Securitize earns less from tokenizing more in its first results

What happened

Securitize filed its second-quarter results as exhibit 99.1 to a Form 8-K on 12 August 2026, its first as a public company after the business combination with Cantor Equity Partners II completed on 1 July and the shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange the following day. Total revenue was $14,435,845, down 5 per cent on the second quarter of 2025. Within it, tokenization revenue fell 12 per cent to $7,839,139 and asset servicing revenue rose 3 per cent to $6,596,706. Average tokenized assets under management reached a record $4.3bn, up 16 per cent, with quarter-end assets of $4.3bn, up 9 per cent, after the company added about $1bn during the quarter 'recovering from crypto-driven declines over the prior two quarters'. Aggregate transaction volume was $5.3bn, up 147 per cent. Total operating costs rose 56 per cent to $24,144,103, with selling, general and administrative expenses up 133 per cent to $8,217,259 and the provision for expected credit losses up from $111,885 to $1,315,134. The loss from operations was $9,708,258 against $197,687 a year earlier. Below it, a $29,266,000 charge for the change in fair value of an option liability and a $4,310,000 charge on simple agreements for future equity were partly offset by a $21,843,000 gain on a derivative liability. Net loss was $21,689,202, or $2.37 a diluted share, against $6,146,303 and 72 cents; adjusted EBITDA, which the company defines as a non-GAAP measure, was a loss of $5.5m against a positive $1.8m. Securitize Fund Services was servicing 663 active funds at 30 June with assets under administration of $24.3bn, down about 20 per cent. Carlos Domingo, chairman and chief executive, said the company had become 'the first tokenization company to go public' and that 'Simultaneously with our listing, we brought our own common stock onchain, becoming the largest tokenized equity in the industry and the first to do so in the U.S. on its first day of public trading.' Francisco Flores, chief financial officer, said that 'While our quarterly revenue can be volatile at this stage of Securitize's growth, we remain focused on driving top-line growth', that 'delivering positive adjusted EBITDA will remain an important near-term goal', and that the combination left the company with 'approximately $350 million in cash and no debt'. CoinDesk reports that analysts had expected revenue of $20.6m and a loss of 15 cents a share, and that the shares fell about 20 per cent in after-hours trading.

Why it matters

The two halves of the release point in opposite directions and the company did not reconcile them. Tokenized assets under management set a record and rose 16 per cent; the volume of activity on those assets rose 147 per cent; and the revenue earned from tokenizing them fell 12 per cent. Those three facts together mean revenue per dollar of assets fell, and no derivation is needed to say so. For a platform that describes itself as the largest by tokenized assets and 'the only one above $4 billion in AUM', that is the clearest published measurement anyone has of what tokenization is currently worth per unit, and the direction is down. It bears directly on the business the rest of this beat is built on. Securitize issues and administers BlackRock's BUIDL, and its second-quarter announcements are all about becoming the pipe rather than the product: transfer agent relationships with Computershare and Continental Stock Transfer for issuer-sponsored tokenized shares, under a model in which 'tokenized shares remain connected to the issuer's official shareholder register, corporate actions and existing transfer-agent infrastructure'; a FINRA approval for Securitize Markets to custody tokenized securities and to join underwriting and selling groups; and a Cantor Fitzgerald partnership for onchain initial and follow-on offerings. Every one of those puts the company deeper into the existing plumbing, which is the same trade the Commission's staff described in the Franklin Templeton letter the same day: a tokenized instrument is accepted by being tied back to the register somebody already controls. The other half of the business is the counterweight and it went backwards. Asset servicing revenue rose 3 per cent while the assets it administers fell about 20 per cent to $24.3bn, so servicing is now earning more on a smaller book while tokenization earns less on a bigger one. The costs are where a first public quarter usually shows itself, and they did: operating costs up 56 per cent, selling and administrative expenses up 133 per cent, and a loss from operations of $9.7m against essentially nothing a year ago. The headline net loss is mostly not operating at all. Roughly $11.7m of the $21.7m is the net of three fair-value swings on an option liability, on simple agreements for future equity and on a derivative liability, which are marks on instruments the business combination has now largely retired.

What is not settled

The growth number that leads the release is the one that needs reading. Footnote 4 defines aggregate transaction volume as the volume of 'investments, redemptions, dividends, and cross chain movements of assets issued by Securitize's platform', so a dividend distribution and a bridge transfer both count towards the 147 per cent, and the release does not break out how much of the increase is subscriptions and redemptions rather than the other two. Nor does it say why tokenization revenue fell while assets rose: whether fees were cut, whether the mix moved from issuance towards ongoing management, or whether the prior-year quarter carried one-off issuance work. The filing gives no fee schedule and no revenue by client, and BlackRock's BUIDL is the single largest relationship on the platform without its economics being disclosed anywhere. The comparison base is also not the reporting entity: footnote 1 records that the results are those of Securitize I, Inc., formerly Securitize, Inc., achieved before the combination completed, so the $350m of cash and the public listing sit outside the quarter being reported. The two figures the reports carry that the filing does not are the consensus estimate and the share price move, and CoinDesk is the source of both. The two accounts of the prior-year loss differ because they use different lines of the same statement, $5,538,788 from continuing operations in CoinDesk and $6,146,303 including discontinued operations in Crypto Briefing, and the figure used here is the second. Domingo's description of the quarter as softer is reported by CoinDesk and does not appear in the release; the earnings call was scheduled for the morning of 13 August and has not been read here.