Joint Stock Co Kaspi.kz Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Kaspi First Quarter 2026 Financial Results. My name is Elliot, and I'll be your coordinator today. I would now like to hand over to David Ferguson, Head of Investor Relations at Kaspi. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Elliot. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Kaspi kz's First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Call. I'm David Ferguson from Kaspi. As usual, with me on the call, I've got our Co-Founder and CEO, Mikheil Lomtadze. The rest of the management team members are also here, including Tengiz Mosidze and our Deputy CEO. We're going to do things a little bit differently to how we've done them in the past. So for today, going forward, we're going to make the first quarter and the third quarter calls financial updates and, where relevant, updates to the guidance. There's no change today. And then we'll keep the full year results and the interim results for more detailed calls where Mikheil will talk about strategy, products, and other initiatives going on in the company. So I think this should be a more efficient way of doing things, particularly, I know a lot of you have multiple companies reporting at the same time, and it should make for more interesting full year and interim results calls. So on that note, I will hand over to Mikheil. He will make a couple of introductory comments, and then I'll take you through the rest of the presentation. Mikheil, over to you.

Thank you, David. Hello, everyone. We have started the year in the first quarter with good growth and strong growth in e-commerce, which was driven by higher purchasing frequency and some of the services and value-added services showing additional monetization faster than the GMV growth itself. Our e-commerce still grew 41% year-over-year on a constant currency and pro forma basis. Importantly, transactions grew 43% year-over-year. The frequency of quarterly purchases now reached 15%, which is also a substantial growth of 44% year-over-year. We remain a very profitable company, and we're happy that the Board recommended a dividend of KZT 850 per share, which represents about a 64% payout ratio. The general message for everyone is pretty simple: we are creating a much larger, more diversified business. We're building on our strength as the Super App leader in our home market in Kazakhstan, while also creating additional growth in Turkey. E-commerce for us is important. As I mentioned before, we are a company focused on the front end of the consumer and merchant relationship. By front end I mean the point where the purchase and sale decision is happening — that decision is happening on e-commerce where consumers are searching, reviewing, and buying goods, and in the future with the help of AI agents. On the other hand, merchants are creating those listings and getting additional sales. When you combine this together, you have additional value-added services. The simplest today would be advertising and delivery value-added services, which have actually grown quite substantially — about 73% year-over-year. We remain very optimistic and believe in the future of our company. As you may have already learned, I have made an investment myself alongside Tencent and other long-term shareholders, and I remain fully aligned and a true believer in the company. We are really excited about some of the services we're working on. During the year, as David mentioned, we'll provide more detailed overviews of some of the products we have been launching, and we'll share how excited we are about the range of innovations the company is launching and working on. That's everything from me at this stage. Back to you, David.

Sure. So thanks a lot, Mikheil. I'll run through the financials, both at platform and at the group level, and then guide on the guidance. Just to summarize, consolidated revenue was up 31% year-on-year and adjusted EBITDA up 9% year-on-year. The simple message is the first quarter is on track with where we expected to be. On the dividend, as Mikheil mentioned, KZT 850 per share. This is the same amount as when we brought back the dividend for the fourth quarter, and we said at the time to extrapolate the amount throughout the 4 quarters of this year. So it's consistent with what we've said and what you can assume for forecasting purposes. At a divisional level, marketplace GMV growth was 19% on a constant currency pro forma basis. To remind people, we acquired Hepsiburada at the end of January, so on a reported basis it's in the numbers for 3 months this quarter versus approximately 2 months in the first quarter of last year. Pro forma constant currency gives you the true indication of the real growth in the business. Marketplace GMV was up 19% on the same basis; e-commerce GMV was up 41% year-on-year — that's the true rate of growth in e-commerce. TPV was up 14%, not affected to any material extent by Hepsiburada. TFE was down 2% with average loan portfolio up 23% and I'll talk a little bit more about that later. Moving on to the segments: as we've talked about both at the full year results and over the last 12 months, e-commerce is one of our most important areas of focus and will be one of the main drivers of growth over the next couple of years. E-commerce GMV up 41% year-on-year, constant currency pro forma like-for-like, driven by purchases up 43% year-on-year. We've spoken about the importance of driving order growth both in Kazakhstan and in Turkey. You see the result of this — purchases per consumer on e-commerce rose from 10.4 last year to 15 this year. That's an indication that the existing consumer base is becoming more engaged. As you scale an engaged consumer base, it drives more opportunities for monetization around advertising, delivery, fintech, and so on. It's the foundation of sustainable, healthy, long-term profitability in e-commerce. That metric is moving in the right direction and contributing to take rate increasing, up 90 basis points year-on-year to 15.8%. Today, around half of GMV is coming from Kazakhstan and Turkey — the businesses are broadly equal in size and importance, with the bulk of the Marketplace business's 3P component coming primarily from Hepsi, where around one-third of their GMV is 1P, with e-grocery in Kazakhstan also contributing. To reinforce that point, you now see e-commerce revenue growing faster than GMV because of take rate expansion and because of growth in value-added services — in this case advertising and delivery. E-commerce revenue was up 58% year-on-year and value-added services grew 73% year-on-year, so revenue growth is coming through. Those revenue figures I just mentioned are on a reported basis. Looking at marketplace growth more broadly: e-commerce is around 60% of marketplace GMV; the other 40% comes primarily from m-commerce and, to a lesser extent, travel in Kazakhstan, with overall marketplace GMV growing at a slower rate, up 19% year-on-year but with revenue growth up 49% and EBITDA up 12%. What we're seeing is the transition from offline to online retail gaining momentum, hence stronger growth from e-commerce versus overall marketplace GMV growth. On the EBITDA, that primarily reflects the inclusion of Hepsiburada for the 3-month period versus 2 months in 2025. As we've said previously, the aim is to keep it around EBITDA breakeven this year. So you've got a full 3-month consolidation of a business that's around EBITDA breakeven, slightly positive, hence the slower EBITDA growth versus the revenue growth. Moving on to payments: payments TPV grew 14% versus the guidance of around 15%, with revenue growing at a slower rate year-on-year as a result of take rate compression. That is consistent with long-run trends and is driven by a change in product mix in favor of Kaspi QR and particularly Kaspi B2B payments. Overall EBITDA was flat year-on-year. Keep in mind EBITDA excludes interest revenue; interest revenue is around one quarter of payments revenue and it grew about 26% year-on-year. So overall, payments is a large, high-margin, and highly cash-generative business and strategically drives engagement across our other businesses in Kazakhstan. Moving on to fintech: average net loan portfolio growth was 23% and TFE declined 2% versus guidance for the year of 5% TFE growth. We're deliberately choosing to prioritize longer-duration loans that generate more revenue. TFE is an indication of origination, but TFE itself doesn't drive revenue for financials — average loan portfolio does, which drives revenue and the bottom line. So we're favoring longer-duration loans that generate more revenue. You can see the duration of the portfolio increase from 7 months to 9.3 months. Effectively, BNPL and small-ticket short-duration loans are becoming a smaller share of the portfolio mix, while merchant financing and general-purpose loans, which have a longer duration, are becoming larger in the mix. While this change is ongoing, you see a divergence between loan portfolio growth and TFE growth. The combination of 23% loan portfolio growth with stable pricing — fintech yield was broadly stable at around 6% year-on-year — translates into 25% revenue growth and 12% adjusted EBITDA growth year-on-year. As we've discussed for several years, EBITDA growth is being impacted by higher funding costs, increased by around 220 basis points year-on-year on the back of interest rate increases in Kazakhstan last year, which continues to pressure growth rates. We hope that rates have peaked, which would be helpful to growth and profitability next year. I'll also touch on risk metrics given many questions over the last months. First- and second-payment default — people who have taken a loan and immediately missed a payment — are some of the best real-time metrics to look at. These levels are low: 0.9% and 0.4%, and broadly stable since the beginning of 2023, with some seasonality. Delinquency rates — a good lead indicator for credit quality — are also low at 2.2% and broadly stable over the last couple of years. While many look at peers' NPL metrics, it's important to review these real-time risk metrics to understand portfolio health. On the back of those comments, cost of risk is broadly flat year-on-year, up around 10 basis points to 0.7% from 0.6%. Regarding the NPL ratio, it is moving up; however, the portfolio is shifting towards lower-risk merchant finance and car loans being secured, which means the probability of collection on NPLs is improving. We keep more NPLs on the balance sheet. This ratio is driven by timing of write-offs rather than the underlying quality of the portfolio. As we keep more loans on the balance sheet because probability of collection is improving, coverage requirements change, particularly for secured products like car loans. So changes in the coverage ratio are largely a function of the mix shift toward lower-risk products. Reporting consolidated numbers: revenue up 31% year-on-year, adjusted EBITDA up 9% year-on-year, and net income flat, down 1% year-on-year. Two things driving the net income trend are higher interest expense — funding costs in Kazakhstan have gone up around 20 basis points year-on-year — and COGS, driven by inclusion of Hepsiburada, which brings its own COGS for 3 months versus 2 months previously. On other cost lines, yes, we're making investments into Hepsiburada operations, but product spend and sales and marketing spend weighing on profitability is relatively minor and under control. On guidance: GMV around 20% for the full year — on track and unchanged; TPV around 15% on track and unchanged; and TFE around 5% while currently trending below that. To some extent that TFE point is a mute point; the key is to drive faster revenue growth rather than necessarily to hit exactly 5% TFE. Overall, we're on track for around 5% EBITDA growth for the year. Clearly, growth was above that in the first quarter, which implies slower growth in subsequent quarters, but it's pretty much where we want to be at this point in time. So on that note, let's open the call up to Q&A. Please, Elliot.

Operator provided instructions to participants. The first question comes from Gabor Kemeny.

This is Gabor Kemeny from Autonomous Research. I have a few questions. First one is on Turkey, where your loss narrowed significantly in Q1 and you are guiding us towards breakeven EBITDA going forward. Can you give us a sense of what sort of losses we should assume over 2026 in Turkey? Second will be on the marketplace take rate, which showed a very decent increase in the first quarter. Can you give us a flavor of how much seasonality you noticed there in the first quarter and what we should model going forward? Some guidance would be helpful. And then finally, you made a point that Kaspi interest rates falling might impact your NII next year. Can you give us some sensitivities to your funding costs and your NIM to fall in Kazakhstan, and can you comment on what you actually expect? How do you actually expect CASA rates to develop from here?

Thanks for the question. Maybe I'll start and then Mikheil may add some additional comments. I'll do it in reverse order. On the interest-rate cuts, we don't assume any interest rate cuts in the guidance this year. All you can do is look at trends in inflation data; inflation in Kazakhstan peaked in September and has started to fall at quite a decent rate over the last couple of months, which is an encouraging lead indicator. In terms of sensitivity, I'd advise you to look at the full year results presentation from last year because there we called out the impact of last year's interest-rate increases on net income in Kazakhstan. Broadly, if I remember correctly, interest-rate moves in 2025 in Kazakhstan — our cost of funding moving up by somewhere between 100 to 150 basis points — knocked around 4% off net income growth in Kazakhstan, so that could be a proxy. On the marketplace take rate, I wouldn't say it's due to seasonality. It's a function of advertising and brands: there's been a trend over many years of growing value-added services, which has been additive to take rate. Look at the increase you've seen year-on-year and use that as a proxy for what you might expect this year. On Turkey, we guide to EBITDA breakeven. We've also talked about free cash flow positive as the guardrails we're putting around this business. I wouldn't specifically comment on net income. The main focus is really driving engagement and making investments to drive engagement on the platform — you'll see that through orders, which is the best lead indicator for progress that we're making in Turkey.

Thanks. It's exciting to have such a shareholder as Tencent. Our team has been admirers of Tencent, believing they pioneered the super app business model. I don't have anything specific to comment on strategically at this time, but in general Kaspi is a team hungry for knowledge, development, and improving innovative services. Having a relationship with Tencent and other companies will benefit us; we also have a lot to share. There's nothing specific at the moment that I would like to discuss on this call, but you should keep in mind that you're working with a management team which is as hungry as ever, constantly learning and thinking about the next breakthrough product to change the consumer and merchant experience. Having such a shareholder is a good thing for us.

We now turn to the next question from Max.

I appreciate your comments regarding the first calls being more focused on financials. But I have to ask about Tencent's recent acquisition of a minority stake. How should we think about any potential strategic synergies going forward from that? Does it change in any way how you're positioning the Super App in Kazakhstan and Turkey? That's the first question. The second is about marketplace growth in Kazakhstan specifically and updates on the smartphone situation — has it normalized? Do you see any impact from supply-chain disruption related to the geopolitical situation in the Middle East on electronics supply? And the final one is on guidance: we saw EBITDA growth trending above the full-year guidance at 9% year-on-year in Q1, but your guidance hasn't changed. What factors did you take into account in maintaining the guidance? Should we expect heavier investments in Turkey or other reasons?

All right. Thanks for your questions, Max. I'll take the marketplace growth and guidance questions and then Mikheil can comment on Tencent. Remember this is the first quarter, the smallest quarter of the year; Q4 is the most important quarter. In subsequent quarters you'll see the timing of investment having more of an impact on EBITDA and the bottom line, so I wouldn't get carried away by Q1 alone. On marketplace growth, there has been no material disruption as a result of what's going on in the Middle East affecting the supply chain. Broadly speaking, the current macro and geopolitical situation is probably more positive than negative for Kazakhstan's macro, but a lot depends on how things evolve over time. On Tencent, Mikheil, anything you'd like to add?

I would just reiterate that it's exciting to have Tencent as a shareholder. We admire Tencent's experience with super apps. While I don't have specific strategic details to share today, we see this relationship as beneficial: it brings knowledge and perspective as we continue to build innovative services. Our focus remains on execution and delivering a great consumer and merchant experience in both Kazakhstan and Turkey.

We now turn to James Friedman.

It's Jamie at Susquehanna. When you originally bought Hepsiburada, your observations were that service quality was below what you are accustomed to delivering and that you needed to invest in Hepsi, especially in terms of delivery. I was wondering where you think you are in that journey now: what metrics do you use, what are you focused on, how have you improved service, and what are your future objectives?

I'll take this. In terms of strategy, it's not something you turn on and off between calls. We had substantial discussion on metrics to bring our Turkey business toward — the Kaspi metrics. These are related to frequency of consumer purchases, speed of delivery, and accessibility of financial options on the marketplace, which drive GMV per consumer. Those metrics improved nicely during last year and we see the same trend continuing. Our goal is to deliver the same quality of experience in Turkey as we do in our home market. That means the experience currently is as good as other players in the market, but we're investing in technology and organizing our data for real-time decision-making and in models to enhance consumer and merchant experience. We aim to deliver as quickly as possible, including on weekends and holidays, and deliver items when consumers want them. From a numbers perspective, that's where the investments are going, and the increases you saw in investment were around those priorities. We're pleased, and those decisions and new initiatives — delivery, payment options, advertising products, personalization, risk management, and marketing — are giving the results you see in growth. That's what keeps us excited about such a large market. To go back to strategy: in Kazakhstan we started from fintech and payments then expanded into e-commerce. In Turkey, we're working backward because we already have a strong consumer base and merchant base and online interaction and traffic. Now we need to roll out some of the services and technology we have in-house, and that's what you see in the first-quarter numbers.

Okay. Great. Engagement is increasing significantly. When you think about where that could potentially go, how do you see that evolving? For context, the average U.S. consumer transacts e-commerce four times a year, the average Brazilian about 10 times a year. What do you think that could evolve to over the long term in Turkey?

In our case, our benchmark is what we've achieved in our home market. If I recall correctly, the numbers at year-end were about 27 purchases per consumer in Kazakhstan and about 7 purchases per consumer in Turkey. So that gives you an understanding of what we're focused on. We're taking our playbook and focusing on execution, making sure technology and data support it. This year is more of an investment year; we have rules — we want to remain a profitable, dividend-paying company. We have guardrails for decisions we make, but our focus is to increase consumer engagement, secure the right assortment and merchant base, and provide delivery and payment methods that support that engagement. The difference today is roughly 7 in Turkey versus much higher in Kazakhstan, and Kazakhstan is growing rapidly. That frames our goals for Turkey.

We now hand over to the next caller. Please state your company name and proceed with your question.

I'm from JPMorgan. I have a few questions on strategy for Hepsi. This has been partially answered, but you've been consuming some cash in Turkey after stepping up marketing campaigns in the past five quarters and that seems to have put pressure on working capital outflows, particularly in this quarter, which may be a seasonal shift. How long will you continue this strategy and is there a KPI target you'd like to reach before normalizing marketing activities? Second, we observed a decline in consumer financing activities in the first quarter in Turkey. Is this a deliberate pause on Hepsi financial products while you finalize license approvals in Turkey? Third, after initiatives like listing small-ticket items which have been successful, have you achieved a more diversified category mix?

Thank you. On consumer finance: our approach is both product-driven and tightly focused on risk management. It's not only about originating consumer finance but originating it to the right person, at the right time, in the right amount so people are repaying. If you originate to the wrong customers, it's a liability. We're happy with how we've rolled out our new risk management system. As we rolled it out, we deliberately slowed origination for everyone's benefit. Hepsiburada has a fully owned consumer finance subsidiary, so in Turkey we can originate consumer loans, but we wanted to implement the Kaspi system first. Now we feel increasingly comfortable doing more consumer finance. We weren't in a hurry; we wanted to put risk systems and data management in place to originate at the high quality we expect; our cost of risk is world class. Regarding diversification, last year we focused on merchants and realized that to promote merchants and allow them to sell low-ticket items we had to improve delivery experience and provide reasonable delivery fees. We continue that effort this year. We rolled out a data-driven logistics platform in Q1, which, with forecasting models and our LLMs, should substantially improve speed and quality of delivery. We're pleased with performance; low-ticket items are growing fast and 3P is growing faster than 1P. On marketing, we're a data-driven company, not focused on short-term traffic spikes. We build engines for profitable, sustainable, repeatable traffic. We invest to acquire consumers who remain engaged and deliver future value and profits. Initially you do need to invest in orders for consumers to experience products and services.

So is it reasonable to say that your initial target is to focus on frequency, to take Turkey's frequency numbers closer to Kaspi's?

Our focus is an engaged consumer base, and an engaged consumer base is reflected by frequency. Frequency is one indicator that consumers love your products and come back frequently. So yes, that's correct: engagement and frequency are core focuses.

We now turn to Sergey calling from Greyhound Capital.

Good to see the result improvement in Turkey. I have two or three questions. One, on Rabobank: has there been any update or any reason for the delay? Two, in Kazakhstan on the payment take rate, you mentioned it has come down quite a bit. What are the reasons behind that? Is it the shared QR code and have we seen the worst in terms of the drop or what can we expect going forward? And lastly, on Tencent: is it a purely passive investment or more operational? Is there potential they might acquire a bigger stake from other larger shareholders in the future?

Thanks for the questions. On payments take rate: it's nothing to do with the National Payment System. Look at the take-rate decline over the last three to five years; it's broadly consistent year-to-year. It's largely driven by product mix: Kaspi B2B payments, which has a lower take rate, is gaining share, and Kaspi QR has a lower acquiring fee — around 0.95% — and the share of QR codes is increasing. It is a mix effect and will continue while lower-take-rate products grow faster; 0.95% is kind of a floor for the acquiring fee. On Rabobank, no update and nothing to report. The base case remains that we expect to close the transaction by the summer; it's out of our hands and the process moves slowly but we're working toward closing. On Tencent, I wouldn't want to speculate about future actions by Tencent; that's a question for them. To your last sub-question on whether it's passive or active: it's primarily a financial investment.

We now move to the next question.

I have about three questions. First, on the payment side: the decline in take rate is understood and you can see that in revenue reduction, but I'm trying to understand what other factors are driving the drop in payments EBITDA because EBITDA was flat year-on-year. Can you comment on the drivers? Second, on fintech: you mentioned a focus on car finance and merchant loans. Could you give guidance on the implications for NIMs? What are respective lending rates for those segments versus unsecured loans and their NPL profiles? Third, on the recent capital you raised — the $600 million — can you give insights into how that will be deployed? Will it be injected into Turkey or split between Turkey and Kazakhstan?

Thanks, Ronak. On the $600 million, the official line is general corporate purposes. That means there is no one specific large project; it's to give us flexibility to fund multiple initiatives across both Kazakhstan and Turkey. We're pleased we raised $600 million at around a 5.9% rate; it gives us more flexibility at a sensible cost. On fintech pricing and NIMs, look at the trend over the last 12 months — fintech pricing has been broadly stable at a gross level. I wouldn't want to provide very specific forward guidance, but I don't expect dramatic changes going forward. On payments EBITDA, this is a very high-margin, mature business with 50-plus percent EBITDA margins. The drop in reported EBITDA was largely mechanical and related to mix and inclusion of Hepsiburada for three months versus two months in the prior year in consolidated results, while the payments business itself remains highly profitable and a strategic engagement driver.

To add: the take-rate change in payments is mostly a mix effect as David mentioned. QR acquiring fees are roughly 0.95% and B2B payments are lower; with share of those increasing, the blended take rate compresses. Payments is a hugely profitable business and strategically important because it provides a massive advantage in high-quality data that lets us train models and make precise decisions — that is critical for future innovation across e-commerce and fintech. We are also innovating on payment products, for example pay-by-link, which has close to 1 million registered users and is growing nicely. But the direct monetization is important and profitable; the strategic data advantage is, in my view, even more valuable for the next five to ten years.

We have no further questions. I hand back to you, David, for any final remarks.

All right. So thanks, Elliot. Thanks, everyone, for your time today. Please feel free to reach out to us if you'd like to follow up on anything. We've got a few of you guys in Kazakhstan this week, so we're looking forward to seeing you. Thanks a lot, and speak soon. Goodbye.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you, everyone. This concludes today's webinar. You may now disconnect from the call.