Aeluma Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
September 9, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: DDC reported first-half profitability with record-high gross margin of 33.4% and GAAP net income of US$5.2 million, marking a significant turnaround.
  • Positive Sentiment: Since May, DDC has built a Bitcoin treasury of 1,008 BTC at an average cost of US$108,416, becoming the world's second-largest public Bitcoin treasury company.
  • Neutral Sentiment: DDC strategically exited its loss-making U.S. operations, leading to a 9.4% revenue decline while enabling a sharper focus on its profitable China business, which grew 7.5% year-over-year.
  • Positive Sentiment: Leadership and governance were bolstered with the appointment of Qiu Ho as Chief of Staff, the launch of a Bitcoin Visionary Council, and the Bitcoin Influence Collective advisory group.
  • Positive Sentiment: DDC aims to accumulate 10,000 BTC by year-end 2025 through existing financing facilities and structured transactions, with transparent reporting on its treasury dashboard.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Aeluma Q4 2025
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

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Operator

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to DDC Enterprise Limited's First Half twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you would need to press 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised.

Operator

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would like now to turn the conference over to Yuji Azai, Investor Relations for DDC. Please go ahead.

Yujia Zhai
IR & Media Relations at DDC Enterprise

Thanks, operator. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining DDC Enterprises first half twenty twenty five earnings conference call. Joining me today are Norma Chew, DDC's founder, chairwoman, and CEO Qiu Ho, DDC's Chief of Staff. Before we begin today's call, I'd like to remind everyone that today's call is being recorded and will be available on DDC's Investor Relations website.

Yujia Zhai
IR & Media Relations at DDC Enterprise

After management's prepared remarks, we'll open the line for Q and A. A press release of DDC's first half twenty twenty five results and a supplemental investor presentation are also available on DDC's IR website. Please note that during the course of this call, we may make forward looking statements. These statements reflect our current views and expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of these risk factors. With that, I'll pass the call to Norma.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. The 2025 was transformational for DDC. DDC started as a content driven Asian food platform that has since grown into a portfolio of beloved ready to eat consumer brands. In the first six months of 2025, BDC turned profitable and delivered record high gross margin and net income of 33.4% and US5.2 million dollars respectively. Hugh will expand on this shortly, but our core operating business is the strongest it has ever been, and we expect continued growth into the second half of the year.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

For our second transformation in May, following in the footsteps of strategy, we added a balance sheet engine to our business, Bitcoin as a core treasury asset and a strategic tool to accelerate long term value for our shareholders. We published CDC's Bitcoin manifesto, a public statement that outlines the standards by which we want to be measured by our investors and how we plan to operate as a Bitcoin treasury company with execution, transparency, discipline, and long term conviction. That manifesto is now core to how we guide our team, speak to investors, and measure internal investment decisions. It's an extension of our values around stewardship, resilience, and sovereignty. Just as food is essential to our personal well-being, we at BDC believe Bitcoin is essential to financial well-being.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

We invest in our health through what we eat, and we protect the value of capital by holding an asset designed to resist fiat debasement. Concurrently in late May, we made our first purchase of Bitcoin and outlined a structured plan for responsible accumulation. Since then, we have scaled quickly, executing multiple purchases, bringing our holdings to 1,008 Bitcoin as of the August. Alongside our accumulation, we have secured record breaking financing and institutional partnerships to support scaling our Bitcoin treasury aggressively. Our goal is clear.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

Build one of the largest and most strategic public Bitcoin treasuries in the world and do it the DDC way. With methodical and disciplined execution, tight risk controls, and transparency while remaining steadfast with our company's core values. Our approach draws on proven playbooks such as strategy to show the value of a clear treasury policy, disciplined disclosure, and aligning the capital stack to a long term accumulation strategy. We've learned from each treasury company that has successfully executed the strategy and adapted it to DDC's brand, business model, and investor base. We believe two core differentiators design our approach.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

Our first edge is reach. BDC is a trusted brand among Chinese speaking audiences, engaging over 60,000,000 active users, 3,500,000 paying customers, and roughly 475,000,000 monthly views across our website and streaming platforms. Platforms. This reach connects us to a fast and underpenetrated investor base with an estimated 6,500,000 mainland Chinese investors with U. Brokerage accounts and 150,000,000,000 in AUM.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

Along with Chinese high net worth individuals holding 1,500,000,000,000.0 US dollars in US assets. For these investors, BDC offers a compliant US listed equity proxy for Bitcoin exposure within a familiar ecosystem. Our second edge is a profitable core business. This foundation allows us to stack Bitcoin sustainably independent of market volatility. Strong earnings reduce the risk of forced sales and strengthens our access to capital markets, enabling us to build our Bitcoin treasury while continuing to invest in our brand and products.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

Together, we believe these create a powerful flywheel, distribution plus cash flow that compounds on both our income statement and the balance sheet. To support this strategy, we are strengthening our team and governance. I'm excited to welcome Q Ho as chief of staff. Q brings over two decades of investment experience across public markets and digital assets, including cofounding initial ventures and early stage crypto investment firm and managing a disruptive technology investment portfolio at CPPIB, where he focused on areas including blockchain technology and AI. CPPIB is the largest pension fund in Canada with over 700,000,000,000 Canadian dollars in assets.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

In addition, he has held senior investment and management roles at hedge funds, including Cayden Capital and Valley Partners, and was the founder and CIO of Wuzhou Asian Partners. At EDC, he will drive cross functional execution across capital markets, treasury operations, partnerships, and investor relations to ensure tight operating cadence as we scale. We're also formalizing external oversight through our newly formed Bitcoin Visionary Council. I'm proud to announce Yatsu, cofounder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands as our inaugural member. Ya'll brings global experience across venture, regulation, and digital asset ecosystems and will help us pressure test our governance and strategic road map as we grow our Bitcoin holdings.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

Complementing this institutional leadership, in July, we also announced the Bitcoin Influence Collective, a mission driven advisory group of key thought leaders and seasoned Bitcoin investors focused on contributing to the company's strategic directions and industry specific innovations. Its four founding members include Adrian Morris, Lamar Arshara, Magdalena Gronowska, and Tim Cosman. These new leadership and advisory additions reflect DDC's commitment in executing one of the most forward thinking and disciplined Bitcoin strategies among public companies globally. Since launching our program in May, we've executed several tranches, reaching 1,008 Bitcoin as of August 31 with an average purchase price of US108 thousand $416 Compared to our first purchase in May, we've increased our Bitcoin yield by 1798%. As of today, BDC is now the second largest Bitcoin treasury company in the world.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

We intend to continue accumulating on an opportunistic risk management basis and only when it is accretive on a Bitcoin per share basis. Capital raising is the lifeblood of treasury companies, and this quarter, we secured up to $528,000,000 in financing from Ensign Funds, Animoca Group, Kinetic Capital, QCP, and other premier institutions. This represents one of the largest Bitcoin dedicated races ever completed by NYSE listed company. It is an especially notable achievement given the size of the company at the time of the race. It underscores the strength of our management team's capital market expertise and ability to attract world class investors.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

In addition, we filed a 500,000,000 US dollars S-three Universal Shelf that further enhances our financing capability. Importantly, 100% of these proceeds are dedicated to one purpose, accumulating Bitcoin for the long term. Going forward, we will continue to leverage a mix of cash on our balance sheet, selective equity, convertible notes, and structured capital applied opportunistically with a singular goal of maximizing our BTC yield. In addition to building our Bitcoin treasury, we've partnered with leading institutions and Bitcoin native advisers to strengthen our platform. These collaborations expand DDC's capabilities in trading efficiency, secure custody, and Bitcoin yield enhancement.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

Together, these partnerships bring institutional grade oversight to our Bitcoin strategy while unlocking new opportunities for growth and reach. Looking forward, we expect strong revenue growth in our core business driven by our focus on markets with higher consumer demand with healthier margins. In regards to our Bitcoin treasury, we will continue accumulating Bitcoin and we'll publish updates with each material event. Lastly, we believe transparency matters. As such, we began reporting our Bitcoin holdings, cost basis, average purchase price, MF calculations, and other Bitcoin treasury metrics on a regular basis on our treasury dashboard on our website at dtc.xyz.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

Our near term goal is to achieve 10,000 BTC by the 2025 through a combination of purchases with our existing financing facilities as well as structured transactions. Longer term, our goal is to rank among the world's top three public Bitcoin treasury companies within three years. Thank you to our team at DDC, our partners and our shareholders. We are building a company that compounds value on both the income statement and the balance sheet. With that, I'll now pass the call over to Kew, DDC's Chief of Staff, to provide a detailed update on our first half twenty twenty five financial results.

Kyu Ho
Chief - Staff at DDC Enterprise

Thank you, Norma. DDC is a global Asian food platform. Our portfolio includes DayDay Coke, Nonna Lim, and Yai Thai, brands with strong consumer engagement and distribution. During the first half of twenty twenty five, we made the strategic decision to shut down our U. S.

Kyu Ho
Chief - Staff at DDC Enterprise

Operations amid tariff uncertainty. This strategic decision allowed us to focus on growing our profitable Asia business and our Bitcoin treasury strategy. The exit of our U. S. Operations removed significant costs related to headcount, marketing, logistics and other costs that were weighing on our profitability, and it simplified our operating model.

Kyu Ho
Chief - Staff at DDC Enterprise

We plan to maintain this focused approach for the near term with option for reassessment in the future following greater clarity on trade tariff policies. Now turning to our financial performance. Revenue came in at $15,600,000 for the first half, which represents a 9.4% year on year decline. This decrease was entirely the result of our strategic exit from loss making U. S.

Kyu Ho
Chief - Staff at DDC Enterprise

Operations where our goodwill was already written off in 2024. The underlying story is much stronger. Our core China business revenue grew 7.5% year on year, mainly driven by the increase in sales volume in China, where we are seeing increased demand as consumer environment improved in 2025, particularly at the price points where we operate. Looking forward, we expect our China business to continue to grow into our seasonally stronger second half of the year. Our sales will be boosted by new target markets in Southeast Asia, including Thailand and Indonesia, where we have strong synergies due to close proximity of supply chain and logistics with our domestic China business.

Kyu Ho
Chief - Staff at DDC Enterprise

Despite lower overall revenues, gross profit increased a strong 16.9% year on year to $5,200,000 This translates to a gross margin of 33.4%, a remarkable seven fifty basis points improvement year on year. This marks our sixth consecutive quarter of margin improvement, driven by economies of scale, stringent supply chain optimization and cost discipline. In addition, deflation in China provided raw material cost savings. Perhaps most importantly, we achieved GAAP net income of $5,200,000 and net income excluding BTC fair value gain of $1,300,000 GAAP net income represents a remarkable turnaround from negative $5,200,000 in the prior year, demonstrating the impact of our decision to exit The U. S.

Kyu Ho
Chief - Staff at DDC Enterprise

Market and focusing on higher margin territories. Lastly, our balance sheet remains strong with $25,100,000 in cash, cash equivalents and short term investments as of 06/30/2025. Of the $528,000,000 financing, we have utilized $53,000,000 for our Bitcoin purchases as of the date of this call. Dollars $275,000,000 in convertible notes and $200,000,000 equity line of credit remain undrawn. In addition, to date, we have not utilized any of the $500,000,000 universal shelf. With that, we'll open the call for questions.

Operator

Thank you. And our first question will come from Matthew Galinko with Maxim Group. Your line is open.

Matthew Galinko
Matthew Galinko
SVP & Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Great. Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on the move into the treasury. So I was hoping maybe we could start a little bit in the operating business in the food business. I know in I think it was April that you announced a joint venture. Is what did that contribute anything to first half results?

Matthew Galinko
Matthew Galinko
SVP & Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Or is there a second half impact from the JV you announced?

Operator

Okay. One moment, please. Stand by. One moment, please. There seems to be a technical difficulty.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

Oh, hi, Matt. Sorry. I was on mute earlier. Thanks for joining the call, and thanks for the question. So for our JV that was announced in April, it did not contribute to the first half results.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

I completed the setup in September, and so we expect to have contribution starting this month and going into the fourth quarter.

Matthew Galinko
Matthew Galinko
SVP & Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Alright. Terrific. And is there potential for additional of those sorts of JVs moving forward, or do you feel like you have capacity to do more on that front to kinda help grow the operating business and cash flow?

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

Yeah. I mean, we are looking at a number of potential m and a and JV opportunities, and the structure is gonna be very similar to the one that we did in April. You know, there is a likelihood that we could do one more in the fourth quarter of this year.

Matthew Galinko
Matthew Galinko
SVP & Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Great. Thank you. And then just another couple on the Bitcoin side. I think you mentioned a few partnerships around yield enhancement. I was hoping you could go maybe a little bit further into you know, what what sorts of strategies you can employ to improve yield.

Norma Chu
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise

Sure. I'll I'll pass this one to Q. Yeah.

Kyu Ho
Chief - Staff at DDC Enterprise

Sure. Hi, Matt. This is Q, chief of staff at DDC. Thanks for your question. So from a yield enhancement standpoint, what we have found is there are quite a lot of partners that we have and also there are quite a lot of inbound interest that we have had received over the last couple of months in suggesting different Bitcoin yield products to us, and we've been busy evaluating each of them.

Kyu Ho
Chief - Staff at DDC Enterprise

Right now, the fact that we're around four months into our strategy, we have taken an approach from a treasury standpoint to be much more conservative than others, meaning that we're looking for new enhancement strategies that gives us principal protection. These strategies can range from any from someone offering us to put some capital, Bitcoin specifically, into their fund to be managed for passive yield to potentially structured products where we may enjoy some yield. To give you an example, some of these unit enhancement suggestions that were given to us include selling puts, covered calls. They could be shops and products. It could be accumulators, all of which we're evaluating at the moment.

Matthew Galinko
Matthew Galinko
SVP & Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Got it. Thank you. That's that's a helpful overview. Maybe secondly, you talked about potentially structured purchases to help move towards the 10,000 Bitcoin goal by the '25. I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about, know, you know, MNAV being, you know, pretty close to one.

Matthew Galinko
Matthew Galinko
SVP & Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

You know, we've seen strategies sort of talk about a more stringent approach to deploying the common ATM for Bitcoin. I'm just curious sort of how you're thinking about issuing common relative to MNAV and what sort of the other approach you have to accretively, you know, acquire Bitcoin? Thank you.

Kyu Ho
Chief - Staff at DDC Enterprise

So I can give you a general sense of how we approach this. MNAP is out of our control, obviously. It's whatever market wants to place that multiple to be on our share price. And, obviously, from a management standpoint, we do as much as we can to be transparent. We are we try to be consistent with how we execute and how we communicate to shareholders.

Kyu Ho
Chief - Staff at DDC Enterprise

In terms of how we think about what instruments to use, you can think about it from a perspective of our ultimate goal is and always will be increasing the coin per share, which means that even as we were to issue new equity or if we're to use convertible debt, it's always keeping in mind that that action itself will increase our decline per share so that even if it's issuing new equity, it's accretive dilution. So this is really key because to us, that's a really important yardstick in which we measure whether we're adding value to shareholders. So with that in mind, we evaluate different instruments that is available to us, and we look for what would make the most sense from a cost of capital standpoint.

Matthew Galinko
Matthew Galinko
SVP & Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Great. Well, I appreciate the answers, and congrats again on the progress.

Operator

At this time, I do not show any additional questions in the queue. So this will conclude today's conference call. And thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.

Analysts
    • Yujia Zhai
      IR & Media Relations at DDC Enterprise
    • Norma Chu
      Founder, CEO & Chairwoman at DDC Enterprise
    • Kyu Ho
      Chief - Staff at DDC Enterprise
    • Matthew Galinko
      SVP & Senior Equity Research Analyst at Maxim Group
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