CAB Payments H1 2025 Earnings Report

CAB Payments EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 0.90
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

CAB Payments Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

CAB Payments Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2025
• Date: 8/14/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, August 14, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:30AM ET

CAB Payments (LON:CABP) Holdings plc and its subsidiaries (CAB Payments) is a market leader in business-to-business cross-border payments and foreign exchange, specialising in hard-to-reach markets. CAB Payments uses its strength of network, technology, and expertise to seamlessly move money where it’s needed and is the holding company for Crown Agents Bank, a UK-regulated bank.

CAB Payments H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: The company has completed its transformation phase and is now in “growth through execution,” with income stabilizing in H1 and early signs of sequential revenue growth.
• Positive Sentiment: Active clients rose to 573 (adding 52 in H1), top‐five corridors now account for just 27% of income (down from 32% last year), and new offices in Europe and New York (with Abu Dhabi planned) are expanding the global footprint.
• Positive Sentiment: Financial momentum is building: H1 gross income was £51.8 m (+3% half-on-half), adjusted EBITDA £13.1 m (25.3% margin, +8% half-on-half) and free cash flow £9.5 m, driven by disciplined cost restructuring.
• Positive Sentiment: New product launches and platform upgrades—including ACH rails covering 52 currencies, first Visa‐processed payments, FX derivatives testing and AI‐driven straight-through processing—are enhancing solution-led sales.
• Positive Sentiment: A standout central bank partnership in one African market has reopened FX corridors, enabled programmed USD reserve sourcing and secured stable, fee-based income while supporting local monetary policy.

Presentation

[Gaurav Patel, Director - IR at Crown Agents Bank]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the CAB payments holdings twenty twenty five interim results presentation. Joining me today are Neeraj Kapoor, our CEO, and James Hopkinton, our CFO. Neeraj will start with some opening remarks, followed by James, who will go over the financial performance in the half, and then Niraj will conclude the presentation with a strategic update. We'll then take some questions from the audience online, first via the telephone lines and then written questions over the webcast. If you're having trouble accessing the Q and A system, please feel free to send an email to the IR inbox on ircabpayments dot com, and I will endeavor to read them out over the call. I will now hand over to Niraj.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to say we've made real progress in executing our strategy, and we've successfully transformed the business to better serve our clients. Most importantly, we've stayed true to our purpose of delivering prosperity in the emerging markets in which we operate. This means we remain true to our core FX and payments offering enhanced by our banking license. My leadership team, which underwent significant changes during the second half of last year and the beginning of this year, is now fully formed.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

And we're united by our common purpose to deliver prosperity in emerging markets. We optimize the use of our network, technology and expertise to help governments, institutions and organizations access hard to reach markets and move money where it is needed. Our focus throughout the year has been on executing and delivering what we committed to do. We've made tangible progress, and we're starting to see solid financial momentum and growth in revenue. In September and again at the 2024 full year results, I laid out an eighteen month road map to reshape the business into one delivering more predictable, attractive, long term growth.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

We're now about nine months into that journey. The transformation phase is complete. The foundations have been laid. And from here, we move into the growth through execution phase. I'm particularly pleased by the new things we're achieving, constantly pushing the business to new highs.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

In the first half, we launched a number of firsts, such as processing our first client payments through our Visa partnership, conducting our first sale from our trade finance portfolio, initial test trades on derivatives with counterparties as well as switching on new and exciting corridors. Our performance in H1 delivered our expected progress. But I want to make it clear, we know there's still work to be done, and we're still on a journey to get the performance to the level that we and our shareholders expect from this business. There are good and solid reasons we're confident about the future. Our client base continues to grow, adding 52 new clients in the half.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Momentum is building fast. As I outlined at the full year 2024 results, our business is becoming increasingly relationship led. This means engaging with clients across the full spectrum of what we offer, FX payments, trade finance and deposits, all integrated through a more cohesive and coherent approach focused on providing solutions rather than just products. To serve our clients' ever evolving needs, we're enhancing our products from testing FX derivatives, building guaranteed deposits to enhanced payment capabilities. We're building solutions matching their priorities.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

In parallel, we're deepening our connectivity in both new and existing markets such as Malawi, Mozambique and Nigeria, giving clients more flexibility, reach and choice. In a moment, I'll describe how our central bank strategy has opened up a new and exciting market. Our strengthened relationships with central banks have been pivotal to our success in leveraging our privileged position as an economic partner to them. And it's great to see we're being recognized through our win at the twenty twenty five Global Markets Central Banking Awards. This award reflects not just the progress we're making, but the long term commitment we're showing in supporting emerging markets globally.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

You can see we've done what we said we'd do in H1. Now that's translating into real momentum in terms of performance. Going back to what I said earlier about our foundations being set, income has stabilized on a half on half basis and is now showing early signs of growth. In support of our strategy, our cost base has been successfully reshaped. We restructured our resources to align with our business model, making the business leaner and more client focused.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

James will go through the details in a moment. Our revenue sources are becoming more diversified with a good balance between our FX, payments and banking offerings as well as continuously reducing income concentration. With some strategic hires, we've restructured the sales force to be more specialized, focused on client growth and increasing share of wallet of existing clients. The focus is on selling solutions that combine our products. On the right, you can see actions we've taken, which underpin our medium term delivery.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Our international footprint is expanding. Our European office is already delivering revenue. New York is now operational, and our planned office in Abu Dhabi is set to open up access to new clients and new markets, perhaps as soon as H2 this year, subject to regulatory approval. Our active client base is growing and crucially, we're building client relationships based on trust and value, not just price. This has helped us secure long term, more sustainable and more valuable revenue streams.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

We've also made strategic moves in key markets. We've secured an IMTO license in Nigeria, giving us greater participation in naira flows. We've opened up our office in New York, allowing us to access more flows into and out of LatAm and Africa. And our renewed focus on building stronger central bank relationships is opening up more opportunities for us across the emerging markets. We've been proactive in reaching out to the central banks and ministries of finance of various markets, both new and existing.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

And this refreshed approach helps to establish a meaningful longer term sustainable presence. And importantly, we continue to invest in our technologies, further improving our product capabilities and operational efficiencies. Our enhanced product offerings will improve our client value proposition, helping us to scale and increase the diversity of earnings. All in all, tangible progress. I can confidently say this shows our plan is working.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

The team is executing our four pillar strategy well. We've taken action in each area. And while there's still work to be done, we head into the second half with increasing confidence in our ability to drive further growth. So let's look at how this is translating into tangible improvements in key metrics. Our client base continues to grow with five seventy three active clients now on the platform.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

We generated a strong H1 client cohort and importantly, many of them are already transacting with us. This combined with our growing diversity of markets, currencies and products, has helped reduce revenue concentration. One measure of this, the top five currency corridors, are now only 27% of the total income, down from 32% last year and 49% the year before. Improved efficiency and smoother onboarding processes mean we're transacting with clients faster. Our network of counterparties has also expanded, now four thirty six liquidity providers and Nostra relationships, enabling us to offer deeper liquidity and sharper pricing.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

The platform continues to deliver a holistic solution across FX, payments and banking, and clients are increasingly treating us as their long term transactional partner. This is reflected in our average deposit balance, which stood at £1,500,000,000 Our platform is generating more and more volume. We're now processing around 2,600 payments per day, showing a 20% growth over 2024, enabled by our investment in our technologies, including AI capabilities to drive efficient scaling. And as previously guided, we're directing more of our technology investment towards commercially driven initiatives. In H1, 67% of CapEx was focused on product enhancements, ensuring our investment continues to support both innovation and revenue growth versus the 29% allocated throughout last year.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

All in all, I'm pleased with our progress in H1. There's more to do, but I'm confident about what H2 will bring. Now James will take you through our financial performance for H1.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

Thank you, Niraj. And it's great to be here for my first set of results since joining the company. As you can see from the charts, all of the key metrics shown are heading in the right direction, with half on half growth in volumes, income, EBITDA, and operating free cash flow. FX volumes of just below £20,000,000,000 have shown sequential growth driven in particular by g 10 currencies as we deepened our relationship with emerging market financial institutions. Emerging FX volumes were slightly lower in the half, reflecting both US dollar strength against emerging market currencies and the impact of geopolitics on IDO budgets.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

Gross income of £51,800,000 was up 3% half on half, although it was down 8% year on year, reflecting both take rate compression through 2024 and the impact of a short lived dislocation in the first quarter of last year. We've controlled costs well, including executing the strategic restructuring exercise in the first quarter. And as a result, these same factors helped shape the EBITDA performance. Our disciplined management of costs and investment has resulted in the business remaining highly cash generative with £9,500,000 of free cash flow with a cash conversion level of 72% compared to 50% in both halves of 2024. As you can see, we've delivered half on half growth of 3% in income, 8% in adjusted EBITDA, and 9% in adjusted profit after tax, demonstrating that the strategic actions taken have started to generate positive performance momentum.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

For the Eagle eyed members of the audience, I wanted to highlight two changes to the presentation of the p and l. First, we've reallocated around £1,100,000 of revenue from each of the halves of 2024 from wholesale FX to payments FX, as this category better reflects the activity generating that particular income. And second, we've extracted IFRS 16 lease interest, which was previously netted from the income line, and we've separately disclosed this on the face of the p and l. Neither adjustment changes the statutory or adjusted profit numbers for any period, but we believe they better reflect our underlying business. Turning to the numbers themselves, an adjusted EBITDA of £13,100,000 represents a margin of 25.3%, up 1.3 percentage points from the second half of last year.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

Depreciation and amortization increased by 37% compared to the the 2024 and eleven percent half on half, reflecting the step up in capital expenditure over the last few years and the timing of technology that came online. On the bottom line, we improved adjusted profit after tax by 9% half on half as operational leverage started to come through with costs growing slower than our income and activity levels. Now, this chart essentially shows that we remain a payments and FX business enhanced by our banking license, with around 60% of our income coming from our FX and payments product areas. We're enhanced by a banking license as it allows us to take deposits, which in turn feeds our payment services for those clients, funds their FX transactions, and in turn enables us to provide trade finance facilities. A key part of our strategic agenda has also been to focus our efforts on building client businesses that generate more annuity flows, which can grow in a more predictable and more repeatable way.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

The red dotted line on the chart highlights the product areas that are traditionally less volatile. As we have seen in developed FX, for example, where spreads are more predictable or where the business generates largely annuity like income as we can see in our deposits, trade finance, and our growing payments businesses. Together, these areas are 70% of our income and grew 8% half on half. Another focus of our strategy is to turn the topmost segment of the chart representing emerging FX into a more annuity and fee based business as well. Emerging FX remains at the heart of who we are, but we're starting to do it in a way that drives more sustainable recurring income streams.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

We're delivering this by, for example, working hard with our central bank relationships and others to resolve structural issues in markets. Instead of transacting on a particular deal on a particular day, we're now working to fill a monthly requirement for clients, turning a one off transaction into regular daily activity, which can be recompensed by margin or fees. You'll hear more about this from Nirad shortly. Our teams are also driving the business by adding more clients, bringing online more enhanced products and services, and opening up more new markets. You'll also hear from Niraj that our business is becoming increasingly integrated with more clients using multiple products across FX, deposits, trade finance, and payments.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

We are a client led business, and this is increasingly apparent as we build out our solutions focus, which is largely agnostic to which product category we earn income in. Our volumes have shown sequential growth despite US dollar strength against emerging market currencies and the impact we've seen to IDO activity. These headwinds have been offset by more significant growth in other transacting clients. As mentioned in the last few slides, take rates are broadly stable in developed FX as they have been for the last few years, and emerging FX take rates have remained at around the same levels we exited 2024 with as we expected. Our increasing focus on structured transactions will generate more fee income from our FX services, which in turn means that take rates should become less of a key driver of our FX business going forward.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

This shift in focus will not only help us build a more predictable income stream, but it is also the way we can build a more sustainable business with our central bank network and with our commercial clients. Turning to the next page. Overall, our costs remain well controlled, and we've been repositioned to better deliver our strategic priorities and drive operational leverage as we grow. Staff costs were flat half and half and slightly lower than the same period of 2024 as we took action to restructure the business. As part of this process, we've taken out surplus roles and have now proportionally more resources in client facing and revenue generating teams.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

The one off cost of the restructuring exercise was around £2,500,000 towards the lower end of the guidance we set out in the full year results in March. And as in previous years, these types of costs have been reflected as non underlying in nature. Importantly, as we set out in the March results presentation, we're maintaining our guidance that staff costs excluding potential variable pay will be broadly flat year on year for 2025. Moving to other operating expenses. In the 2024, there was a around £600,000 reduction to costs related to a one off VAT refund.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

When adjusting for this to better reflect our underlying cost trajectory, non staff costs or other operating expenses were up 5% year on year and broadly flat half on half. The increase in costs year on year largely reflects activity linked costs such as software costs as we rolled out new products, and third party processing costs like bank charges as we processed 20% more transactions year on year. Overall, we are positioned to deliver better operational leverage through time. We're developing lean principles and using AI technology and applying them to processes to drive greater efficiency. We will continue to work hard to deliver further efficiencies as our platform scales, and we'll also continue to look to invest behind sustainable, profitable client activity where we see good opportunities.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

As I mentioned before, we are a payments and FX business enhanced by a banking license. It is a real competitive advantage for our business where we compete with non bank businesses. The license also opens doors across our network, helping us to build a network of over 430 Nostro or liquidity provider banks around the world. Taken together with our emerging markets expertise, our business model is very hard to replicate. But it's also important to remember that we're not a typical bank and have no intention of becoming one.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

Our revenues are largely capital light and non balance sheet intensive. We remain highly capitalized with a CET1 ratio of 19.5% higher than the market average. Our client assets to client deposits ratio was around 17%. This means that for every one pound of client deposits with us, we lend out approximately 17p. This is significantly lower than pretty much any other bank out there.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

To help benchmark how capital light we are, the slide shows our stats against a selection of banks that are more international and transaction banking focused. Our uniqueness is further evidenced by our revenue to credit risk RWA ratio of around 30%. This is significantly higher return than the same peer group that generate around 12%. Deploying credit and capital is not the key driver of our income. Where we do use our capital is largely in trade finance, which is diversified, short tenor, and generates significant activity in other products.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

Importantly, this also positions us for a massive opportunity. In Africa, around 40% of trade is intermediated by banks compared to around 80% worldwide. We can connect this demand with providers of capital in a capital efficient way, and we can have a lasting positive impact on the markets we serve. Finally, on this slide, in terms of CapEx, we spent £3,500,000 in the half, in line with our previous guidance, with around two thirds of the spend focused on continued product development, which will generate further revenue streams. In the first half, we delivered good progress.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

We executed on our strategic priorities and the commitments we've made. We generated approximately £52,000,000 in total income, £13,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA, and 5,400,000.0 in adjusted profit after tax, all showing growth from the second half of last year. We are pleased with the progress that we've made as it is building a more diversified business with more clients, transacting more products with us across more markets. Whilst we have more to do, there is evidence the steps we have taken have translated into building momentum for our financial performance. Cost efficiency and productivity remain a focus for us to deliver operational leverage as we grow.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

However, we will continue to invest behind activity that generates sustainable, profitable, client driven revenues where we see the opportunities. I'll now hand back to Niraj, who will describe in more detail the client progress we're making and why we're confident that this should translate into a better performance in the second half of the year. Niraj?

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Pleasing progress indeed. It's all about delivering what we said we deliver. It's been a period of intense effort and strategic enhancement, which has transformed the business and continues to allow us to deliver on our commitments and to position ourselves for continued sustainable growth. At the last full year results, I laid out an eighteen month road map to reshape the business and put it on a predictable growth trajectory. We're now nine months into our journey, and I can confidently say we've laid strong foundations.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

The team have been focused on execution and delivered. We've established the business, improved our operating model and created the platform we need to grow on. We're driving new client solutions and operational efficiencies through enhancing our technology stack as we offer more digital solutions. Whilst growth in H1 was modest, it's turning a corner, and we've done well against the exogenous factors out of our control and solid foundations are in place. We expect our progress to accelerate in H2.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Turning now to our client activity in H1. Activity levels have remained resilient despite ongoing global macroeconomic pressures. Our strategic focus is starting to show meaningful results, although there's clearly been an impact to our international development organization activity levels, which has made about 10% of our revenues historically and now. Starting with banks, which represent around two thirds of H1 income, This segment is showing early positive signs of our relationship led model clearly delivering. The Bank segment includes both commercial and central banks.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

This grew 5% half on half, driven by higher FX volumes, core deposits and an uplift in trade finance activity, together with successful onboarding of new correspondent banking relationships. In the NBFI and FinTech segment, representing just under a quarter of income, we also showed good sequential progress on income, up 5% half on half. We grew our client base in H1 with a number of significant new clients all about to go live with us. The IDO sector has been challenged in the period as they felt the impacts of well publicized geopolitical headwinds. These pressures contributed to a 13% decline in income to GBP 5,900,000.0.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

As we mentioned at the full year results, we're expanding our reach beyond financial institutions to include large national and international corporates, such as airlines, key resource firms and asset managers who can benefit from our integrated FX payments and banking solutions. Our specialism is that we're able to move money to where it's needed, And there are requirements where we can add real value to the markets we serve and the corporates that also do business there. Our all important purpose of bringing prosperity to emerging markets for sustainable growth is grounded in the strength of our platform and technology designed to drive client loyalty and deliver holistic solutions across FX, payments, deposits and trade finance. Our client led solutions focus aims to harmonize the power of all of our products together to work through our client relationships to solve real problems rather than just purely execute a trade. This is why we've created a structured solutions business.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

It's also powerful in being able to build a more fee based business model at the same time as increasing share of annuity flows in the FX product set. I'll go into the power of this solution in a case study shortly. This includes helping clients unlock trapped liquidity and convert to hard currency, source liquidity for outbound payments, or hedge against volatile currency movements. All of these are critical pain points which our solutions aim to solve. Spot FX remains our core business.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

However, we're rapidly expanding our offering to meet a broader range of client needs. I'll go through the progress of each of these now. First, enhanced payments. Three clients are now live on our automated clearinghouse or ACH rails with 52 currencies available. This proposition is now being marketed and is gaining traction in particular with our IDO and NBFI clients.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Next, FX derivatives. We've completed successful test trades, operational readiness is in place, and we're talking to a number of clients to get started in the second half of the year. Our approach here is not to carry significant risk on our balance sheet, and we'll be hedging our positions in real time. Then deposits. We continue to build our deposit book, strengthening our transactional banking relationships, particularly with banks' clients.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

We've also been working on a guaranteed deposit product through a global banking partner. And finally, trade finance. We have the ability to bring together providers of capital and unsatisfied demand in Africa, LatAm and beyond for Trade Finance. This is a capital light business, demonstrating our origination capability and is an important first step in helping our markets access international trade finance capital providers. These product enhancements and structures are driven by real client demand, demand which gives us strong confidence in the acceleration of momentum into the second half.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

And with a client centric model, we're starting to look at total client wallet rather than just individual product revenues. I want to add some flavor on the work that we're doing and the results we're delivering. This is a standout example of our relationship led central bank model driving tangible results. In one key African market where foreign banks trading local currency FX had been largely prohibited from operating by the Reserve Bank for several years, we very recently successfully reestablished ourselves as a trusted economic partner to that Central Bank. With their full support, we're the only foreign bank currently operating in this way, helping the Central Bank source material levels of valuable US dollar reserve capital on a medium term programmed basis, while also enabling us to provide local currency to our clients.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

This isn't just about access, it's about impact. By managing this solution for the central bank, we're generating a stable fee based income. That's a core part of our model. We're providing a valuable service improving prosperity in that country and not relying purely on spreads. Crucially, this approach has effectively reopened another market for our business.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Foreign flows have resumed. We're helping the market increase its liquidity in both local and foreign currency as well as supporting the Central Bank in building up their reserves of U. S. Dollar and other G10 currencies and in line with their own monetary policy goals. It's a powerful validation of our purpose and strategic approach and the playbook we're replicating in other markets.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

We're steadily building a business with an increased global reach, one that's closer to our clients, closer to liquidity and capital flows and better positioned to capture growth in key corridors. A sustainable emerging markets business that makes its money by delivering prosperity in those markets. Last year, we opened Amsterdam as our European hub. I'm pleased to say it's now starting to deliver revenue through new clients. We've expanded the sales force and now have four sales professionals on the ground with a strong pipeline continuing to build.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

At the same time, we're delivering on our plans to have more boots on the ground sales operations in Africa and then expanding that model into LatAm, giving deeper access to local financial institutions and large corporates and ensuring we're better aligned with the needs of each market. We recently secured representative sales office license in New York, and just this week, we officially opened its doors. It's a significant milestone which validates our business model, opens up a large new market and brings us closer to key clients and our U. S. Clearing banks who provide access to U.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

S. Dollar liquidity. In H2 this year, subject to regulatory approval, we'll be looking to have a sales operation in the ADGM in Abu Dhabi, a strategically important location. We've applied for a Category two license to operate there, recognizing the region's role as a critical source of capital flows into Africa and Asia. The capital of capital.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Together, these moves are giving our platform a truly global reach. We're investing to become more scalable, connected and built for long term revenue growth and profitability. We'll continue to update you on our progress. Our business growth is being powered by the advances we're making in our technology and how we're driving efficiency in our processes. Our efforts in this area have underpinned a significant 20% increase in transaction processing, now handling 550,000 transactions in the first six months of this year with little to no increase in operating costs.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

As it stands, our platform can handle multiples of this figure as we continue to grow. To date, approximately 94% of processes and transactions are streamlined via straight through processing. We're also really focused on our customer experience journey, including significantly speeding up how long it takes a client to onboard with us and start transacting. Our platform is also flexible. This flexibility has allowed us to offer new products and functionality to our clients more rapidly.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

For example, in this period, we configured our system to quote all currency crosses in Chinese renminbi. We've remained truly customer focused, ensuring our systems are up and available, maintaining over a 99.7% uptime. We'll continue to invest in our technologies and processes, increasing the use of AI. This will make us more efficient as an organization and significantly increase the speed of business, which our clients always value. We're now working very hard to deliver the impact of the efforts in H1 to our clients in H2 and beyond.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

We closed the first half with strong client driven momentum. This gives us real confidence in our ability to deliver an even stronger performance in the second half of the year. Client growth continues to be a key driver. We added 36 new active clients in H1 and we're seeing strong engagement from across our expanding base. Our European office is starting to deliver with a growing pipeline of both major and emerging market banks.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

We're also seeing a real uptake of our new enhanced product suite. Clients are now actively transacting on our improved payment rails with our ACH capability coming online and volumes steadily increasing. Our structured solutions, I refer you to the example I shared earlier, represent more than isolated wins. They reflect the type of purpose driven, high impact conversations I'm now having with emerging market central banks around the world. We continue to increase the reach of our business.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

New markets are opening up. Europe is scaling well. And with our U. S. Representative office license now in place, we're able to begin business development in a major global corridor, The Americas.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

It's an exciting time, and we're well positioned to make the most of it. I want you to know how good we should all feel about the future of our business. We've laid strong foundations through our drive for growth and from here, it's all about building, scaling and growing with our purpose being our North Star, delivering prosperity into emerging markets. Despite it being a difficult period for the markets, alongside internal complexity and uncertainty, we've still delivered our growth objectives, and everyone in the business has navigated this with professionalism and determination. So well done to the team.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

We're passionate about driving prosperity in our chosen markets. As we build a more scalable profitable business, we'll be able to increase our reach and the positive impact on the emerging markets we serve. Technology is key to this as we enhance our product set as well as drive further operational efficiencies in our business. We're halfway through an eighteen month journey to drive sustainable growth And already, we're seeing solid and tangible progress, progress that's starting to come through in our financial performance and is setting the tone for what's ahead. My team and I are wholly focused on execution and delivering on our commitments.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

We have real momentum heading into the second half and strong confidence in our ability to deliver further growth in H2 and beyond. So looking ahead, we remain focused on full year delivery, and we'll update you on our 2026 plans at the time of our full year results. Right, let's take questions.

[Gaurav Patel, Director - IR at Crown Agents Bank]

Thanks, Miraj. Firstly, let's go to the phone lines and take questions from there before taking questions via the web portal. Operator, if you go ahead with the first question, please.

[Operator]

You. First question is from Vivek Raja, Shore Capital.

[Vivek Raja, Equity Research - Financial Companies at Shore Capital]

Hi, good morning, chaps. Thank you for your presentation. Three things I wanted to explore, if I can, please. The first one is, I appreciate H1 excluding these conditions, were challenging. To meet your unchanged guidance of, I think you described it as modest income growth in FY 2025, does entail a sharp improvement in the second half.

[Vivek Raja, Equity Research - Financial Companies at Shore Capital]

What do need to see in the business, to sort of see that H2 uplift? And what I just wonder if you could just give us some more notes of confidence from you that give you the sort of, well, confidence in meeting the FY 2025 unchanged guidance? Sorry, clumsy question. And second question was about the connections and integration across the sort of different strands of the business. I think you sort of talked at length about that today and how the business is better connected.

[Vivek Raja, Equity Research - Financial Companies at Shore Capital]

I just wonder, could you give us a sense of sort of wallet share metric to explain how that works? And where do you think there's scope to integrate the business across the difference of revenue streams more as we go forward? And then the last question was about active client numbers and the new client additions. Could you just square those for us, please? So your sort of 50 odd new client additions and then the active client base for the year.

[Vivek Raja, Equity Research - Financial Companies at Shore Capital]

Has there been any attrition there? Where have you seen that attrition? And what could you do in the future to mitigate that?

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Thanks,

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Vivek. Good morning to everyone. So I think that on the H1, H2 confidence point is that, as I've said in the presentation, that we have built some real momentum, a real bow wave in the first half that hasn't necessarily delivered its results in the first half. So the 36 new clients, the opening of The U. S.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Office, the momentum with the European growth in customer numbers and our approaches in various other markets and our products that we are starting to put on to into our client base right now, they haven't actually delivered anything in H1 or very limited amounts. And therefore, our momentum going into H2 is the reason for the confidence. And it is based on real confidence and real customers that we have brought on board that want to transact. And that really kind of and I'll leave James to give you the reconciliation of numbers on numbers on the clients. But the real thing is that the clients themselves are all transacting with us, and that's an important point.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

So the point raised around onboarding and speed of onboarding is quite critical to us to make sure that once we've got clients and bear in mind, our clients are generally quite complicated. They can be central banks or banks in nature, and they're never simple to onboard. But we have done amazingly well at the way that we can speed up that onboarding and get them to income generation. And that is the point that, again, provides us confidence for H2 and the way that we need to deliver that. On the connections and integrations, I think it's really important that our clients understand that we bring more to the table than just a product.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

And by understanding their needs better, we can also provide them with better solutions from everything that we can do product wise. But also it helps us to enhance our product base and be more focused on a demand led basis, which you will have noted that I mentioned earlier. So I think that that's a very important part of our development in terms of the way that we deal with customer need. Now the other thing about that, and I'm glad you asked the question about wallet share. So whilst the business previously has focused on product metrics and you will just seen in the last presentations a lot more emphasis on product KPIs, Here, we are moving towards, as I say, a more relationship built model, which requires us to understand client dynamic and client wallet share.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

And as we move to the full year, you'll see more information brought on that particular basis to these type of presentations to demonstrate how we are doing with wallet share and the way that we operate generally with customers. So James, do want to talk about the numbers on customer numbers and sales?

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

Yes, I'd love to. And it is a little bit like Sudoku. So the lovers of Sudoku out there will love this. So we had five forty six active clients at the end of last year, of which we've added 52 clients. Of those 52, 21 are active with us at the half year.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

So we've another 50% of those clients that are going to start transacting with us after the June 30, which also gives us confidence to the second half. We also have 15 clients that were brought on last year and are now active this year. And then there are nine clients where we took the decision to exit off board them from the platform for various different reasons, not predominantly because we weren't transacting sufficiently with them. So those are the reconciling items to get from $5.46 to five seventy three. That's the number of clients.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Great. Thank you. Should we go to the next question? Thanks, Vivek.

[Operator]

Next question is from Gregoire Herman, Barclays.

[Grégoire Hermann, Equity Research Analyst - Software & Payments at Barclays]

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. First one would be, I mean, you've reported a positive growth of active customers in H1. So maybe could you maybe remind us of what are the decisive arguments that's enabled you basically to win against competitors? And maybe you talked about specific solutions or additional products that you have added to your portfolio, Which ones basically exactly made a difference to clients, if any?

[Grégoire Hermann, Equity Research Analyst - Software & Payments at Barclays]

And then potentially lead to this question, you described 2025 as a year of product launches. Can you tell where do you stand right now in your portfolio roadmap and the number of projects that have been delivered? How much you are expecting to deliver further in 2025? And the speed with which you actually expect these product or solution to translate into further revenue generation, please? Thank you.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

No. Thanks for the question. On the growth point, yes, I think that the customers and the way that we approach them is the way that we are getting them to understand that we can deliver solutions to the problems that they have. So rather than just operate on the basis of, say, FX, spot FX on a daily basis, we can now offer them solutions that take their problems and say, for example, they have particular currencies and particular jurisdictions that they're finding hard to move out of, then we can find ways to do that through the demand that we have from other customers that we deal with. So we have a network that we're bringing to bear in some cases.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

In other cases, it's a case of just understanding the fact that with our relationships and the way that we have dealt with other customers that we can bring those solutions to these newer customers and these newer customers want those solutions. I think that what we're finding and whilst I've been traveling around the world is that a lot of the needs of the emerging markets are quite similar. They are all commodity driven economies. We deal with the ones that grow the fastest and that have the strongest economic KPIs and political stability. And that allows us to therefore use our playbooks across those different economies rather than inventing new things for each one separately.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

And what we found a lot we've what we found is a lot of success through being able to do that. So I think that it's something that we will And as we open up new offices, especially in The U. S, where we started work already, that we will start using that approach more so with the IDO clients and the clients that sit in the LatAm region, both in and out of The U. S.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

So these are all things that will allow us to generate more clients based on the fact that we have experience of their needs. On the 2025 launch of products, I say I would say that I would the emphasis on products is probably not the most important part, although derivatives are being launched now and these are very specific to what we do and that they are obviously very collateralized in the way that they're approached. But having said that, there are other things that we're doing, which is more about joining up the products that we already have and making them work for our clients. Our clients have specific needs and the speed of delivery that you ask about is the fact that we can come to them with solutions that work pretty much immediately. So once we've gone through their governance procedures to be onboarded with them as well as them being onboarded with us, then we can get to work very, very quickly.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

And that's why the focus on onboarding customers is a key one for us because the quicker we do that, the quicker we can bear our products into that market and create value both for our customers and for us. Anything to add?

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

Well, think that was an excellent summary. I would just add, I mean, maybe some capabilities that we talked about in the presentation. So we're building out our deposit product base to enable all of our clients to use our services. We've now got ACH rails that are up and live, and we have started selling that to our client base. That has 52 currencies capabilities around the world, and that's going to help underpin further growth.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

We've had 20% volume growth in our payments year on year already. I think that's going to really help drive that. And actually, just to underpin the flexibility of our systems, we're now able to quote Chinese renminbi crosses against all currency pairs. And that was actually a relatively easy update to our system. So good flexible systems are helping to underpin our client proposition.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Thank you. Thank you for the question.

[Grégoire Hermann, Equity Research Analyst - Software & Payments at Barclays]

Thank you.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Question.

[Operator]

Next question is from Portia Patil, Canaccord.

[Portia Patel, MD - Diversified Financials & Equity Research at Canaccord Genuity - Global Capital Markets]

I've just got one. I was interested to hear you talk about fee based income. So apologies if you did mention this, but interested to know what percentage of the revenue in H1 was what you call fee based and how you expect the revenue mix to evolve in the fullness of time between fee based and FX payments volume based, if that's the right way to think about it?

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Yes.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Thanks, Borje. I'll let James tell you the statistical side of it. But I think that from our perspective, as I answered the first question, it's very important to look at customers from what they need rather than the types of income that we produce. And to some degree, a large chunk of our income is fees, whether they are through FX or through other means. The only real net interest income that we produce is through our deposits and some trade finance activities that we take part in, which are ultimately quite limited.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

So I think that the real thing is that the way that we want to consider fees going forwards is really through that wallet share by client and really understand how we're making money for from that client to help them with what they need and how they can get maximum value from what we provide to them. And that then gives us a much better outcome because some of the things on their own have limitations. So FX fees from FX through take rates have a limitation, whereas value that we can provide through providing solutions is related to the value that the customer sees and therefore can drive a much higher margin in terms of what we can obtain in terms of value share based on that equation. So that's kind of the move. And I think that whilst we continue to increase the customer base and see the customer for all of the things that we can provide them through that wallet, I think we will get to a point where whilst we are more focused on total income, the actual split of whether it is from fees or from net interest income becomes less of our concern, but more about the share of wallet. Do you want to

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

Yes. No, absolutely. In the half, we made about just under GBP 8,000,000 in revenue from fees, which is up 4% half on half from the second half of last year. I think the key point is that a lot of what we talked about in the presentation is a business activity that really is starting to grow. And as we look at the results of June, July and as we're into August, we're seeing that through come through quite strongly.

[Gaurav Patel, Director - IR at Crown Agents Bank]

Question

[Operator]

is from Paul Bryant, Equity Development.

[Paul Bryant, Equity Research Analyst - Financials at Equity Development]

Hi, good morning, gents. Thanks for the presentation. Two questions, please. Specifically with regard to the Amsterdam and New York offices, even though I appreciate New York, it's very, very early days. Could you give us any feedback from the sales teams in terms of what clients are finding attractive about this new kid on the block?

[Paul Bryant, Equity Research Analyst - Financials at Equity Development]

Where are they moving business from? Or is it more you're enabling them to do more for their clients? And then the second one is stablecoins. There's tons of talk and articles about the impact of them on cross border payments. Are you seeing anything in your space?

[Paul Bryant, Equity Research Analyst - Financials at Equity Development]

And is there anything going on within CAB to look at that? Thank you.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

No. Thanks, Paul. Good questions. On the first question around the new offices that we have, Amsterdam and CAB Europe as it's known is has been around now for just over a year and has started to really grow its customer base. And what we're finding is that, one, obviously, in Europe, our presence isn't as well known.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

And now that we are actually actively marketing ourselves over there, we're finding that our specialism in emerging markets is a very important factor in winning business. And there are less competitors from what we can see in Europe that deal specifically in the markets that we deal in. And clearly, having those deeper relationships with some of the emerging markets that we deal in creates that specific uniqueness that those customers are looking for. So we are very focused on that and we are finding more and more customers that wish to be involved in those emerging markets from Europe. It's a big place and we're very focused on delivering those clients that provide us with maximum value in the shortest time.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

So that's kind of there. On The U. S. Side, as you say, very early days. We've only just started.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

We have a team, some very, very small team out there right now, which will grow over time. There is a focus on IDO flows because there is, notwithstanding the well publicized U. S. Cuts in development funding and that kind of thing is that there are still many organizations in The U. S.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

That are operating into emerging markets that we can help them with. But also the focus on Latin America, we have been building our presence in Latin America from London. That can be enhanced both in terms of time and proximity by operating out of The U. S. Office and growing that business specifically as well.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

On the stablecoin side, I mean, that's a very interesting point and we have been looking at this very carefully for certainly the eighteen months I've been here and maybe longer. And as that becomes something that is developing into a workable product, you won't be surprised to know that we are working very hard to understand exactly how we can take part through our products in markets using stablecoins and blockchains to help our clients transact more simply, more cheaply, more efficiently and again delivering again more prosperity into the markets that we deal in, which is very important to us. Bear in mind that most emerging markets, if not all, operate on the basis of trading some kind of commodity that they're taking out of their country. And therefore, stablecoin isn't something that we can ignore in helping them do that more effectively.

[Paul Bryant, Equity Research Analyst - Financials at Equity Development]

Thank you. That's helpful.

[Gaurav Patel, Director - IR at Crown Agents Bank]

I don't think we've got any more questions over the call. And I can't see any questions over the web portal. So with that in mind, thank you, everyone, for tuning into our results today. Please feel free to reach out to the IR team should you have any further questions or about the results or our business. With that, we'll close the call here. Thank you very much.

[Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director at CAB Payments Holdings]

Thank you.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments Holdings]

Thank you.

Participants

Executives

• Neeraj Kapur, CEO & Director
• James Hopkinson, Group CFO

Analysts

• Gaurav Patel, Director - IR at Crown Agents Bank
• Vivek Raja, Equity Research - Financial Companies at Shore Capital
• Grégoire Hermann, Equity Research Analyst - Software & Payments at Barclays
• Portia Patel, MD - Diversified Financials & Equity Research at Canaccord Genuity - Global Capital Markets
• Paul Bryant, Equity Research Analyst - Financials at Equity Development