MoneyHero Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
December 6, 2023

There are 4 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Money Hero Group 3Q 'twenty three Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Nawaz Imam, Group Head of Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you so much. Hello, everyone. Good morning or good evening, depending on where you are. I'm Noah Ajman, Group Head of Corporate Development. We're excited to have you join us for Money Hero Group's first ever earnings conference call for the Q3 of 2023.

Speaker 1

Today, we have with us Prashant Agarwal, our CEO and Sean Craft, our CFO and COO. Let's start with a few friendly reminders. First off, you can find detailed results in our earnings release located in the Investor Relations section of our website. Also, we're recording today's webcast. Don't worry if you miss anything, a replay and its transcript will be posted on our website under the Investor Relations section as well.

Speaker 1

A heads up, during this call, we'll discuss some future projections and expectations for our business. Keep in mind, these forward looking statements are based on what we currently expect and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ. We encourage you to look at our earnings release and SEC filings for a detailed discussion of these risk factors. Remember, these forward looking statements reflect our views as of today, and we're not obligated to update them unless required by law. Also, we will talk about some non IFRS financial measures today.

Speaker 1

For a reconciliation of non IFRS financial measures to the most directly comparable IFRS metric, please see our earnings press release. And one last thing, all monetary references will be in the United States dollars unless we say otherwise. And with that, I will hand it over to Prashanth Agarwal, our CEO.

Speaker 2

Thank you very much, Nawal. Good morning and good evening, everyone. It is an absolute pleasure to be here with you today for our first ever earnings call. 1st and foremost, I want to thank all of our investors, new and old. With an incredibly low redemption rate of approximately 36% in our de SPAC, our investors, including Teal Capital and Pacific Century Group, have shown a tremendous amount of confidence in the growth dynamic of our industry and trust in us, the management team, to grow Money Hero into Southeast Asia's prevalent financial products platform.

Speaker 2

With this fresh capital, in an otherwise very difficult fundraising environment, we aim to strategically push forward in growing our top line and overall market share aggressively over the coming quarters. With that being said, it is worth restating the primary mission of Money Hero Group to make our users' personal finance decisions more efficient and more rewarding, while maintaining strong trust based relationships with our commercial partners whose contributions are strategically important for our ability to attract and retain users. We will remain laser focused on both. Now let's walk through the key highlights of this quarter. We are excited to see strong performance across our business, especially in key metrics like monthly unique users, total traffic and members.

Speaker 2

Looking at the fundamentals of our business, we have built a strong consumer presence across our markets over the years. As a result, majority of our traffic, up to approximately 75%, has historically come through organic channels, and we anticipate that to continue. This provides an opportunity for us to see significant operating leverage as we continue to scale and refine our core technology for more efficient user segmentation and target. It is also important to note that in our region, we pioneered the process of managing the rewards and incentives infrastructure within Financial Services' firm value chain, including reward strategies, sourcing and fulfillment. As we scale, we will be able to drive further procurement cost savings given this deep integration into their value chain.

Speaker 2

Importantly, we generate revenue in a vast majority of our commercial agreements through end user conversions that leads to high quality approved applications for our providers. This emphasis on end user conversion ensures our goals are aligned with those of our partners as our commercial pricing on per unit basis generally increases as we drive greater consumer volume demand. Financial Services firms seek to boost customer acquisition volumes through online channels often face escalating marginal costs. Acquiring each additional customer becomes progressively more difficult, enhancing the value of our service in their efforts to grow and scale. Now turning into our various markets.

Speaker 2

In Singapore, we continue to see strong performance as revenue in 3rd quarter increased 50% year over year to US9.5 million dollars dollars driven by effective marketing and favorable mix of our client portfolio, especially in credit cards and insurance. This solid performance underscores the company's strong position and competitive edge in the Singapore market. During the quarter, we strategically enhanced the value of the rewards on offer to consumers, aiming to expand our market share in Singapore. Given our strong market position, we will continue this similar strategy to gain further market share, balancing short term margin impact and long term market share and scale gains. In Hong Kong, the company reported solid growth with revenue increasing by 23% year over year to US6 $900,000 for the quarter, showcasing continued resilience in this market.

Speaker 2

Hong Kong is our most diversified market from a product perspective. The quarter was characterized by favorable profit margin indicating efficient operations and effective cost management strategies. A key driver of this performance was the diversified mix of product verticals that contributed to this growth. Highlighting the company's ability to cater to broad range of consumer needs. We are extremely pleased with our progress in Philippines, where we've achieved 39% year over year growth, reinforcing our growing dominance in this market.

Speaker 2

Over the past 9 months, this market has generated over $10,000,000 in revenue, representing 19% of our group revenue, an increase from 15% for the same period in 2022. The expanding addressable market buoyant by macroeconomic growth and increasing digitization presents the company with substantial ongoing opportunities. Please note that a recent Euromonitor market study, which is publicly available on our Investor Relations website, forecasts nominal GDP compound annual growth rate from 2023 to 2028 at 9.4%, which is a rapid rise in digital penetration throughout the country. In Taiwan, we navigated the continued challenges associated with the sale of Citi's consumer banking operations to DDS. This transaction officially closed in August of 2023, resulting in ongoing operational integration efforts at DDS, which have limited our collaboration abilities at this time.

Speaker 2

However, Money 11, our Taiwan marketplace, continues to witness a significant increase in user engagement with monthly unique users reaching 2,700,000 in the Q3 of 2023, up from 1 point $8,000,000 from the same period in 2022, a growth of 50%. Furthermore, we have continued to invest in our commercial capabilities within Taiwan to further penetrate the banking market and capitalize on customer acquisition opportunities with local financial services firms and regional players seeking expansion in Taiwan. From a product perspective and in line with our strategic plans to grow our insurance footprint, we are extremely pleased to see 150% increase in insurance product revenues year over year, totaling US1 $500,000 in 3rd quarter. This contributed 7.4% to our group revenue as compared to only 3.4% in the prior year quarter. We currently have insurance broker licenses in 3 of our markets and an agency license in 1.

Speaker 2

In Taiwan, where we currently do not hold a license, there are efforts underway to obtain 1. Brokerage licenses facilitate seamless online insurance transactions for our users, enhancing our revenue through user conversions. We continue to see strong traction across the insurance related product portfolio and have continued to invest in this business line across all functional areas. This focus on insurance reflects our recognition of its significant yet largely untapped potential within the Asian consumer finance landscape, we are confident that the sector offers strong structural as well as cyclical growth opportunities. Now as for the same Euromonitor report that I referenced earlier, online gross written premiums constitute only 6% of the total written premium across our markets, with both online and overall gross written premiums forecast to increase rapidly, showing a significant opportunity ahead of us.

Speaker 2

We are also heartened to see the growth of Creatry, our B2B business. Creatry allows us to capture users and convert traffic from online content channels and lifestyle platforms by sharing revenues from end conversions through our preexisting commercial deals with partners and associated offers. This approach not only expands our user reach, it ultimately offers a more sustainable model of paid digital marketing relative to traditional methods such as paid search or social media advertising. Given the increasing trend towards digitization and content creation across our markets, we believe Creatry can play a progressively larger role in our overall business, where it already contributes 18% of total revenue. This will drive ongoing growth across our markets, especially as we broaden our applicable product reach.

Speaker 2

In closing, as we navigate through an increasingly complex global macroeconomic environment, our company is well aware of the potential challenges ahead. Despite these global economic conditions, our commercial pipeline indicates continued investment from consumer banking firms in customer acquisition, suggesting a stable demand in the region where we operate. These geographies show signs of being structurally underpenetrated, offering room for growth, especially in resilient sectors like insurance, which are less impacted by global economic fluctuations. Our approach is to prudently capitalize on these markets potentials, especially in the areas that are yet to be fully explored, while remaining adaptable to the global economic landscape. We are prepared to adjust our strategies for consumer acquisition in any given product segment with a clear understanding of the levers at our disposal to manage margins and control related expenses effectively.

Speaker 2

With that, I thank you very much for your attention, and I turn it over to Sean Croft, our CFO and COO.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Prashant. Good day, everyone. I wanted to first start by sharing some details about our D FACT transaction before I get into our Q3 numbers. On October 12, we successfully closed our business combination with Bridgestone Holdings, through which we raised approximately $99,900,000 in gross proceeds through the contribution of cash held in Ridgetown's trust account. Net of transaction expenses, proceeds with were approximately 87,000,000 dollars Shortly after closing of the business combination, we deployed proceeds to prepay all outstanding third party debt.

Speaker 3

And as of 31 October, Money Hero had a debt free balance sheet with $70,500,000 of cash and cash equivalents. In terms of the post business combination capitalization of the company, as of the date of this earnings release, we have a total of 42,000,000 2325 shares issued and outstanding. For further details, please see our earnings release. Turning to our Q3 results. Let me first start by saying that since the business combination was not completed until Q4 of 2023, The results presented today and in our earnings release have been prepared on a stand alone basis in respect of Comparis Group Capital Limited and its subsidiaries.

Speaker 3

Comparis Group Capital Limited was the parent company of Money Hero Group prior to the completion of the business combination with Bridge Town. In the Q3 of 2023, Money Hero Group delivered 17% year over year revenue growth to $20,300,000 Excluding Taiwan, which has faced challenges this year, 3rd quarter revenue increased 36% year over year with strong performance in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines as shares by Prashant. From a profitability standpoint, in the second half of twenty twenty two and then the first half of twenty twenty three, we were laser focused on improving the underlying profitability profile of the business achieved through a combination of cost reduction and strengthening of unit economics. This was executed extremely well by the team and led to a material improvement in our profitability profile. In the Q3, our adjusted EBITDA loss improved to negative $1,300,000 from negative $3,000,000 in the Q3 of 2022.

Speaker 3

Looking at the 9 months results, the impact of those actions is much more apparent. 9 months adjusted EBITDA in 2023 was negative $2,200,000 at a negative 4% adjusted EBITDA margin compared to negative $13,100,000 and a negative 26 percent EBITDA adjusted EBITDA margin for the 1st 9 months of 2022. Having fine tuned our profitability levers, we are now refocusing our efforts on accelerating top line growth and market share expansion. This strategy began to yield results in Q3 2023 with 27% quarter on quarter revenue growth, and we are continuing to see this accelerate in the Q4. In each of October November of this year, we achieved new record monthly revenues in excess of $9,000,000 per month, with our Singapore market leading this exceptional growth.

Speaker 3

While we are not providing formal guidance for Q4, it is fair to say that our growth trajectory has significantly accelerated on the back of strong execution by the team, and we are successfully expanding our market share across markets consistent with our strategy. As we evaluate the strategic direction of our company, we recognize the potential in prudently using our cash balance to foster growth. Our approach is 2 fold. 1st, we aim to strengthen our core business through organic initiatives that enhance our existing operations and market presence, such as investing into our insurance business, which is our fastest growing product vertical or further expansion of our B2B business, which has equally shown strong growth and presents a massive opportunity for us. Simultaneously, we are open to exploring strategic acquisitions, investments or partnerships, which align with our long term vision and can offer significant value add.

Speaker 3

In the fragmented competitor landscape of our industry, our company stands out as a significantly scaled player, surpassing competitors by an order of magnitude in almost all of our markets. This dominant market position, coupled with our robust capital position, enables us to consider these broad growth opportunities and to do so in a manner that would be both attractive and accretive to our overall value. Our presence in developed markets such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan is largely profitable at the country level, enabling us to strategically reinvest our core regional into our core regional platforms, thereby enhancing our services and expanding our capabilities. Additionally, it provides us the financial flexibility to pursue growth opportunities in emerging markets where we can leverage the successes achieved in other markets to inform and guide our expansion strategies into newer territories. Thank you for your attention today.

Speaker 3

For more details of our financial results, please refer to the earnings press release on the Investors section of our website. And with that, operator, please open it up for any

Operator

over to the speakers.

Speaker 1

Okay. Well, thank you everybody for joining us. We really appreciate it. If you do have any questions or follow ups, please feel free to email us directly on our IR email address, and we look forward to being in touch in the future. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.

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Key Takeaways

  • Completed a business combination (SPAC) on October 12, raising US$99.9 million in gross proceeds, prepaid all third-party debt, and exited October with a debt-free balance sheet and US$70.5 million in cash.
  • Delivered 17% year-over-year revenue growth in Q3 to US$20.3 million, rising 36% ex-Taiwan, driven by strong performance in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines.
  • Improved profitability with Q3 adjusted EBITDA loss narrowing to US$1.3 million from US$3 million a year ago, and 9-month adjusted EBITDA margin improving from –26% to –4%.
  • Achieved robust regional growth: Singapore revenue up 50% to US$9.5 million, Hong Kong up 23% to US$6.9 million, and Philippines up 39%, now comprising 19% of group revenue.
  • Expanded high-growth verticals with 150% YoY increase in insurance product revenues to US$1.5 million (7.4% of group revenue) and B2B “Creatry” now contributing 18% of total revenue.
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Earnings Conference Call
MoneyHero Q3 2023
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