Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Orion Digital Q1 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded today, Thursday, May 7th, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Craig Armitage, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, John, and good morning everyone. Before we begin, I'd like to cover a few brief items. Today's call will include forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. The company undertakes no obligation to update these statements except as required by law. Additional information about these risks is included in Orion Digital's Q1 filings and its periodic filings with Canadian and U.S. regulators, which you can find on SEDAR+, EDGAR, and the Orion Investor Relations website. In addition, today's discussion will include certain non-IFRS or adjusted financial measures. These should be considered as a supplement to, and not as a substitute for IFRS results. We've included reconciliations to these measures or for these measures in the Q1 press release and filings.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Dave Feller. Dave.
Thanks, Craig, and thank you to everyone joining us today. I'm joined by our President and CFO, Greg Feller. This is our first quarter operating under the Orion Digital name following our rebrand from Mogo earlier this year. The new name reflects the company we're building, a financial technology company focused on platforms for the next generation of financial services. We operate two distinct growth platforms, Intelligent Investing in Canadian Digital Wealth and Carta Worldwide in European payments infrastructure. These platforms are supported by a consumer lending portfolio that generates cash flow to fund continued investment in the business. Before walking through Q1 results, I want to spend a few minutes on Intelligent Investing, why we're investing in it, and why we believe it is one of the most significant opportunities in front of Orion.
The retail investing industry has spent the last two decades selling a story of democratization, easier access, lower costs, empowerment. The product that was actually built behind the story was optimized for activity, engagement, and frequent decision-making because activity is what generates revenue under the prevailing business models. That is why prediction markets are showing up next to retirement accounts. That is why trading interfaces keep adding leverage and frictionless speculation. That is why every layer of the experience is tuned for engagement rather than outcome. We think AI changes the structure of this. As research, analysis, and decision support tools become broadly accessible, the question of what an investing platform is actually for becomes harder to avoid. Platforms designed around activity will continue to optimize for activity. What many of them are really optimized for is a dopamine loop of engagement.
The opportunity, as we see it, is to build a platform designed for what investing is actually supposed to do: compound capital over long periods of time. That is what Intelligent Investing is. Not a better trading app, not a cheaper brokerage. It is a different category of product designed around a different objective with a different set of incentives embedded in it. One of the most important financial principles in system design is that systems produce the outcomes they are designed to optimize. Trading platforms optimize activity, wealth managers optimize assets under management, financial media optimizes attention. Intelligent Investing is designed around long-term compounding, and that principle shapes every layer of architecture, the environment, the decision process, the research tools, the incentives. The first thing you'll notice in the product is the design. It is intentionally minimalist and calm.
Most investing apps are built around stimulation, price movement, charts, alerts, frequent prompts. We are building the opposite. The environment is designed to support disciplined thinking because the environment in which decisions are made shapes the quality of the decisions themselves. The second layer is research. Serious investing requires serious research, which is why we partnered with FinChat to give every member full access to its professional-grade research platform, a subscription that on its own costs over CAD 90 a month. The third layer, which we're building towards, is decision architecture. Serious investors document their reasoning, they write investment memos, they capture their thesis before committing capital, and they review it afterwards. That process is what separates disciplined capital allocation from reactive trading and is one of the core areas we'll be developing on the platform in the quarters ahead.
As the foundational architecture comes into place through the phase 2 rollout, we'll be positioned to release these capabilities and continue building on them in a regular cadence. Taken together, the environment, the research tools, and the decision architecture we're building are designed around disciplined capital allocation and long-term compounding. As Charlie Munger said, "Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome." The incentives embedded in our wealth platform are aligned with long-term investor outcomes. The activity maximizing platforms are competing for ground the market is leaving behind. We are building for what comes next. On Q1, results for wealth specifically grew to revenue grew 12% year-over-year to CAD 3.9 million. Assets under management are CAD 495.6 million at March 31st, 2026, representing 14% growth year-over-year.
We are progressing through the phase 2 rollout, which expands the offering beyond the managed portfolio framework introduced in phase 1 and introduces self-directed investing within the same unified platform. As phase 2 deployment continues through the first half, the foundational architecture of Intelligent Investing is coming into place, and we expect it to roll out the new capabilities on a regular cadence as we build on that foundation. The platform rests on three principles. First, their core S&P 500 portfolio is a default foundation, reflecting the long-run reality that most investors and most professional managers underperform the market. Second, self-directed investing is a discipline layer where capital allocation decisions can be measured against an S&P 500 benchmark over time. Third, an environment intentionally designed to reduce emotional and reactive decision-making in favor of structured long-term thinking. That is the direction of Intelligent Investing.
We are not building a faster trading app. We are not building a cheaper brokerage. We are building a platform designed for the thing that investing is actually supposed to do, compound capital over the long run. We believe that is where the next generation of investor value gets created. I'll now turn it over to Greg to cover Carta, the financial results, and our 2026 outlook.
Thanks, Dave. I'll cover three things today. Our Q1 financial results and balance sheet, our 2026 outlook, and the platform driving our growth. Let me start with Q1 performance. Adjusted EBITDA grew 46% year-over-year to CAD 1.5 million, with gross margin expanding from 67%-69% as our revenue mix continued to shift towards higher margin platform revenue. Wealth revenue grew 12% as Intelligent Investing scaled, while European transaction volume at Carta grew 12% to CAD 2.7 billion, and adjusted other subscriptions related revenue grew 6%. Total revenue was CAD 16.9 million in Q1 2026, compared to CAD 17.3 million in Q1 of 2025, with adjusted revenue up 2% year-over-year, excluding the non-core businesses we exited during 2025.
Net loss was CAD 5.8 million in the quarter, improvement of 51% year-over-year, primarily reflecting lower non-operating revaluation loss compared to Q1 of 2025. Cash flow from operating activities before investment in gross loan receivable is CAD 4 million, up 6%. I also want to spend a moment on our balance sheet, which strengthened materially during the quarter. We ended Q1 with CAD 35.4 million in cash, marketable securities, and investments. Within that cash, unrestricted cash of CAD 25.6 million was up 96% year-over-year and 27% from year-end 2025. The increase reflects the deliberate conversion of non-core holdings into operating cash, primarily from monetization of WonderFi position, which earlier in 2025 agreed to be acquired by Robinhood Markets.
This is one of the most significant balance sheet improvements in the company's recent history, and it positions us with meaningful operating flexibility going forward. Turning to our payments platform, let me say a word about Carta. Carta operates within the authorization layer of European payments, providing the system that authorizes transactions, enforces program rules, and connects payment activity. As payments increasingly become AI-mediated and agent-initiated, this position becomes increasingly strategic. Carta has a long history of supporting clients that have scaled meaningfully, including previously supporting U.K.-based Wise during earlier phases of its growth and current clients like Pluxee, one of the leading European employee benefits platforms, which remains an anchor client today. We believe Carta operates with a structurally competitive pricing position in Europe, issuer processing, and we see a meaningful opportunity to expand within our existing client base and selectively into new accounts.
We also are evaluating stable coin-based infrastructure for the selected cross-border payment flow, where it can improve settlement speed, transparency, and cost efficiency. Our wealth platform metrics reflect early progress against the much larger opportunity that phase two opens up. Wealth revenue grew 12% to CAD 3.9 million, and AUM grew 14% to CAD 495.6 million in the quarter. We expect increased marketing investment in Intelligent Investing during the second half of phase two rollout. Now to our outlook. We are providing updated guidance for 2026. Q2 adjusted EBITDA, CAD two and a half to three and a half million. Full year adjusted EBITDA, CAD 6 million-CAD 7 million. Consolidated revenue modestly lower year-over-year. We are reducing Q2 loan originations by approximately 50% from Q1 levels.
We want investors to see clearly what business produces under this scenario with reduced new origination activity. The existing loan book generates cash without the offsetting customer acquisition and incremental provision costs we incur at full de-deployment pace. The Q2 adjusted EBITDA guide reflects that. This is a temporary modulation, not a run rate. We are guiding second half adjusted EBITDA lower than the first half as we step origination volume back up and increase marketing investment, including for Intelligent Investing following its phase two launch. We believe these investments are aligned with our goal to compound per share value over multi-year periods. We think the cash generated characteristics of our portfolio when origination spend is dialed back are an important attribute of the model for investors to understand, particularly in environments where capital flexibility matters.
Lastly, we continue to believe the public's market current valuation does not fully reflect the economics of our business, and our share repurchase program reflects that view. We have retired 7% approximately of outstanding shares since June 2022. With that, we will open the line up for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to David Feller. Please continue.
Thank you again for joining us on our Q1 call. We look forward to updating you post Q2. Thanks again.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.