lending to its ecosystem as strategic partners on a risk-adjusted basis, and allocating capital to high-conviction growth themes across the digital asset, financial technology and artificial intelligence sector. As of November 2, 2026, we held approximately 109.3 million SUI tokens, including our digital asset loans and receivables. On a fully adjusted basis, this represents approximately 1.35 SUI per share of common stock. A significant majority of our holdings are staked, generating an estimated annual yield of approximately 1.5% during the quarter and approximately 4,000 SUI per day.

Staking enables us to earn Sui-denominated returns while maintaining exposure to the network's growth over time. Beyond staking, we are continuing to evaluate opportunities to deploy our treasury assets through institutional lending agreements that offer attractive risk-adjusted returns. Our existing relationship with Bluefin, a leading decentralized trading and lending platform built on Sui, is an example of this strategy in action. Through our agreement, we have lent 6 million Sui tokens to Bluefin and are entitled to participate in revenues generated by certain activities on its platform. We view this arrangement as an opportunity to enhance the economic productivity of our treasury while supporting the development of financial infrastructure within the Sui ecosystem.

We are also actively supporting initiatives designed to expand liquidity and utility across the Sui network. As of September 30, we held approximately $10 million of suiUSDe, reflecting our commitment to supporting the development of Sui-native stablecoin infrastructure. We believe stablecoins will play an increasingly important role in the growth of decentralized finance and initiatives that expand liquidity and accessibility can help support broader adoption across the ecosystem. Our official relationship with the Sui Foundation continues to be an important differentiator in executing the strategy. In July, we extended our trademark license agreement for an additional year, further reinforcing our relationship with the Foundation.

We also continue to engage directly with the developer and broader digital asset communities, including through our participation as a Platinum Sponsor at Sui Basecamp in Singapore during October, where we hosted the Sui GE Arena Trading Competition. Our actions reflect our broader commitment to being an active participant in the Sui ecosystem. By leveraging our scale, strategic relationships and access to institutional opportunities, we believe we are well positioned to identify additional avenues for value creation as the network continues to mature. Importantly, our strategy also extends beyond our core Sui treasury operations.

We are pursuing a broader set of high-conviction growth opportunities across digital assets, financial technology and artificial intelligence, where we believe our capital, industry relationships and investment expertise can generate attractive risk-adjusted returns. We believe the convergence of blockchain technology, financial services and artificial intelligence represents a compelling investment opportunity. As these technologies continue to evolve, we expect to see new business models emerge that change how financial products operate, how capital is allocated and how businesses leverage technology to improve productivity and efficiency. Our strategic investments in Nof1 and Recursive Superintelligence reflect this investment philosophy and our commitment to identifying differentiated opportunities in emerging financial technology.

Nof1 is focused on developing advanced financial intelligence models specifically designed for financial markets. We believe AI has the potential to meaningfully enhance financial research, market analysis and investment decision-making, creating opportunities for greater efficiency and more sophisticated approaches to capital allocation. Our investment provides exposure to a company operating at the intersection of artificial intelligence and financial technology, 2 areas we believe will become increasingly interconnected over time. Similarly, our investments in Recursive Superintelligence provides exposure to the rapidly advancing field of AI research and development. Recursive is focused on developing systems capable of accelerating AI innovation, and subsequent to quarter-end, Recursive introduced Flint, its first coding model developed with support from its automated AI research system.

We view this as an encouraging early milestone and believe Recursive's approach has the potential to support meaningful advancements in AI capabilities and applications. While these investments are distinct from our core Sui treasury strategy, they are consistent with our broader objective of allocating capital to high-conviction opportunities with attractive long-term growth potential. We intend to be selective and disciplined in evaluating additional investments, prioritizing opportunities where we believe we can achieve compelling risk-adjusted returns while maintaining the financial flexibility necessary to support our core treasury operations. Ultimately, our objective is to build a differentiated platform capable of creating shareholder value through multiple avenues. Our Sui treasury provides a substantial foundation of digital asset exposure.

Our staking and lending activities are designed to enhance balance sheet productivity, and our strategic investments provide opportunities to participate in emerging technologies and business models that we believe have significant long-term potential. Looking ahead, we remain focused on increasing Sui per share over time, maximizing the productivity of our treasury and pursuing disciplined capital allocation opportunities that can enhance the intrinsic value of our business. We believe our combination of scale, strategic relationships and a long-term investments approach positions Sui Group Holdings to capitalize on the continued evolution of the digital asset ecosystem and to deliver sustainable value for our shareholders.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Doug Polinsky, our Chief Executive Officer, to provide an update on our specialty finance operations.

Douglas Polinsky: Thank you, Marius, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. Our legacy specialty finance business continues to operate alongside our Sui treasury strategy with a focus on managing our existing loans and investments. During the first 9 months of 2026, we received approximately $900,000 in repayments and redemptions from legacy investments. As of September 30, 2026, our remaining traditional lending portfolio, measured at fair value after impairments and credit provisions, is valued at 0 due to a markdown of a non-performing loan. While we continue to manage our legacy specialty finance investments, our primary focus is in our Sui treasury strategy and identifying opportunities that can generate lasting value for our shareholders.

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Joseph Geraci, to take you through our financial results. Joe.

Joseph Geraci: Thank you, Doug. A quick reminder as we review our third quarter financial results, all comparisons and variance commentary refer to the prior year quarter unless otherwise specified. Due to our strategic shift on July 31, 2025 from our specialty finance business toward blockchain native treasury management, our historical financial condition and results of operations for the period presented may not be comparable. Total revenue and other income excluding net realized and unrealized losses on investments for the third quarter of 2026 was $557,000 compared to $2.6 million in the same period last year.

The decrease was primarily driven by lower investment and interest income from a reduction in the size of our legacy loan portfolio, as well as lower SUI staking revenue due to the decline in the market price of SUI when rewards were earned. Our third quarter 2026 results include approximately $54.7 million in net gains on digital assets and receivables, consisting of $82.7 million, including $3 million amortization of deferred income and net unrealized gains, partially offset by $28 million in realized losses associated with digital asset trading activities. The unrealized gains primarily reflect changes in the fair value of our digital assets and receivables, including the amortization of deferred income related to our Sui purchases.

The realized losses were primarily attributable to high frequency trading activities and our almost entirely non-cash losses. These results reflect U.S. GAAP accounting for our digital asset holdings, including changes in fair value and losses recognized on trading activity. The reported amounts do not necessarily correspond to cash inflows or outflows of the same magnitude. Excluding the aforementioned gains and losses on digital assets and receivables, operating expenses for the third quarter of 2026 were approximately $5.2 million compared to $3.9 million in the prior year period.

Net income for the third quarter of 2026 increased significantly to $47.7 million or $0.59 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $44.3 million or a loss of $0.72 per diluted share in quarter 3, 2025. And as of September 30, 2026, cash and cash equivalents were approximately $0.7 million compared to $21.9 million as of December 31, 2025. Cash and cash equivalents, including stablecoins, were approximately $10.7 million as of September 30, 2026. This concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open it up for questions from those participating in the call. Operator, back to you.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from Brian Kinstlinger with Alliance Global Partners.

Kevin Pimental: This is Kevin on for Brian. In terms of maximizing yield on the Sui treasury today, are you exploring any additional opportunities to generate returns beyond staking, particularly if you're lending or other ecosystem opportunities, whether that's similar to the Bluefin agreement or otherwise?

Marius Barnett: Marius here. Thanks for the question. So yes, I mean, that's been a consistent strategy of ours to look at lending. I think we have to look at lending on a risk-based approach because lending in today's world is especially in DeFi has its particular risk as we discussed earlier in the year. Even the Bluefin lend is a corporate lend. It's not through smart contracts or any of the DeFi protocols. And we always said that we look at the DeFi protocols and very comfortable with the security risks in the world at the moment.

We continue to expand our relationships in the corporate part of the market and looking at institutional lending to the likes of market makers or lenders where we can look at different types of guarantees or on a risk-based approach and look at the return profile. So we continue to expand that and looking at that more aggressively as time goes along.

Kevin Pimental: Great. And then has the combination of the current NAV discount and the increasingly uncertain path for clarity of the passage of the Clarity Act changed your strategy or capital allocation priorities? And if so, how are you thinking about the strategy differently today versus maybe earlier in the year?

Marius Barnett: Yes. I think Clarity, obviously, there's been a lot of changes. I think that we still could see longer term, some different types of regulation coming through. From a strategy perspective, I think just from a general market movement perspective over the last 6 to 9 months, our focus has been cutting costs. And I think we've done a great job in terms of getting the overhead cost of running the business down so that we've got enough cash to continue to run the business and not be under pressure to sell shares or to look at different types of raises.

I think from a strategy perspective, we've been focused on a disciplined approach to making sure that we don't have any material cash requirements coming up and that we can wait for the markets to recover. We certainly have had to hold off on the expansion programs because we wanted to cut costs and ensure that we look at the best interest of all shareholders here.

Kevin Pimental: Got it. Just 2 more. What is management strategy to create value for shareholders beyond the appreciation of SUI itself? And what initiatives can drive NAV or SUI per share growth even if Sui prices remain relatively flat?

Marius Barnett: Yes. I think right now our priority is making sure that, as I said, that we have a disciplined approach and that we're not doing anything wild or that we're not taking undue risk in the market at the moment. We're looking forward to what the long-term looks like for crypto. And I think from a capital allocation perspective, the key has been cutting costs and not actually spending capital to increase NAV per share. We want to remain disciplined in our capital allocation approach. So I think longer term we can look at using Sui as collateral and seeing how we lend that out and grow.

And you know, I think that for the next 6 to 9 months, we need to stay very disciplined and see where markets are at that point in time.

Kevin Pimental: Great. And then just for a last one, with recent SUI ecosystem developments, including the Samsung USDC integration and the Hashi Testnet launch, what are you seeing in terms of actual network activity and Sui demand? And which on-chain metrics are you watching most closely to determine whether these developments actually translate into sustainable value for Sui and the company?

Marius Barnett: Yes. So I think there's been quite a few material announcements in the last few weeks. I think we've been very vocal about our long-term view on agentic finance and commerce in these sectors. I think to that extent SUI made some material announcements in terms of a JV with Google Cloud, another JV with Alibaba, and then incorporation of USDC on Sui into Samsung Wallet. I think there's also the launch last month of Hashi, which is Mysten Labs' product where you can keep your Bitcoin in your custodial wallet and it doesn't get rehypothecated and you can use it in different ecosystems.

We're definitely seeing increased network activity, although it has been slow generally, but we expect it to be slow when the markets have been so volatile, especially in a downward-trending market. I think long-term there's some unique things that are coming online. I think from a KPI perspective of where we're looking at these types of things is, one is, SUI fees are really low because the cost of using SUI is so low, and we don't look at necessarily the fees on the chain because the point being of SUI is that it is so cheap to use. I think we look at TVL, how much TVL is on chain.

I think we look at the volume of stablecoin transactions. We look at the number of stablecoins on chain. We look at the number of developers on the chain, and those are the key metrics that we'll be watching.

Operator: And your next question comes from Nathan Frankovitz with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Nathan Frankovitz: I wanted to know with the stock at 0.72x mNAV as of the press release and SUI per share flat over the quarter, how are you thinking about the possibility of share buybacks against some of the AI and fintech investments highlighted in the press release?

Marius Barnett: Yes. As I said, we're taking a disciplined approach to keep cash on our balance sheet. I don't foresee us using the existing cash on the balance sheet to do buybacks at this point in time. As I said, we want to keep our cash requirements and make sure that we've got significant runway, that there's not the possibility of needing to sell treasury or do anything material from that perspective. I think in time what we can look at, when the market's right and when the risk profile is right, is looking at different types of financial instruments such as convertibles or prefs or those types of instruments where we could potentially look at doing buybacks.

But we take a very disciplined approach and we don't want to take risk or put too much pressure on the balance sheet at the moment.

Nathan Frankovitz: Understood. And then just one quick follow-up. Last quarter, you said you had hoped to offer more clarity on the enhanced management structure this quarter. Where does that stand? And is there a chief investment officer search still on the way?

Marius Barnett: Yes. So we have been working through that. And as soon as we've got more light on it, we'll make the necessary announcements.

Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. And with that, we will conclude today's call. All parties may now disconnect. Have a great day.

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