Abaxx Provides Q1 Corporate Update

TORONTO, Feb. 01, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Abaxx Technologies Inc. (NEO:ABXX)(OTCQX:ABXXF) (“Abaxx” or the “Company”), a financial software and market infrastructure company, majority shareholder of Abaxx Singapore Pte Ltd. (“Abaxx Singapore”), the owner of Abaxx Commodity Exchange and Clearinghouse (individually, “Abaxx Exchange” and “Abaxx Clearing”), and producer of the SmarterMarkets™ Podcast, summarizes development activities over the past quarter and the general progress of the Company’s business plans.

The Company plans to host an investor call and presentation on Tuesday, February 6th, with details outlined in this release.

Abaxx Corporate Milestone Highlights

• Risk and Regulatory: Received three regulatory licenses from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (“MAS”) in December 2023 to operate a recognised market operator, an approved clearing house and an approved holding company. Engaged with prospective members on onboarding processes and sharing of risk frameworks.
  
• Commercial: Approved applications for two initial clearing members and announced Abaxx Singapore’s membership approval into the Futures Industry Association (FIA). Began onboarding global inter-dealer broker networks — key in building market liquidity for the debut of Abaxx product verticals. Conducted extensive series of demos intended to familiarize brokers with the Abaxx Trade Registration Platform for block trade entry. Finalizing additional membership approvals to build a key group of clearing members at launch.
  
• Exchange Product Development: Continued to enhance readiness of trading participants by ensuring adequacy of product knowledge of our launch suite of LNG, Carbon and Nickel Sulphate futures contracts. Lithium futures progressed to Stage 2 (Scoping/Design/Drafting). Precious Metals solutions in Stage 3 (Industry Review/Risk/Regulatory).
  
• Systems and Operations: Completed Abaxx Exchange and Abaxx Clearing ISV certification process. Integration, training and onboarding of all user classes (trading firm, broker firm and clearing firm) into production and payment network underway and on time for targeted 1Q -2024 launch. Abaxx Singapore completed the onboarding of a multinational bank as Abaxx Clearing’s second settlement bank and Abaxx Clearing is now active on the Swift network.
  
• Strategic Financing: Closed equity private placement as previously announced on January 10, 2024 with Abaxx’s first group of strategic investors including Cboe, TLW, and Traxys.
  
• Abaxx Console Apps and ID++ Protocol: Continued to advance design and development work on prototypes and advanced foundational productization. Held our first private demo day, reviewing our full slate of product applications and prototypes. Advanced work on prototyping processes and tooling for a novel, privacy-preserving deployment of Large Language Model (LLMs) applications within the Abaxx Console Suite using ID++.
  

Last quarter included the completion of multiple critical milestones toward the launch of Abaxx Exchange and Clearinghouse, including the grant of an Approved Clearinghouse (“ACH”) license and Recognised Market Operator (“RMO”) license to Abaxx Singapore’s fully owned subsidiaries, Abaxx Clearing and Abaxx Exchange, respectively, as announced on December 7th, 2023. The Company’s ongoing efforts continue around technological advancements, regulatory engagements and expanding Abaxx’s market presence to offer smarter markets for transition-related commodities with better tools to manage risk.

The following provides a detailed update on these developments.

Abaxx Exchange and Abaxx Clearing Developments

Risk and Regulatory: The remaining regulatory licensing processes were successfully completed in Q4, leading to the grant of MAS licenses in early December 2023. Teams completed internal default management drill; margins and guaranty fund frameworks shared with clearing members.

Commercial: Last quarter, commercial activities remained active across Clearing Members, Trading Firms and Brokers for all three product asset classes. Clearing firms are now in User Testing across our Abaxx Exchange systems and have completed Abaxx-provided product knowledge workshops with special attention paid to the physical settlement attribute of Abaxx Exchange futures. Trading firms are working with their Clearing firms to ensure connectivity for Day 1 trading. Commercial teams are working to onboard global inter-dealer brokers and conducted numerous demo sessions of the Abaxx “Block Trade Registration Platform” for brokers in Houston, London, New York and Singapore. The Abaxx commercial team has also increased the frequency of market workshops leading up to launch, with the intent of growing the understanding of our innovative markets. Their upcoming “roadshow”' will include co- sponsored events with leading market Clearing firms, Brokers and Price reporting agencies. It will include a mix of in person and online sessions.

Systems and Operations: Integration, training and onboarding of all user classes (trading firms, broker firms and clearing firms) into Abaxx production systems and payment network is well underway and on time for targeted launch in Q1 of 2024. Abaxx staff is heavily engaged with a focus on training clearing and broker firms in administration and use of systems that support order routing, trade entry and post trade activities. Industry-leading Exchange and Clearing ISVs have deployed their software packages for authorized use by the Abaxx community. Abaxx Clearing is now active on the Swift network and is in process of activating accounts for its Clearing Members at settlement banks through which margin deposits and payments will be managed. Final live production system end-to-end checks have been scheduled to accommodate a Q1 launch.

Exchange Product Development:
LNG, Carbon and Nickel Sulphate futures contracts are prepped for launch. Further development work continues on a number of fronts as momentum grows and we transition to production and scaling our enterprise. Development work on additional battery and initial precious metals products is a priority. We are encouraged by the enthusiasm and demand for these product futures to extend the battery metals category and we have progressed to Stage 2 (Scoping/Design/Drafting). Precious Metals solutions are in Stage 3 (Industry Review/Risk/Regulatory).

Additional Corporate Updates

Abaxx Console Apps: In Q4 2023, our Digital Product and Engineering Teams marked the completion of the “Project Venice'' pilot with an internal demo day that highlighted the capabilities of pairing Abaxx’s console apps with newly developed tools to connect qualified participants looking to transact in global carbon markets. The teams deployed release updates to Verifier and foundational infrastructure to support interoperability and security. In addition, the team advanced work on prototyping privacy-preserving processes and tooling for AI and large language models.

Q1 2024 Business Update Investor Call

The Company plans to host a quarterly business update investor presentation, to provide a business update and respond to investor questions.

The Company will hold the investor presentation via Zoom Meetings on Tuesday, February 6th at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time Zone (EST). The Company invites current and prospective shareholders to attend this quarterly business update and Q&A session with the Abaxx executive team. Attendees may email their questions in advance to [email protected].

Registration will be required to access the meeting. Following the presentation, a recording of the session will be made available on the Abaxx Investor Relations website at investors.abaxx.tech.

PRESENTATION DETAILS
DATE: Tuesday, February 6th, 2024
TIME: 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time (EST)
LOCATION: Zoom Meeting
To receive the meeting link and passcode, please register here.
QUESTIONS: Please submit questions ahead of the presentation to: [email protected]

About Abaxx Technologies

Abaxx is building Smarter Markets — markets empowered by better financial technology and market infrastructure to address our biggest challenges, including the energy transition. In addition to developing and deploying financial technologies that make communication, trade, and transactions easier and more secure, Abaxx is a majority-owner of Abaxx Exchange and Abaxx Clearing, subsidiaries recognized by MAS as an RMO and ACH, respectively.

Abaxx Exchange and Abaxx Clearing are a Singapore-based commodity futures exchange and clearinghouse, introducing centrally cleared, physically deliverable commodities futures and derivatives to provide better price discovery and risk management tools for the commodities critical to our transition to a lower-carbon economy.

For more information please visit abaxx.tech, abaxx.exchange and smartermarkets.media.

For more information about this press release, please contact:
Steve Fray, CFO
Tel: 416-786-4381

Media and investor inquiries:

Abaxx Technologies Inc.
Investor Relations Team
Tel: +1 246 271 0082
E-mail: [email protected]

Forward-Looking Statements

This News Release includes certain “forward-looking statements” which do not consist of historical facts. Forward-looking statements include estimates and statements that describe Abaxx or the Company’s future plans, objectives, or goals, including words to the effect that Abaxx expects a stated condition or result to occur. Forward-looking statements may be identified by such terms as “seeking”, “believes”, “anticipates”, “expects”, “estimates”, “may”, “could”, “would”, “will”, or “plan”. Since forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Although these statements are based on information currently available to Abaxx, Abaxx does not provide any assurance that actual results will meet management’s expectations. Risks, uncertainties, and other factors involved with forward-looking information could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Forward-looking information in this news release includes but is not limited to, Abaxx’s objectives, goals or future plans, statements about anticipated membership approvals and timing of the Abaxx Exchange launch, statements about anticipated network launch dates and the timing of network launch, statements about Abaxx’s product development and anticipated timing for product deployment, statements regarding anticipated exchange listings, receipt and timing of regulatory approvals, timing of the commencement of operations, financial predictions, intended use of proceeds from previous financings, and estimates of market conditions. Such factors include, among others: risks relating to the global economic climate; dilution; the Company’s limited operating history; future capital needs and uncertainty of additional financing; the competitive nature of the industry; currency exchange risks; regulatory risks; the need for Abaxx to manage its planned growth and expansion; the effects of product development and need for continued technology change; protection of proprietary rights; the effect of government regulation and compliance on Abaxx and the industry; the ability to list the Company’s securities on stock exchanges in a timely fashion or at all; network security risks; the ability of Abaxx to maintain properly working systems; reliance on key personnel; global economic and financial market deterioration impeding access to capital or increasing the cost of capital; and volatile securities markets impacting security pricing unrelated to operating performance. In addition, particular factors which could impact future results of the business of Abaxx include but are not limited to: operations in foreign jurisdictions, protection of intellectual property rights, contractual risk, third-party risk; clearinghouse risk, malicious actor risks, third-party software license risk, system failure risk, risk of technological change; dependence of technical infrastructure; and changes in the price of commodities, capital market conditions, restriction on labor and international travel and supply chains. Abaxx has also assumed that no significant events occur outside of Abaxx’s normal course of business.

Abaxx cautions that the foregoing list of material factors is not exhaustive. In addition, although Abaxx has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, or intended. When relying on Abaxx’s forward-looking statements and information to make decisions, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events. Abaxx has assumed that the material factors referred to in the previous paragraph will not cause such forward-looking statements and information to differ materially from actual results or events. However, the list of these factors is not exhaustive and is subject to change and there can be no assurance that such assumptions will reflect the actual outcome of such items or factors. The forward-looking information contained in this press release represents the expectations of Abaxx as of the date of this press release and, accordingly, is subject to change after such date. Readers should not place undue importance on forward-looking information and should not rely upon this information as of any other date. Abaxx does not undertake to update this information at any particular time except as required in accordance with applicable laws. Cboe Canada Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.