AMBR — H1 2026 Financial Report Analysis

Crypto revenue halved; a new market-making line filled half the gap

Amber International, a Singapore-based company that runs a crypto wealth-management platform for wealthy individuals and institutions (Amber Premium) and, since its March 2025 merger with iClick, an online-marketing business, reported first-half 2026 revenue of $23.9 million, down 28.4% from $33.5 million a year earlier. Its crypto platform revenue fell 55.9% to $12.3 million as trading volumes and crypto prices dropped. The company's new "agentic" line, which groups the marketing business with a market-making service for crypto token projects (A-MM) launched in the second quarter, doubled to $11.7 million. The six months ended in a $2.2 million net loss, against a $1.7 million profit in the first half of 2025.

The figures come from the interim financial statements and management's discussion filed on Form 6-K on September 10, 2026. Amber is a foreign private issuer: it reports under international accounting rules (IFRS) and files no 10-Q, so this half-year filing is its fullest 2026 report so far.

At a glance

• Crypto platform revenue: $12.3 million, down 55.9%. The business the company was built on brought in less than half of what it did a year ago. Part of the drop is a one-off fee that boosted 2025.
• Agentic revenue: $11.7 million, up 107%. It now makes up 48.8% of revenue, up from 16.9%. About $3.5 million came from A-MM in its first quarter, and much of the rest reflects a full six months of the acquired marketing business.
• Operating loss: $2.2 million (a −9.0% margin). The second quarter alone was profitable at the operating level ($1.0 million), after a $3.2 million loss in the first quarter.

Key figures

n/m = not meaningful (the result swung from profit to loss). Diluted EPS to four decimals: −$0.0240 vs $0.0212. Related-party share is our calculation from the revenue the filing lists by related party in Note 19.

What drove the numbers

Wealth management is Amber Premium's main product line: structured products (crypto investments with option-like payoffs), "Earn" interest-bearing deposit programs, and crypto-backed loans. Revenue fell from $21.5 million to $9.6 million. Management gives three reasons. First, the prior-year half included a "non-recurring service fee" that did not repeat (the filing does not give its size). Second, Amber deliberately cut the interest rates it paid on Earn deposits to shrink that deposit base, choosing, in its words, "capital efficiency and risk management over near-term revenue." Third, lower crypto prices reduced the dollar value of the deposits that do remain. Liabilities due to customers, which are mostly those deposits, fell from $61.4 million at year-end to $49.6 million at June 30.

Execution solutions, the fees Amber earns for carrying out large crypto trades, fell 65.9% to $1.6 million. The MD&A cites "a pronounced industry-wide contraction in trading volumes with a lower realized fee rate", meaning both fewer trades and thinner fees on each one. Payment solutions (converting between ordinary money and crypto) fell 34.1% to $1.1 million.

Agentic revenue rose from $5.7 million to $11.7 million, and the doubling has two separate sources. About $3.5 million came from A-MM, which manages trading liquidity for crypto token projects and began earning revenue in the second quarter. The other $8.2 million came from the marketing and enterprise software business. That business was up 44.5%, but it was only consolidated from March 12, 2025, so the comparison sets six months against roughly three and a half. Measured quarter to quarter, marketing revenue actually fell, from $4.3 million in Q1 to $3.8 million in Q2. The September 3 earnings release attributes that dip to "realignment of resources away from lower margin consumers and marketers." In other words, most of the growth in the "agentic" line is a merger effect plus one new quarter of A-MM, not existing customers spending more.

Costs fell less than revenue. Total operating expenses dropped 21.4% to $20.0 million. Research and development spending fell 61.1% to $3.1 million because "certain product and platform development initiatives" were finished in 2025. Sales and marketing rose 38.2% to $4.5 million, reflecting a full half of the marketing business. General and administrative costs fell 12.8% to $12.5 million, helped by lower share-based pay and no repeat of 2025's merger legal fees. G&A alone took 52.0% of revenue, which is the main reason the first half lost money.

The quarterly turn. Q2 revenue was $13.9 million, up 38.8% from Q1's $10.0 million but still 26.5% below Q2 2025's $18.9 million. Q2 gross margin rose to 79.5% from 67.7% in Q1. Gross margin is the share of revenue left after the direct costs of delivering the service. With operating expenses steady at about $10.0 million a quarter, the company swung from a $3.2 million operating loss in Q1 to $1.0 million of operating income in Q2. The swing came from the new A-MM revenue and a recovery in wealth management ($5.3 million in Q2 vs $4.3 million in Q1).

What the headline numbers hide

• Half of revenue comes from related parties. Note 19 lists $11.8 million of H1 2026 revenue from companies connected to Amber's insiders or its former principal shareholder, out of $23.9 million total: AG Global Technology ($5.4 million), Lead Accelerating ($4.2 million), Proton Fund SPC ($2.2 million) and small amounts from others. That is 49.3%, down from 78.8% a year ago, when WhaleFin Technologies alone provided $15.1 million. AG Global, which produced no revenue in H1 2025, is party to an intercompany services agreement signed in November 2025 (filed on a 6-K) that follows on from an earlier agreement with WhaleFin. Revenue from related parties is real revenue, but its prices are not set at arm's length the way a stranger's would be, and it can stop if the relationship changes. This is the most important single fact about the quality of the top line.
• Money owed by related parties nearly doubled. "Amounts due from related parties" rose from $32.3 million at December 31, 2025 to $60.1 million at June 30, 2026, up 85.8% in six months, while revenue fell. That balance now equals 58% of the company's $102.8 million of total equity and is about twice its $30.2 million of cash. The filing does not say how much of it is trade-related versus advances.
• Operating cash flow was positive, but not because of earnings. Operations generated $1.0 million in cash despite the $2.2 million pre-tax loss. The MD&A attributes the gap to $9.0 million of "crypto assets used for operations" (crypto converted to cash) and a $4.3 million drop in trade receivables, partly offset by a $6.8 million outflow on related-party balances. That cash came from shrinking the balance sheet, not from profitable trading.
• Adjusted figures flatter the half, but only slightly. Amber's non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA for H1 was −$1.3 million, against the reported net loss from continuing operations of −$2.3 million. The gap is mainly $0.8 million of depreciation, $1.1 million of unrealized losses on crypto holdings added back, and $0.9 million of other gains taken out. Share-based pay was only $39,000, down from $805,000, so stock compensation is not hiding costs this period. That could change: the October 23, 2026 shareholder meeting will vote on a one-off grant of 23,469,189 fully vested Class B shares to chairman and CEO Michael Wu. The proxy says it would raise his voting power from about 74.1% to about 82.3%.
• Per-share comparisons are distorted by the merger. The weighted-average ADS count rose from 79.5 million to 93.8 million because the H1 2025 figure only partly included shares issued in the March 2025 merger. This happened even though Amber spent $4.9 million buying back ADSs in the half (2.64 million ADSs, about $5.8 million in total, under a $50 million program running to November 2026).
• A correction between the press release and the filing. The September 10 filing corrected about $1.3 million of other comprehensive loss (a currency-translation item) reported in the September 3 earnings release. Net loss, revenue and cash flow were unaffected. The company also lists remediation of "material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting" among its risks. That is a formal admission that its accounting controls are not yet where auditors want them, which makes small corrections like this one more likely.
• The Q2 outlook was met only by changing what counts. Before Q2, Amber had guided to $9–10 million of Amber Premium revenue for the quarter. The crypto platform alone brought in $6.6 million. The company says it beat the outlook ($10.1 million) by adding A-MM's $3.5 million, a revenue stream that did not exist when the outlook was given.

Takeaway: Amber is trying to replace a shrinking crypto wealth business with "agentic AI" revenue, but the replacement so far is a merger-inflated marketing unit plus one quarter of a crypto market-making service. Meanwhile half of all revenue, and a fast-growing $60.1 million receivable, sits with related parties. The Q2 operating profit is real, but it rests on one new quarter of A-MM, so whether that line repeats in Q3 matters more than any other figure.

What to watch next

Management withdrew its financial guidance, saying that during the shift to "an agentic AI company" the previous guidance "is no longer an appropriate measure." It plans to present more AI agents and "the financial framework for the transition" at an Investor Day expected before year-end 2026. Its two new agents, Ambre (personal finance) and MIA (marketing), launched after June 30 and contributed no revenue to these results.

Our read: with operating costs running at about $10 million a quarter, Amber needs around $12.5–13 million of quarterly revenue at Q2's 79.5% gross margin just to break even at the operating line. Q1 showed what happens without A-MM: a $3.2 million operating loss. Three things will decide the second half:

1. Whether A-MM revenue repeats in Q3, and who pays it (third parties or related parties).
2. Whether related-party receivables keep growing faster than revenue.
3. What the Wu share grant costs. If approved on October 23, the shares vest immediately, so a large non-cash share-based pay charge in Q4 is likely. Its size will depend on the share value at grant.

Based on last year's timing (Q3 2025 results were published on November 26, 2025), Q3 2026 results are likely in late November.