CAB Payments H2 2025 Earnings Report

CAB Payments EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 5.40
• 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: H2 2025
• Date: 3/5/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, March 5, 2026
• 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 H2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Financial momentum — Total income rose to £119m (+12% YoY) and adjusted EBITDA reached £35m (30% margin) with strong second-half acceleration, showing improving profitability and operating leverage.
• Positive Sentiment: Strategic repositioning and diversification — The group reduced concentration risk (top‑5 currency weight down to 32%), now serves ~600 active clients with >90% retention, expanded multi‑rail and stablecoin capability, and opened New York and Abu Dhabi offices to deepen corridors and client proximity.
• Positive Sentiment: Medium‑term targets — Management reiterated a target CAGR for total income excluding net interest income in the high teens to low 20s over the next three years, with continued operating‑leverage improvement and potential capital returns from end‑2026.
• Negative Sentiment: Net interest income headwind — NII fell in H2 due to U.S. dollar rate cuts and hedging actions (about £1.5m half‑on‑half), and management expects a year‑on‑year drag on NII in 2026.
• Negative Sentiment: Rising costs and investment — Operating costs increased ~10% in 2025 and platform/product investment will step up in 2026 (management expects costs to rise ahead of inflation as they add client‑facing staff), which could pressure near‑term margins until revenue scale materializes.

Presentation

[Gaurav Patel, Head of Investor Relations at CAB Payments]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2025 results presentation. We are glad to be joined today by all those on the webcast. With me, I have Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO, James Hopkinson, Group CFO. Neeraj will open up the presentation with key achievements in the year and the foundations for our future growth, followed by James, who will go through the financial delivery for 2025. As we are in an offer period, and as per The Takeover Panel rules, we will not be conducting a live Q&A session. Thank you for those that have submitted questions in advance. We'll post written responses to these questions on our website. With that said, I'll now hand over to Neeraj.

[Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO at CAB Payments]

Hello, everyone. There's no doubt 2025 marked an important milestone for the group. Before I get started, just wanted to comment on the ongoing situation in the Middle East, and especially, regarding our team in Abu Dhabi. I can confirm that they are all fine. I'm in touch with them, all the time, as well as with the regulators and the clients, and we're clearly actively monitoring what's happening there to make sure that the team remains safe. Our business model is built on being in these kind of environments, and that sustained presence is the real value that differentiates us from our competitors. Back to 2025. Over the past two years, we've fundamentally reshaped the business strategically, operationally, and financially.

[Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO at CAB Payments]

When I joined, we had deep foundations, but also concentration risk, operational inefficiencies, and a strategy that required more of an e-execution focus. We've improved strategy execution, reshaped the cost base, diversified revenue streams, strengthened leadership, and rebalanced towards sustainable recurring income. This is all about quality. Importantly, we've returned to peak income levels, excluding the concentrated naira revenues of prior years. This isn't a recovery driven by volatility, it's structural and strategic. This is now a relationship-led cross-border FX and payments business focused on scaling from a significantly stronger base. In 2025, we focused on high-quality value creation, and I can assure you we've delivered. 12% growth in total income, 14% growth in adjusted EBITDA, strong second half acceleration, diversified revenue mix, and improved operating leverage.

[Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO at CAB Payments]

What's important isn't just the growth rate, it's the quality and durability of that growth, and it's driven by systemic financial development in our markets, expanding trade corridors, client wallet share expansion, and network enhancement. All this underpins repeatability. 2026 has started well. Our investment case is now clear. Few, if any, institutions globally combine the following six elements. Growth linked to economies, not cyclicality. Our growth is aligned to structural economic development in the markets we serve rather than short-term rate or volatility cycles. A network that is hard to replicate. Our liquidity and correspondent banking network has been built over decades and provides access in markets where barriers to entry remain high. Long-standing sticky relationships. This is all about trust, driving retention, repeat flows, and increasing wallet share. Multi-rail payments reaching billions of endpoints. This enables us to support both scale and flexibility as volumes grow.

[Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO at CAB Payments]

A highly scalable model with capital generation. As transaction volumes increase, our operating model delivers improving margin contribution and strong cash generation. A fully licensed platform unlocking access. Our U.K. banking license enhances credibility, regulatory trust, and access to counterparties in markets that others cannot easily serve. Together, these elements create a differentiated infrastructure platform positioned for sustained structural growth. This combination has been built over decades and is rare. It's not easily recreated, it's not quickly assembled, and it represents long-term infrastructure in markets that continue to develop structurally. Our model is built around three reinforcing drivers. First, high-quality income growth. Growth driven by payment scale, geographic expansion, client acquisition, network monetization, and product expansion, not by balance sheet leverage. Second, operating leverage expansion. We're structurally reducing our cost-income ratio. Incremental revenue is delivering improving margin contribution. Third, our infrastructure investment is modular and scalable.

[Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO at CAB Payments]

Each extension of the network increases client utility, deepens liquidity access, and improves operating leverage. Because we're capital light, that scale translates into improving returns as volumes grow. Over time, that combination enhances the durability and quality of our earnings. All of this creates capital-light compounding of profits. Less than 8% of income comes from our lending activities. That profile is expected to remain stable. These generate strong cash conversion, growing surplus capital, capacity for disciplined infrastructure reinvestment, and capacity for shareholder returns over time. Together, these create a compounding profit model. We've materially reduced concentration risk. We now serve almost 600 active clients. Retention exceeds 90%, and revenue per client is increasing. Top five currency concentration is reduced from 45% to 32%. This improves resilience, it improves predictability, and it improves earnings quality. That's what drives value.

[Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO at CAB Payments]

We're positioned in regions forecast to grow GDP between 2.5% and 4.5% per annum. These economies develop, trade flows expand, payment volumes increase, and liquidity needs to deepen. We sit inside these flows, we participate in that structural expansion. We grow as they grow. Last year, we reduced roles by about 20% during the reset phase. At the same time, EBITDA increased by 14%, straight-through processing reached 94%, and onboarding times improved by 40%. This reflects structural redesign of the operating platform. Volume scale, cost growth remains controlled. Decoupling growth from costs drives operating leverage expansion, which remains ahead of us powering profit and compounding through the expansion of AI use.

[Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO at CAB Payments]

In 2025, we expanded Automated Clearing House rails and processed 1.200,000 payments. We continued to invest in stablecoin capability, multi-rail expansion, regional licensing, and core platform enhancement. These investments expand our existing infrastructure advantage, sustaining profit compounding. Our liquidity and Nostro network has taken decades to develop. It requires trust, it requires regulatory alignment, and it requires local presence. It can't be replicated quickly nor bought cheaply. It's embedded infrastructure central to our long-term positioning and drives our profits. At our core, we're a B2B FX and payments business. Our platform supports both high-value, low-frequency flows and high-frequency payment activity. We operate multi-rail with global reach across more than 190 countries and billions of endpoints. This flexibility supports client retention and wallet share expansion. Our infrastructure is scalable.

[Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO at CAB Payments]

We've all heard a lot about the increasing prevalence of stablecoin in our markets. Stablecoin represents disciplined strategic optionality. It's not just a pivot. The economic value in emerging markets lies in regulated off-ramps, local liquidity depth, and central bank relationships. These attributes complement fintechs. These are capabilities we already possess and gives us a strong position to play in the stablecoin market. Our approach remains phased, regulated, and strategically aligned to monetize this year. We've expanded our footprint with offices in New York and Abu Dhabi, complementing London and Amsterdam. This strengthens proximity to clients, clearing partners, regional capital, and growth corridors. It enhances access without altering our capital light model. We're targeting a compound annual growth rate percentage for total income, excluding net interest income in the high teens to the low 20s for the next three years.

[Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO at CAB Payments]

We're also targeting continued operating leverage and increasing capital generation. This framework reflects sales capacity expansion, product rollout, which is underway, network monetization, and operating efficiencies that are already visible. It's grounded in actions taken and capability built to deliver a compounding profit model. James will now expertly take you through our financial performance.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

Thanks, Neeraj. As Neeraj said at the outset today, we are as a team, pleased with our 2025 performance. We delivered double-digit broad-based growth across our most important financial metrics. Income of GBP 119 million was up 12% year-over-year and 30% half-on-half. We remain an FX and payments business, with this income representing around 70% of revenue, growing at 15% year-over-year. Cut another way, income excluding net interest income was up 17% year-over-year, almost 50% half-on-half. No matter which way you look at it, the income engines are picking up speed. Operating costs increased by 10%, reflecting business growth, investment in our client-facing teams, expanding products and network reach and inflation.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

At the bottom line, this translated into adjusted EBITDA of GBP 35 million at a margin of 30% and an adjusted profit before tax of GBP 23 million, which was up 9% year-on-year. This more than doubled half-on-half as operational leverage came through. We're clearly heading in the right direction, although we know we have more to do to realize the full potential of the franchise. The business accelerated within the year with a strong step up in income and profitability in the second half, and I'll go through the half-on-half drivers in the next few slides. At the first half results in August last year, we said that the business had turned the corner. Our income was down 8% year-on-year, but had started growing slightly half-on-half.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

The performance in the second half of 2025 confirms that we are on a totally new trajectory. Starting with the top left quadrant, total income rose 30% half on half, despite net interest income falling 9% as a result of the U.S. dollar interest rate cuts in the latter half of the year and our interest rate risk management action, which we took also in the second half. The drivers of the increased growth were largely strategic. More clients transacting across more markets and more products, combined with widening FX margins. Moving to the top right, adjusted EBITDA increased 69% half on half to GBP 22 million, showing the power of operational leverage as income grew faster than costs. Our adjusted EBITDA margin also increased to 33% in the second half, up from 25% in the first half.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

Marginal EBITDA margin from H1 to H2 was in the region of 58%. The bottom right chart shows that volumes increased consecutively across each of the last four halves as we consistently ramped up volume with our existing and new clients. Importantly, the emerging market volumes started to increase for the first time in several halves. Finally, the bottom left quadrant shows that the blended take rates increased by 6 basis points in the second half, largely due to an uptick in emerging market spreads from the cyclical lows we saw in the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2025. I'll go through this in a little more detail in the following slide. This slide shows the emerging market take rate trends we've seen over recent years.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

We've selected 2021 and 2024 as comparable periods as we didn't feel it was appropriate to take the naira inflated margins in 2022 and 2023. This chart shows that recent norms have EM take rates at around 30 to 33 basis points. In the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, this was below trend as we saw a series of big geopolitical changes reverberate through global markets. The world has adjusted to the new normal over the last nine months or so. One of the things I wanted to bring out therefore is the bridge from this more normalized level of around 30 basis points to the take rates seen in the second half of 2025 of 38 basis points.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

There are three main items in the walk which provide important contextualization to the take rate increase. First, around 6 or 7 basis points relates to our central bank strategy, which I will talk about in the next slide. Around 2 basis points relate to a time-bound dislocation of a small number of markets in the second half. Around 1 basis point relates to the change in mix resulting from the 35% growth in payments FX volumes half on half, compared to the 15% growth in volumes in wholesale FX. The payments FX business is typically smaller ticket, higher margin, and importantly, more repeatable. That leaves us with a core margin of around 27 basis points, which is in line or even slightly below recent norms. This is not the same rate times volume business as in the past.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

We've invested in relationships and providing solutions, and this is coming through in our numbers. Let's go through the half-on-half income growth in a little more detail. Starting with the right-hand side of the chart, we've called out around GBP 2,500,000 of one-off or more episodic income. These are a GBP 700,000 gain on the sale of a portfolio of bonds and just under GBP 2 million in income that was related to a small number of limited time-bound currency dislocations. These dislocations happen in our markets periodically, and when they happen, we remain open for business, supporting our clients and the markets through these challenging times. While this is a core part of being an FX and payments business, we will call these out transparently. Our baseline level of income in the second half was therefore more like GBP 65 million.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

Moving to the left-hand side of the chart, we saw an uptick across the board in terms of both client volumes and margins, which I covered in the last slide. Our central bank strategy delivered in the second half as we rolled out a number of structured solutions alongside our central banking clients. For us, structured solutions can take many forms, but essentially transforms an episodic and transactional activity into a client-led programmatic solution that is more repeatable in nature across weeks, months, and potentially years. We are helping these important clients with their reserve management, which is a long-term value-added service we offer. We also delivered steady growth in our other payments line, which largely represents income from correspondent banking and pensions clients. Our correspondent banking business will be enhanced with the onboarding of a new global clearing partner that we announced in January.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

Net interest income fell GBP 1.5 million half on half, reflective of the factors I mentioned earlier. Given the key interest rate changes and our hedging strategy, which both landed in the final quarter of 2025, it would not be unreasonable to annualize this quarter or so's impact as you think about 2026. Clearly, rate expectations change, and it's our job also to minimize their impact through things like growing deposits, for example. Hopefully this gives you useful context. Moving on to trade finance, which also saw continued growth half on half. I would note that we're now at or around our current appetite levels given our capital light strategy. Overall, even after excluding the more one-off items, the growth was still up a solid 25% half on half, was broad-based and was client-led.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

Finally, as we think about sustainability of this trend, it's important to note that we have started 2026 with strong results both in January and February, as Neeraj mentioned earlier. Let's now talk about our clients. Starting with our bank segment, which remains our largest client group with around 60% of total income. This segment consists of our emerging market financial institutions, central bank, and global banking clients. Together, this segment delivered steady year-on-year and half-on-half growth, up 15% and 16% respectively, despite the net interest income drag in the second half. Moving to our fintech and corporate clients. This segment represents around 30% of our income and grew 15% year-on-year, including 66% growth in the second half. This was driven by new client wins, our expanded currency coverage, and the normalization of margins mentioned earlier.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

Our international development organization clients, who represent just over 10% of our income. Serving these clients is at the heart of how we can best execute on our purpose. The global dynamics of this sector are well known. It was positive to see that our clients were significantly more active in the second half. Turning now to costs. Headline operating costs, excluding depreciation, rose 10% to GBP 83.9 million. I'll walk you through the drivers of this. Starting from the left-hand side of the chart. To get a more comparable baseline, we've added back around half a million pounds related to a one-off VAT refund. After this adjustment, the increase is more like 9% year-on-year. Staff costs, excluding variable compensation, were broadly flat year-on-year, as we previously guided.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

This followed the strategic restructure we executed in the Q1 of 2025 that Neeraj mentioned. Our staff showed great professionalism to keep driving the business forward through this period of change. Cost of sales, which includes items like clearing and processing fees, and they are directly linked to volume. These costs were up 16% despite our transaction volumes being up 19% year-on-year. Adjusted for the VAT refund, other operating expenses increased 6% year-on-year, and these related to professional fees and software cost increases that largely related to our expanded footprint and broadening of our products and capabilities, as well as a degree of general inflationary pressure.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

Finally, outside of the chart, we also incurred GBP 4.7 million in non-underlying costs during the year, which were in line with previous guidance. Our client momentum and our strategic opportunities are clear to us, and we now have a foundation from which we can invest into our growth. On the investment side, we're continuing to build up our global presence with a targeted build-out of New York, European, and our Abu Dhabi locations, and our London-based specialists. Furthermore, we're scoping out more in-person presence in sub-Saharan Africa and the LATAM regions. To be clear, though, we're talking about maybe 30 or so more client-facing staff phased over the year. Offsetting this investment, we're determined to continue improving our productivity and efficiency, including leveraging AI more.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

Net-net, we expect more than inflationary increase in expenses next year, but all of our costs will be as focused as possible on productivity. Onto our investment into our platform. We invested just under GBP 9 million in 2025, down from around GBP 15 million in 2024. A large proportion of our in-year investment went towards product developments, many of which are at the early stages of monetization. Looking ahead to 2026, investment is expected to step up to between the levels in 2025 and 2024. In closing, before I hand back to Neeraj, 2025 demonstrated good strategic and financial progress. We saw strong growth year-on-year, with particularly strong acceleration in the second half.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

Our confidence in our outlook is built over several layers of growth, including our market's growth, their increasing interconnectedness with the international financial system, continuing to expand our client base, improvements in our product range, volumes, and wallet share, and the fact that our investments to enter new regional flows have only just started. The growth we're generating is increasingly translating into positive operational leverage, with profitability improving as we scale the business. Our revenue streams are higher quality, more diversified, and more predictable, with less reliance on single corridors or episodic income. We are supporting our global expansion and long-term client opportunity by continuing to invest for growth. I would now like to conclude by bringing together all of the guidance we've given into our medium-term financial framework.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

First, we will look to grow our total income, excluding net interest income, by a compounded annual growth rate percentage in the high teens to low 20s over the next three years. Please note that in 2026, we do expect a year-over-year drag on net interest income compared with 2025 levels, as I mentioned earlier. We will be investing in our client teams, which will mean that costs will increase ahead of the rate of inflation in 2026. Through the medium-term, we are targeting continued improvement in operational leverage and a structural reduction in our cost-income ratio over time.

[James Hopkinson, Group CFO at CAB Payments]

Finally, with the group now operating near the upper end of its lending appetite and with a view to efficient capital management, starting at the end of 2026, we expect to be in a position to consider capital return options alongside assessing other attractive investment opportunities. We'll therefore come back to you at this time next year with a formal capital allocation framework. Now I'll hand back to Neeraj to talk you through the exciting future ahead for the group. Neeraj.

[Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO at CAB Payments]

That was clear and insightful, James. I'd like to remind you of the six elements of our investment case. I won't go through them again, but I can say that these advantages have been built over decades and are not easily recreated. They're increasingly valuable today, and as I've already made clear, they position us for sustained structural high quality growth. What does all this mean? Well, we've shown you that we're more diversified, structurally growing high quality revenue, operating with improving margins and generating increasing profits and capital. This is no longer a transitional phase. It's a scaling infrastructure platform operating in structurally expanding markets. We remain focused on disciplined execution, long-term value creation through delivering sustainable high quality earnings. There are three reasons why we're so confident in our purpose-driven value trajectory. Our turnaround is complete. This is a rapidly scaling infrastructure platform.

[Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO at CAB Payments]

Infrastructure platforms with structural high quality growth are scarce. Over the last two years, I've traveled extensively in our markets, and I've noticed some clear and consistent trends. For example, regulators in our markets are becoming more sophisticated and are increasingly controlling fintechs and the emerging stablecoin environment. Fintechs are experiencing this directly and are coming to us for solutions that leverage our central bank relationships. Stablecoin is an important and exciting evolution in our target markets. This is precisely why we've been creating a demand-led stablecoin proposition that will be launched this year. This builds on what fintechs find hardest to deliver, which is off-ramp liquidity. We're best positioned to deliver this alongside our regulatory partners. I've also seen our team deliver revenue diversification, operating leverage improvement, and capital light compounding of profit.

[Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO at CAB Payments]

Our global expansion into New York in December 2025 and Abu Dhabi in January 2026 will start delivering revenues this year. We've affirmed our medium-term guidance over the next three years, targeting a high teens to low twenties compound income growth rate. This excludes net interest income, but includes more operating leverage. We've positioned ourselves as a regulated infrastructure platform, connecting fast-growing markets with scalable investment underway. My team and I are focused on disciplined execution and long-term value creation for all shareholders. Now over to you, Gaurav.

[Gaurav Patel, Head of Investor Relations at CAB Payments]

Thanks, Neeraj and James, and thanks to those on the webcast today. As a reminder, we will be posting written responses to Q&A on our website. We will close the call there.

[Operator]

This presentation has now ended.

Participants

Executives

• Gaurav Patel, Head of Investor Relations
• James Hopkinson, Group CFO
• Neeraj Kapur, Group CEO