Marti Technologies, Inc. Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Marti Technologies Full Year 2025 Conference Call. Before we begin, I'd like to mention that today's earnings release and slide presentation are available on Marti's Investor Relations website at ir.marti.tech, where you'll also find links to our SEC filings, along with other information about Marti. Joining me on today's call are Oguz Alper Oktem, Marti's Founder and CEO; and Cankut Durgun, Marti's Co-Founder, President and COO. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that statements made on this call as well as in today's earnings release and accompanying slide presentation contain forward-looking statements regarding our financial outlook, business plans, objectives, goals and strategies and other future events and developments, including statements about the market and revenue potential of our services. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These risks and uncertainties include those described in our filings with the SEC, today's earnings release and the accompanying slide presentation and are based on current expectations and beliefs as of today, April 13, 2026. In addition, our discussion today will include references to certain supplemental non-GAAP financial measures, which should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for our GAAP financial results. We use these non-GAAP measures in evaluating and managing Marti's business and believe they provide useful information for our investors. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measures, where appropriate, can be found in today's earnings release and slide presentation as well as our filing with the SEC. With that, I'll turn the call over to Alper.

Thank you all for joining us today for Marti's Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. Marti continues to position itself as Turkiye's leading mobility super app with a single integrated platform offering eight services and operating across 20 cities nationwide. These services include car, motorcycle and taxi ride-hailing, motorcycle and car delivery as well as our owned and operated e-bike, e-mobile and e-scooter fleet. In 2025, we successfully scaled into a true multiservice mobility platform. We expanded our ride-hailing footprint into 16 additional cities, significantly increasing our addressable market and strengthening our network density. At the same time, we successfully launched delivery services in Istanbul, marking a major step forward in executing our multiservice mobility platform strategy. 2025 also included a pivotal milestone for Marti. It's the first full year of platform monetization. We delivered breakthrough revenue growth with revenue more than doubling to $39.2 million and exceeding our guidance by $5.2 million. This strong performance was driven by robust customer adoption and increased monetization across the platform and the momentum we are seeing supports our confidence in delivering $70 million in revenue for 2026. At the same time, we made meaningful and accelerated progress towards profitability. Gross profit margin improved dramatically from negative 15.5% to 61.1%. We're really proud of these results, demonstrating the operating leverage and scalability of our platform model. This also reinforces our path towards sustainable profitability as our network continues to mature. Additionally, our adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed by 37% to $12.1 million, exceeding our guidance by $4.9 million. We are targeting to achieve $1 million of positive adjusted EBITDA in 2026, representing a $13.1 million improvement. Overall, we believe that our continued execution across monetization, geographic expansion and multi-service integration is strengthening our financial performance and positioning Marti to capture Turkiye's large and emerging mobility opportunity with increasing efficiency and resilience. We are the number one urban mobility app in Turkiye across both iOS and Android platforms. We are also the only operator operating car- and motorcycle-hailing service at scale and the largest two-wheeled electric vehicle operator in the country, complemented by our on-demand delivery services. We reached 160.2 million all-time trips and 7.4 million unique platform consumers since our launch. Our ride-hailing service continues to scale rapidly and as of the first quarter of 2026 has reached 3.8 million all-time unique ride-hailing riders and 490,000 registered drivers. These metrics reflect the strength of our multiservice platform, combining mobility and delivery and our ability to consistently scale both supply and demand in a highly dynamic market. Although we're the youngest player in Turkiye's urban mobility market, we are the clear market leader. It is also important to note that of the top five urban mobility apps in the country, four are operated by local players. This is in line with global benchmarks, which have demonstrated that local companies often win in mobility because of operational advantages, deep local market knowledge, regulatory agility, stronger consumer and driver relationships, tailored service offerings, trust and brand perception. By the end of 2024, we had already established a strong ride-hailing presence across four of Turkiye's largest cities: Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Antalya, creating a solid foundation for scale. Building on this foundation, 2025 was a year of rapid expansion as we accelerated the execution of our 2025/2026 investment plan and significantly broadened our geographic footprint. Today, Marti operates in 20 of Turkiye's largest cities, representing approximately 80% of the country's GDP, marking a step change in the scale and reach of our platform. The strategic expansion is a key milestone in our long-term vision. We're not only increasing our footprint, but also building infrastructure, network density and operational capabilities required to make Marti the go-to mobility platform across the country. Our ride-hailing service continues to outperform our growth targets, supported by strong execution across city expansion, platform improvements and organizational scale. As of December 31, 2025, all-time unique ride-hailing riders grew 103% year-over-year from 1.7 million to 3.4 million. All-time registered drivers in the same period grew 72% year-over-year from 262,000 to 450,000. On a two-year basis, this growth translates into a 161% compound annual growth rate in riders and 105% compound annual growth rate in drivers between 2023 and 2025, highlighting the sustained momentum of our platform expansion. Importantly, we had already achieved our 2026 first quarter targets by mid-March, demonstrating the strength and acceleration of our growth trajectory. Building on this momentum, we have set new higher targets going forward. We've set targets for 4.3 million all-time ride-hailing riders and 530,000 registered ride-hailing drivers by June 30, 2026. This continued outperformance reflects our ability to efficiently scale both demand and supply supported by improving network density and platform efficiency. At the same time, 2025 marked the first full year of our platform monetization with the introduction of dynamic pricing and improved matching algorithms, representing a key inflection point in our business, driving higher efficiency and improved rider and driver satisfaction. Throughout 2025, the behavior of our consumers and drivers supports our decision to offer multiple services through our platform. Our multiservice offering is being further strengthened by the launch of our deliveries with a strong adoption across both consumers and drivers. Starting with our ride-hailing consumers, we are seeing clear evidence that consumers prefer a multiservice experience. Thirty-five percent of our car-hailing consumers and 82% of our motorcycle-hailing consumers use these services after previously being introduced to Marti by using another Marti service. Our existing services serve a highly effective consumer acquisition channel for our new services. Furthermore, 15% of our car-hailing consumers and 72% of our motorcycle-hailing consumers also use other market services on our platform. This highlights strong cross-service engagement. On the driver side, we are also seeing rapid early adoption in our delivery service. Despite delivery being launched only in the final quarter of 2025, 31% of motorcycle-hailing drivers and 9% of car-hailing drivers have already performed delivery trips. This demonstrates strong supply-side flexibility and willingness to adopt new services such as deliveries. Multiservice consumers also generate greater economic value for our platform. Trips per consumer are 4.4x higher and revenue per consumer is 3.6x higher for multiservice consumers compared to consumers who use only a single service. We believe these dynamics reinforce our strategy of investing in the balanced growth of our ride-hailing, delivery and two-wheeler electric services within a unified platform. Strong revenue growth from our first full year of platform monetization, the launch of ride-hailing in 16 additional cities, the introduction of delivery service in Istanbul, strong operational efficiency initiatives and AI-enabled cost reduction initiatives drove a significant improvement in our gross profit margin. As a result, our gross profit margin improved sharply from negative 15% in 2024 to positive 61% in 2025, which amounted to a $26.9 million gross profit uplift. Going forward, we will continue to pursue disciplined growth with a clear focus on profitability, operational efficiency and prudent capital allocation. We achieved accelerated growth and substantial scale in consumers and drivers with limited capital investment. This demonstrates our strong commitment to capital-efficient growth, supported by meaningful cross-service efficiencies across our platform. Moving forward, we intend to make targeted investments to leverage multiple growth opportunities. These include increasing organic growth in existing cities, improving our consumer and driver experience, initiating loyalty program incentives, selectively expanding into new cities to serve a greater share of Turkiye's urban population, increasing our take rate and further refining our dynamic pricing and matching algorithms. We believe these initiatives will position us well to capture an estimated $4 billion annual revenue opportunity in the ride-hailing business in Turkiye. Here's how we calculate the size of the revenue opportunity, that $4 billion figure. With global benchmarks, we see that the introduction of ride-hailing service into a market uncovers unmet demand significantly eclipsing the demand for taxi service prior to the introduction of ride-hailing. This is because ride-hailing offers a significantly better, more accessible consumer experience than taxis across all dimensions, including vehicle availability, price and driver and vehicle quality. As an example, in the city of New York, ride-hailing increased the size of the taxi market by 1.6x. There were approximately 800,000 daily taxi trips in Istanbul, our largest city when we launched our ride-hailing service. We believe that what happened in New York City is now happening in Istanbul, and we expect there to be 1.3 million daily ride-hailing trips in Istanbul at steady state. Istanbul's taxi market accounts for about 35% of the entire country's taxi market. So assuming similar market dynamics in Turkiye's other cities, we project that there will eventually be about 3.9 million daily ride-hailing trips in Turkiye. This is about 1.4 billion trips a year, approximately $13 billion of potential gross annual booking value. At an assumed take rate of 30%, which is industry standard and in line with global benchmarks, this equates to $4 billion of total annual revenue potential for Turkiye's ride-hailing market at maturity, and we expect Marti to capture a significant portion of that revenue. We're working really hard at it. I'd now like to turn it over to my partner, Cankut, to present our financials. Thank you.

Thank you, Alper. Turning to our 2025 full year results. We delivered strong growth across our platform while continuing to improve profitability. We increased our total trips 60% year-over-year from 31.7 million in 2024 to 50.8 million in 2025. This was driven by an increasing number of ride-hailing trips as a result of higher usage in our existing cities, successful new city launches and growing cross-service adoption on our platform. The number of unique platform consumers who used our services at least once during the year increased 44% year-over-year to 3.1 million. This growth was also primarily driven by a higher number of ride-hailing consumers. Trips per unique platform consumer rose 11% to 16.5, reflecting improved service availability and cross-service platform usage. As shared earlier in the presentation, the number of unique ride-hailing riders that have used our service since its launch increased from 1.7 million to 3.4 million, while the number of registered drivers increased from 262,000 to 450,000 in 2025. As a result of the gradual decommissioning of our existing two-wheeled electric vehicle fleet, our number of average daily two-wheeled electric vehicles deployed decreased from 32,600 in 2024 to 23,200 in 2025. On the financial side, revenue more than doubled to $39.2 million, representing a 110% year-over-year increase. This strong growth was primarily driven by the successful completion of our first full year of platform-level monetization, the scaling of our platform, the introduction of dynamic pricing and increased consumer engagement across our multiservice platform. We also delivered meaningful cost reductions. Cost of revenues declined 29% to $15.3 million, driven by operational efficiencies across our multiple services, lower depreciation costs, reduced field logistics costs and several AI-enabled cost reduction initiatives inside the company. As a result of strong revenue growth, increasing scale and meaningful cost reductions, we turned our gross profit from a loss of $2.9 million in 2024 to a profit of $24 million in 2025. Our gross profit margin improved sharply as a result from negative 15% to 61%. Our general and administrative expenses also decreased 43% from $49.2 million in 2024 to $28.1 million in 2025. This was primarily driven by lower share-based compensation expenses and lower insurance costs. Excluding share-based compensation, general and administrative expenses increased to $16.8 million in 2025 compared to $12.1 million in 2024. This increase is in line with the scaling of our organization to support the growth of our multiservice platform. As a result, our adjusted EBITDA improved by $7.2 million from negative $19.3 million in 2024 to negative $12.1 million in 2025. We believe that the accelerating performance of our services represents an important milestone for our growth and profitability. By the end of 2026, we expect once again to close to double our annual revenue to $70 million and to reach positive adjusted EBITDA. This guidance reflects the continued execution of our 2025 and 2026 investment plan, including continued investments in our ride-hailing business, the further growth of the delivery service, cost-efficient scaling and the build-out of our organizational capabilities to support a larger operational footprint. We thank you for participating today and for listening to our performance and our future investment plans and would like to answer any questions that you might have.

Our first question today is coming from Rohit Kulkarni from ROTH Capital Partners.

Congrats on 2025. I guess to kick things off, maybe talk about what you're seeing in Istanbul versus all the other new cities that you've added, specifically with growth and how profitability in the core city proportion of rides compared to all the new cities that you had added last year?

Great question. Well, first of all, we're really surprised because our initial assessment a few years back about the distribution of potential future trips between Istanbul and the other cities was much more lopsided towards Istanbul. As you know, Istanbul is a 20 million city, that's one quarter of Turkey, but it is the financial and cultural capital. As a result, you always tend to exaggerate the potential of Istanbul and downplay the potential of the other cities in Turkey. However, we're really positively surprised by how large the demand is outside of Istanbul. I believe right now, Istanbul is close to 50% of our business and the other 50% comes from the other cities, and we've only launched around 20. But there's a lot more cities that we're going to launch, and we expect Istanbul to go down to 35% eventually.

Okay. Great. And I guess a question on the multiservice offering. Now you have motorcycle, car as well as delivery. Maybe talk about how that affects both the driver and rider acquisition? And how do you think of the potential revenue per consumer as you fully ramp multiple services across all the cities that you have?

It's fairly simple. The more services you have, the more offerings you have for both consumers and your drivers. As you add deliveries, for example, you're offering your drivers not only ride-hailing opportunities, but also additional delivery opportunities a day. Drivers appreciate having more ways to earn. At the same time, consumers who join the platform see multiple available services they can use. As a result, it accelerates the natural progression of a two-sided marketplace: the more drivers you have, the more consumers you have, and vice versa. As you build on your platform with different business models, you keep drivers and users engaged and the two-sided market dynamic plays out faster. People like our platform and migrate towards us. That's why we're the largest mobility player despite being the newest one in the country.

Also, Rohit, like the statistics we shared: for example, 31% of motorcycle drivers who have performed ride-hailing services with motorcycles have already performed deliveries, keeping in mind that this is based on three months of data, the tail end of 2025. I was impressed by that figure. I wasn't expecting such high cross-utilization, but that does show drivers are willing and able to perform multiple services. That's largely a function of earnings opportunities being roughly similar across the two. If you think of the average ride-hailing fare versus the average delivery fare, those are similar numbers and the time a driver needs to spend is similar. So we see clear cross-usage on the motorcycle side. On the monetization point, as of the end of last year we were only monetizing in three cities. Part of the growth we foresee in 2026 and beyond is rolling out monetization in additional cities beyond the initial three we had in 2025.

Okay. Great. And one last question, and then I'll get back into the queue: around regulatory framework and any potential changes that you might anticipate with ridesharing or your overall business, do you have any updates to share on how we should think about that?

We've been working on the regulatory front for several months. Since 2025 we really began pursuing the regulatory outcome; this is a long-term effort to create laws that enable ride-hailing at the national level. It's somewhat analogous to what we achieved on the two-wheeled electric vehicle side, though different because ride-hailing is a larger market and there are many more interested parties. As a result, it takes more time, but we continue to be active across ministries at the national level working on the regulatory side.

Our next question is coming from Jack Halpert from Cantor Fitzgerald.

I've got two, please. First, can you help frame any exposure the business might have to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East more recently? Have you seen any disruptions to services or maybe impacts from fuel prices? How should we think about that? And second, you noted loyalty programs as a growth driver going forward. Can you talk about your progress there, where you think consumers will take advantage of this and how it can drive your cross-service usage?

Thank you. First, thankfully our country is not involved in the ongoing conflict in the region. We're safe at home. What's happening around us is tragic, but Turkey is secure and we're unimpacted directly by those events. The main indirect impact is on energy and food prices, and therefore general inflation. That has two effects: it increases the cost per trip for our drivers as fuel prices go up, which can eat into their margin, but our dynamic pricing algorithms ensure our match rate stays around our target of approximately 95%, so we adjust pricing as needed. Higher fuel and inflation can increase average trip prices and pressure consumer budgets, which could reduce demand, but that's a global issue. Because we are still early in scaling this business and because demand is strong in cities like Istanbul, I don't expect significant effects to our demand and supply for ride-hailing in the near term. On loyalty, we've built an in-house CRM team using AI to segment our data and offer targeted campaigns and loyalty schemes to consumers and drivers. That team was built about six months ago and is now operating at full scale. We are already seeing improvements in engagement metrics such as rides per consumer and rides per driver per month.

Let me add some data on the fuel side. The impact from fuel is limited because Turkey has a subsidy mechanism for energy price volatility. Oil is priced in dollars and the Turkish lira tends to depreciate versus the dollar, so this fund has long been in place to counteract short-term volatility in oil prices. When I last checked, oil prices had increased materially since the crisis began, but gas prices for Turkish consumers had only increased about 9% because of subsidies. If fuel is, say, 20% of a driver's cost base, a 9% increase in that component results in roughly a 2% overall cost increase for drivers. That's why we have not felt significant impact so far. Of course, if the crisis lasts years or oil prices change dramatically over the long term, we'll monitor and take necessary precautions, but in the current scenario we are not seeing material disruption.

Our next question is coming from Sam Dufault from Oak Ridge Financial. The crisis began, but gas prices for Turkish consumers had only increased about 9% because of subsidies. If fuel is, say, 20% of a driver's cost base, a 9% increase in that component results in roughly a 2% overall cost increase for drivers. That's why we have not felt significant impact so far. Of course, if the crisis lasts years or oil prices change dramatically over the long term, we'll monitor and take necessary precautions, but in the current scenario we are not seeing material disruption.

Congratulations on the year-end results. My question is around the guidance for 2026 around the $70 million revenue number. You mentioned three cities were monetized in 2025 and additional cities anticipating to be monetized in 2026. Of those 17 remaining cities, how many do you anticipate bringing online in 2026? And at what point in the year? And then in that $70 million revenue target, does that include delivery services? If not, how do you see that shaping up long term as a percentage of overall revenue?

Yes, the $70 million includes delivery services; it's a company-wide revenue target. It's important to clarify the nature of the delivery services we're offering now: rapid intercity parcel deliveries. We are not directly competing in food or grocery delivery at this stage. Consumers could theoretically request a delivery from a restaurant or grocer on our app, but we are not listing restaurants. Our current delivery volume targets are therefore smaller and the eventual revenue impact will reflect that. In the future, we could leverage our initial position in delivery and grow into merchant onboarding and broader offerings, but that would play out over time, not immediately in 2026. Regarding monetization of cities, we look at key metrics before monetizing, primarily the level of demand we can drive to each driver. When demand reaches levels that allow drivers to earn significant income, that's when we turn on monetization. We anticipate turning on monetization for additional cities in 2026, and those are part of the revenue guidance. The timing and specifics of which cities will be monetized will be decided case by case based on the underlying metrics.

Got you. And you spoke on the regulation front as well. Assuming some form of regulation gets passed and competitors enter the market, how do you see that impacting your customer acquisition cost and your cash spend? Do you anticipate needing additional cash or capital raising to meet that additional spend? Or at that point do you anticipate results from operations funding that additional spend?

We believe we benefit in both scenarios. A regulatory outcome legitimizes the business and likely creates additional supply and demand, which propels growth. Under the current status quo, our growth is very capital-efficient. When competition enters the market, CAC and driver acquisition costs will increase relative to current levels. However, we have a multi-year, multi-year head start in Turkey—more than three years—and that first-mover advantage gives us capital efficiency. While other markets saw billions spent, Turkey might see hundreds of millions if competition becomes intense; we remain confident that because of our first-mover advantage we can keep spending in the tens of millions rather than hundreds. That said, actual needs will depend on what competitors do.

Your next question today is coming from Poe Fratt from Alliance Global Partners.

The first question is you mentioned AI helping you reduce costs. Can you expand on that statement?

We recently presented a comprehensive view of AI impact across departments. Examples include an AI chatbot for our call center and customer service operations, AI for driver identification on both the individual and vehicle sides, and coding tools that increase developer productivity. We've used these tools mainly to increase output from existing teams rather than to reduce headcount. In addition to those domain-specific use cases, AI tools have increased productivity for software development and other functions, delivering efficiency gains across the organization.

I'd like to add that over the past six months the pace at which we produce code and improve our products has increased dramatically. Tasks that used to take months now take weeks or days. It's not only speed; quality has improved because developers use AI to generate code and then act as architects, improving design, UX and UI. This has helped us close the gap with global incumbents much faster. AI has accelerated improvements in our dynamic pricing algorithms and the overall look and feel of our app, allowing us to move quicker than would have been possible otherwise.

Great. That's really helpful. My second question is about take rates. Could you talk about take rates in the third quarter, fourth quarter or an exit rate and compare them to what's built into your guidance for 2026?

We continue to include both increased monetization in cities that we currently do not monetize as well as gradual increases in take rates over time in our guidance. The global benchmark we reference is approximately 30% take rate, but we remain very far below that today and have upside even in monetized cities to increase monetization levels.

If I could try to pin you down a little bit more: I think the last time we talked about take rates, they were high single-digit to low double-digit. Is that a fair range right now? Or could you help me understand where you are in the process of trying to get to that global target?

Relative to what we shared last, there haven't been significant changes.

That's an important point. Our projected revenue for this year is $70 million, and the take rate built into that is in the higher single-digit to lower double-digit range. The take rate is within our control and we manage it so as not to curb growth unnecessarily. If we stepped on the accelerator and increased take rates materially, our financial profile would look very different. We kept monetization measured last year because we were not yet monetizing broadly. Now that we've started, you can see how the company profile has changed this year. Those numbers could be significantly better if we decide to increase take rates faster, but right now we're optimizing for growth.

Just to clarify, though, you don't have any significant increase in take rates built into your 2026 guidance?

We do have small increases built into the guidance. The timing and magnitude are city-specific and depend on driver metrics in each market. But these increases are small percentages; we're nowhere near the 30% global benchmark this year.

Our next question is coming from Sid Havaldar from Crescent Enterprises.

Congratulations on the growth so far and a stellar FY 2025. My question is around growth and understanding that beyond geographic expansion, is there a plan to continue expanding the incentives program and the impact that would have on cash outlay and ultimately the cash requirements of the business?

We continue to see that Turkey is a very large market that has been underserved. The potential keeps increasing as we go deeper. I previously thought Istanbul would represent a larger share of the market; now we see it's closer to 45% and declining as we expand. The opportunity is much larger than we originally estimated. Because of that scale potential, growth remains attractive and we see room to deploy incentives where needed to capture market share and deepen density. We are digging deep in this market and the market has rewarded us each time we go deeper.

Another way to look at this is the capital outlay needed relative to gross profit. We achieved roughly 60% gross profit margin this year. If you assume 60% gross profit margin on $70 million of revenue, that's about $40 million of gross profit prior to fixed costs and marketing. From there, marketing and organizational investments will determine EBITDA outcomes. We continue to invest in marketing and organizational development, especially in new cities, while demonstrating the business can be profitable at current monetization levels. As revenue increases and the need for below-the-line investments reduces in some new cities, we expect improved EBITDA margins. From our perspective, a ride-hailing business in Turkiye can achieve EBITDA margins at least as attractive as global peers, if not more, because of the market dynamics and our efficiencies.

Okay. That's very helpful to understand. Lastly, can you comment on the cash position today and what we can expect toward the end of 2026 and the capital bridge as you look to achieve profitability?

We finished the year with about $8 million of cash. We also have two convertible notes outstanding. One of them, signed in April 2025, has allowed a $13 million drawdown to date and we have the ability to draw down a further $10 million. If necessary for the business—given existing cash flow generation and our growth plans—we can draw down further during the year. Therefore, we do not see additional capital needs beyond the existing capital we already have in place and available for drawdown in 2026.

We've reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further or closing comments.

We're all good. Thank you very much, everybody, for listening.

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.