Key Highlights

• Sixt SE delivered Q1 pre-tax earnings of €2.1 million, significantly outperforming consensus forecasts of a €1.5 million loss
• Quarterly revenue reached €928.9 million, representing a 12.6% increase on a currency-adjusted basis and surpassing the €911 million estimate
• Corporate EBITDA surged 40.2% compared to the prior year, reaching €67.7 million
• The company returned to profitability with net income of €1.5 million, a sharp contrast to the €12.6 million loss recorded in Q1 2025
• Management reaffirmed 2026 full-year targets: €4.45–€4.60 billion in revenue with approximately 10% pre-tax profit margin

Shares of Sixt SE (ETR: SIXG) rallied 4.93% during Wednesday trading after the German mobility services provider delivered first-quarter financial results that exceeded market expectations on multiple fronts.

Sixt SE, SIX3.DE

The company reported pre-tax earnings of €2.1 million for the first quarter. This marked a significant outperformance versus the consensus forecast, which had called for a €1.5 million loss, and represented a dramatic improvement from the €17.6 million loss recorded in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

Quarterly revenue totaled €928.9 million, climbing 12.6% on a currency-adjusted basis and exceeding analyst projections of €911 million.

Net income turned positive at €1.5 million, reversing from a €12.6 million deficit in Q1 2025. This improvement highlights the company’s enhanced operational efficiency and more strategic fleet utilization.

Corporate EBITDA climbed 40.2% year-over-year to €67.7 million, also beating analyst forecasts. The company’s fleet expanded 8.4% to 182,900 vehicles, not including franchise partner operations.

Co-CEO Alexander Sixt attributed the performance to disciplined execution: “a tight, demand-oriented fleet, sustained strong investments in premium vehicles, brand, network, and above all technology.”

Performance Across Key Markets

European markets outside Germany delivered the most robust growth, with revenue climbing 16.2% to €344.7 million. The German domestic market posted solid gains as well, with revenue increasing 11.5% to €271.2 million.

Revenue from North America declined 1.9% to €310.3 million, though this decrease was primarily attributable to currency translation effects. According to Jefferies analysis, the region actually expanded 9.2% on an organic constant-currency basis.

While the foreign exchange headwind in North America warrants monitoring, the fundamental demand trends in the region remain positive.

2026 Outlook Maintained

Sixt retained its full-year 2026 financial guidance without modification. Management continues to project revenue in the range of €4.45 billion to €4.60 billion, accompanied by a pre-tax profit margin “in the area” of 10%.

The midpoint of this revenue guidance stands at €4.525 billion, closely aligned with the €4.54 billion consensus estimate. The implied pre-tax earnings of approximately €453 million exceed the consensus forecast of €446.9 million.

CFO Franz Weinberger emphasized the company’s confidence in maintaining its targets “despite increased geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty.”

The first-quarter performance represents a complete turnaround from the losses sustained twelve months earlier. With guidance unchanged and demand remaining resilient across most major markets, these results provide investors with greater visibility as Sixt approaches the peak summer travel period.

Key Takeaways

• SoftBank’s fourth-quarter net income reached $11.6 billion, representing a three-fold increase year-over-year
• A $45 billion valuation increase in its OpenAI holdings fueled the profit surge
• The company’s OpenAI stake was valued at $79.6 billion at the end of March
• Total OpenAI investment stands at $34.6 billion, with commitments exceeding $60 billion
• S&P Global Ratings downgraded SoftBank’s outlook to “negative” citing debt levels and portfolio concentration risks

SoftBank Group announced net income of 1.83 trillion yen (approximately $11.6 billion) for the quarter that concluded on March 31, 2026. This figure represents a substantial increase compared to the 517 billion yen profit recorded during the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

The performance significantly exceeded Wall Street expectations, with analysts having projected earnings of 295.2 billion yen, based on Bloomberg’s consensus estimates.

The dramatic earnings increase was primarily attributed to a 3.043 trillion yen investment gain recorded during the quarter. The majority of these gains originated from the Vision Fund, SoftBank’s primary investment arm.

The standout performer in the portfolio was OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company responsible for developing ChatGPT. As of March 31, SoftBank’s ownership position in OpenAI reached a valuation of $79.6 billion, marking a cumulative gain of $45 billion on the investment.

To date, SoftBank has deployed $34.6 billion into OpenAI. The Japanese conglomerate has pledged to invest over $60 billion in aggregate, which would secure approximately 13% equity ownership in the AI pioneer.

During February, OpenAI completed a funding round that assigned the company an $890 billion valuation. A subsequent financing round in March, which SoftBank co-led, valued the startup at $852 billion.

The Vision Fund alone recorded gains of approximately $20 billion during the three-month period from January through March, with OpenAI accounting for nearly the entire amount.

Significant Losses Beyond OpenAI Holdings

However, SoftBank’s investment portfolio showed mixed results elsewhere. The company experienced losses across multiple other holdings, including positions in Coupang, DiDi Global, and Klarna.

When excluding Vision Fund performance and accounting for currency fluctuations and operational expenses, SoftBank recorded an investment income deficit of 472.1 billion yen for the complete fiscal year.

Financing expenses during the fourth quarter climbed to 229.4 billion yen, compared with 148.9 billion yen in the prior-year period, demonstrating the increased borrowing costs associated with financing its artificial intelligence investments.

The company maintains $17.5 billion in outstanding obligations from a $40 billion bridge financing facility utilized to fund its OpenAI investment.

Credit Rating Concerns Intensify

To finance its aggressive OpenAI investment strategy, SoftBank has been divesting stakes in portfolio companies. The firm liquidated positions in Nvidia and T-Mobile, generating proceeds of 218.1 billion yen from these asset sales throughout the fiscal year.

S&P Global Ratings adjusted its outlook on SoftBank from “stable” to “negative” in March. The ratings agency expressed concerns that SoftBank’s asset quality and financial flexibility would likely decline due to its substantial OpenAI capital commitment.

According to S&P, SoftBank could mitigate these risks through additional asset monetization.

For the complete fiscal year, SoftBank reported net income of 5 trillion yen. Both the Vision Fund and its telecommunications business segment served as primary profit contributors.

Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son has positioned artificial intelligence as the central pillar of SoftBank’s long-term strategic vision. OpenAI continues to face intensifying competition from technology giants including Google and emerging players like Anthropic.

TLDR:

• Compound governance approved an oracle tweak that enabled liquidation of stolen rsETH collateral.
• The attacker used 116,500 rsETH as collateral to borrow ETH and wstETH across Compound v3.
• DeFi United seized nearly $30M after temporary oracle bounds forced undercollateralization.
• The recovered rsETH was redeemed into ETH to help restore KelpDAO’s damaged bridge reserves.

DeFi governance proved capable of acting as an emergency recovery mechanism after the April 2026 KelpDAO exploit. Roughly 116,500 rsETH worth $292 million were stolen and deployed as collateral on Compound v3.

Standard liquidation rules offered no path to recovery, since the stolen rsETH still priced normally. A governance-approved oracle adjustment changed that, eventually enabling DeFi United to seize roughly $30 million. The recovery marked one of the most coordinated on-chain interventions in DeFi’s history.

Why Standard Liquidation Rules Could Not Touch the Attacker’s Position

On April 18, 2026, attackers exploited a vulnerability in KelpDAO’s LayerZero bridge infrastructure. About 116,500 rsETH worth $292 million were released illegitimately from the Ethereum-side escrow.

The attack was widely attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Rather than selling, the attacker deployed them as collateral across multiple lending protocols.

On-chain data shows the attacker opened a Compound v3 position within minutes of the exploit. ETH and wstETH were borrowed in tranches against the stolen rsETH tokens.

Partial withdrawals helped manage the collateral ratio in the same window. The position was active and borrowing real assets before the protocol could respond.

In the weeks that followed, the position remained technically healthy at market prices. Compound’s rsETH markets were frozen, and loan-to-value ratios were set to zero.

The stolen rsETH still priced normally despite having no legitimate backing. Automated liquidation mechanisms therefore had no grounds to trigger.

DeFi lending liquidations depend on collateral value falling below set thresholds. Because rsETH had not dropped in price, the attacker’s position stayed above water.

There was no admin key or circuit breaker available to freeze the account. DeFi governance was therefore the only available instrument to act.

How a Governance Proposal Triggered Liquidation and Recovered the Collateral

The Compound Foundation engaged risk partners, including Gauntlet, to find a resolution pathway. Gauntlet submitted a proposal for a modified oracle for Compound’s rsETH markets.

The new oracle kept the Kelp DAO exchange rate feed as its primary source. It also added configurable price bounds operable by the Compound multisig.

Santiment Intelligence noted that an oracle adjustment pushed the attacker’s position into liquidation. This allowed DeFi United to seize roughly $30 million in collateral.

Temporarily setting the price floor below market value triggered undercollateralization. A DeFi United Recovery Guardian multisig then repaid the borrowed assets and seized the collateral.

Santiment data recorded $29,044,839 in Compound v3 liquidations on May 9th at 02:30 UTC. The event covered 12,426.70 rsETH at a price of $2,337.29 per token.

Notably, rsETH showed no meaningful price distress during the event. The collateral was removed cleanly without triggering a broader market selloff.

The seized collateral was redeemed through KelpDAO’s system and converted back to ETH. Those funds helped refill the damaged bridge lockbox that backed rsETH.

After completion, the oracle was restored to normal market levels. No persistent changes were made to the Compound protocol.

Members of the US Senate Banking Committee have filed more than 100 amendments to a crypto market structure bill set for markup on Thursday, with the proposed changes mostly related to stablecoins, software developers and ethics. 

According to a list obtained by Politico, Democratic senators have proposed dozens of changes, while Republicans are seeking slight adjustments to the bill. 

It is not clear what the specific details of each amendment are, but some concern issues the committee has been seeking to solve for months, including stablecoin yield, crypto software developer protections and ethics provisions.

The list offers insight into the issues the committee will likely debate at the bill’s markup on Thursday as it seeks to advance the measure to the Senate floor. The Senate Banking Committee indefinitely delayed a previous markup in January after major crypto lobbyist Coinbase withdrew support for the bill.

The legislation aims to divide how US market regulators oversee crypto, with the House passing a version of it in July called the CLARITY Act. Crypto and banking lobbyists, along with lawmakers, have fought over provisions on stablecoins and whether government officials should be barred from involvement in crypto.

Further restrictions on offering stablecoin yields have been the bill’s most contentious provision, with banking and crypto lobbyists failing to reach an agreement after months of negotiations.

A version of the bill released on Monday banned third-party platforms like crypto exchanges from offering yield on stablecoins in a way that is “functionally equivalent” to the payment of interest on an interest-bearing bank deposit.

The list shows Democratic Senators Jack Reed and Tina Smith introducing an amendment to “strengthen [the] prohibition on interest/yield by using a ‘substantially similar’ test rather than an ‘equivalence’ test.”

An excerpt of the leaked list showing amendments for debate by Senator Jack Reed, with one supported by Senator Tina Smith. Source: Politico

Another planned amendment from Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen pitches an ethics provision that Democrats and some Republicans have supported, which would bar the president, vice president, senior officials, members of Congress and their families from owning, promoting or being affiliated with crypto.

Related: Seven Democrats seen as ‘key’ to advancing CLARITY Act: Galaxy

Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto also plans an amendment protecting software developers by “creating a safe harbor from criminal liability for not registering as a money transmitter,” a provision that is supported by many crypto groups.

Other amendments concern sanctions, institutions engaging in crypto, and one from Democratic Senator Andy Kim that seeks to reestablish the Justice Department’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which the department dismantled in April last year.

Republicans have a majority on the Banking Committee and in the Senate, but some party members, such as Senator Thom Tillis, have said they won’t support the bill without certain provisions.

Republicans also control the Senate, but will need some Democrats onside to pass it with a three-fifths majority to end any potential debate on the bill.

Magazine: Will the CLARITY Act be good — or bad — for DeFi?

Ethereum liquid restaking platform Kelp and decentralized lending protocol Aave have completed a series of steps to restore rsETH backing, including burning the exploiter’s rsETH tokens.

Kelp DAO detailed a post-exploit recovery for its liquid staking token rsETH on Tuesday, confirming that the hacker’s tokens were burned on the layer-2 Arbitrum network.

The 117,132 rsETH — worth about $278 million at current prices — will be progressively restored over two weeks using funds from the Aave Recovery Guardian multisignature wallet, which is controlled by the DeFi United recovery group and Kelp’s own recovery safe.

The funds will be routed through the LayerZero OFT adapter, the smart contract responsible for locking, minting, burning and releasing rsETH during cross-chain transfers.

Kelp DAO confirmed that rsETH on mainnet and layer-2 networks, which has a market capitalization of $1.5 billion, remains fully backed at all times.

The move to recover the liquid staking tokens will bring users impacted by one of this year’s largest DeFi exploits one step closer to recovery.

Kelp was hacked in April when attackers widely attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group exploited its rsETH adapter bridge contract, the software that manages the platform’s liquid restaking token, and drained about $293 million. 

Blockchain security firm OpenZeppelin reported at the time that no smart contract bug had been publicly identified, adding that “the system failed operationally,” and this is a category of risk the DeFi industry has “consistently underweighted.”

Tracking the exploited funds. Source: Cyvers

Withdrawals will resume within 24 hours

Kelp said it will unpause withdrawals, “tentatively within 24 hours,” after the first tranche is returned to the smart contract. All rsETH operations, including deposits, redemptions, bridging and claims, will resume as usual after the contracts are reactivated.

The protocol has also completed a “security hardening pass,” and bridging security now requires four independent attestors and 64 block confirmations, while it has deprecated some layer-2 routes.

Related: At least a dozen crypto entities attacked since Drift Protocol hack

It is also in the process of migrating to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) for “further strengthened cross-chain bridging.”

Derivatives traders undeterred by DeFi hacks 

Kelp is a prominent liquid restaking protocol on Ethereum, primarily built on top of EigenLayer, where users deposit ETH or other supported liquid staking tokens for additional yields. 

The protocol’s total value locked hit an all-time high of just over $2 billion in September 2025 but has since declined by about 26% to $1.55 billion, according to DefiLlama.

Cointelegraph reported this week that ETH derivatives traders have largely remained unfazed by the recent wave of DeFi exploits, with professional sentiment holding steady despite elevated security concerns.

Magazine: DeFi’s billion-dollar secret: The insiders responsible for hacks