OBOOK Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 30, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Core infrastructure completed: Obook says it finished its four-layer OwlPay platform in 2025 — centered on OwlPay Harbor — integrating Circle Payments Network, Visa Direct, multiple blockchains and fiat rails to enable stablecoin on‑ramp and global settlement across major markets.
  • Positive Sentiment: Early commercial traction is emerging: management reports 29 contracted enterprise clients and 7 onboarding as of April 2026, with aggregate annual payment volume on existing client business rising from an estimated ~$5 billion (Mar 31 snapshot) to over $6 billion.
  • Neutral Sentiment: 2025 reported net loss was $31.9M, but ~ $16.8M was non‑cash share‑based compensation and ~$6.9M was one‑time Nasdaq listing costs; adjusted underlying loss was about $8.2M, revenue was $7.9M (+4%), cash ended at $9.4M and the company secured a $10M convertible note (access up to $15M).
  • Positive Sentiment: Shareholder alignment and capital stability: shareholders holding over 99% of previously locked shares voluntarily extended the lock‑up by one year, which management says signals confidence and reduces near‑term selling pressure following the Nasdaq delisting.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Long‑term commercialization plan is aspirational: management reiterates a directional framework toward ~ $500M annual revenue by 2030 based on ~25–35 bps core take rates and higher‑margin Visa Direct use cases, while planning to use AI to drive operating leverage and limit headcount growth.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
OBOOK Q4 2025
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

Skip to Participants
Henry Fan
Investor Relation Director at OwlTing

Good morning and good evening to all, and welcome to the OBOOK full year 2025 result conference call. I'm Henry, investor relations director, and I will be your speaker host today. I have with me our Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, Darren Wang, and our Chief Financial Officer, Winnie Lin. Before we proceed, I would like to remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements which are subject to risk and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Forward-looking statements may include, among other things, our business outlook, expected product and corridor rollouts, enterprise pipeline conversion, regulatory licensing progress, and long-term operating leverage.

Henry Fan
Investor Relation Director at OwlTing

For a detailed discussion of the risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to our earnings press release issued earlier today and our filing with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20-F. In addition, during today's call, we will reference certain non-IFRS financial measures, including non-IFRS gross margin and non-IFRS operating expenses, which exclude share-based compensation expense. These non-IFRS measures are provide a supplement information and should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with IFRS. A reconciliation of non-IFRS measures to their most directly comparable IFRS measure is included in our earnings press release and our annual report on Form 20-F.

Henry Fan
Investor Relation Director at OwlTing

On today's call, Darren will walk you through our 2025 strategic milestones, provide an update on the OwlPay platform and our progress across the four layers of our settlement stake, share early indicators of enterprise commercial traction, and frame where we are headed in 2026 and beyond. Winnie will then provide a detailed review of our full year financial results, including a non-IFRS framework we believe is most useful for evaluating our underlying business economics, our liquidity position, and our operating leverage thesis as volume scale across our infrastructure. I will now turn the call over to our Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Darren Wang.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

Thank you, Henry. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before I begin, I want to thank our employees, partner, customer, and shareholders for your support over the past year. We deeply appreciate your trust in OwlTing Group and your continued commitment to our long-term vision. Before I review the year, I want to start with an important development. Including SBI Holdings, shareholders of more than 99% of the shares that were originally subject to lock-up restrictions have voluntarily agreed to extend those lock-up for an additional year. We believe that decision sends a strong signal. It reflects the conviction of our core shareholders in the company's long-term direction and our ability to create value over time. It also reinforces alignment between our shareholder base and our strategy priorities.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

From a market perspective, it help reduce concerns around potential near-term selling pressure while supporting confidence in the stability of our capital structure. Turning to 2025, this was one of the most important years in OwlTing's 15-year history. During the year, we completed our delisting on Nasdaq, and just as importantly, we completed the core build out of the infrastructure that will support our stablecoin-enabled cross-border settlement business. If I were to describe 2025 in one sentence, I would put it in this way. 2025 was not simply a year of financial result. It was a foundational year, a year that positioned OwlTing for its next stage for growth. What we built was not a single product. We built an infrastructure layer for global payment and settlement. At the center of the platform is OwlPay Harbor.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

OwlPay Harbor is our enterprise-grade stablecoin on-ramp offering and global settlement infrastructure. It is not a standalone feature. It is the core infrastructure layer that allows businesses to connect stablecoin, fiat, payment rails, and settlement capabilities in a unified system. Instead of integrating bank by bank, market by market, and compliance workflow by compliance workflow, our customers can access those capabilities through one platform. At the settlement layer, we have already integrated key network and infrastructure, including Circle Payments Network, Visa Direct, and a range of local and cross-border payment rails. They allow us to help customers convert stablecoin into fiat more efficiently and move funds into accounts and payment endpoints across multiple markets. Today, our fiat payout and settlement capabilities support major markets across the U.S., Europe, the U.K., Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

With global US dollar wire capabilities, our reach can extend to more than 180 countries subject to local regulatory, partner, customer, and compliance requirement. The second layer of the platform is payment gateway. Today, the foundation of the layer is PayNow. It is our most mature payment gateway product and currently our most direct contributor to revenue. Our strategy is not to replicate PayNow country by country. Our strategy is to use Harbor to connect into existing payment gateways, processors, and local payment capabilities around the world, allowing those fiat-based entry point to expand into stablecoin on-ramp and global payout functionality. In other words, PayNow is our current entry point. Harbor is the platform that enable us to scale the capability globally. The third layer is OwlPay Wallet Pro. Our Wallet Pro serve as the interface for moving value into, through, and out of the system.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

It supports conversion, storage, and transfer between fiat and stablecoin. We currently support USDC settlement across multiple blockchains, including Stellar, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimism, and Arbitrum. We also use Circle CCTP to improve efficiency and control in cross-chain USDC transfers, and we continue to evaluate additional chain integrations. Our multi-chain strategy is deliberate. It is driven by enterprise use cases, liquidity, compliance, and practical utility, not expansion for its own sake. The fourth layer is OutPay Cash. This is our mobile-first remittance application for end users built on Visa Direct. If OwlPay Harbor payment gateway and Wallet Pro solve the infrastructure and enterprise side of the equation, OutPay Cash brings those capabilities directly to the user. This is also where our work with Visa become especially important because it help connect stablecoin to mainstream payment experience in ways they are visible and relevant to everyday users.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

If I step back and summarize the platform, Harbor is the settlement infrastructure. Payment gateway is the global payment entry layer. Wallet Pro is the fund access and multi-chain interface, and OutPay Cash is the end user application layer. As we enter 2026, we also begin to see something very important. This platform is no longer just built. It is beginning to gain real commercial tractions. Six months ago, we were talking primarily about pipelines. Today, we are talking about signed customers, customer in onboarding, and a pipeline that's moving toward actual transaction flow. The customer base fall into several categories. First, Web3 and digital asset platform, including enterprise wallet, trading, and infrastructure customers. Second, cross-border remittance, fintech, and payment platforms. Third, enterprise treasury and B2B settlement use cases. Fourth, real-world nonprofit and specialized use cases.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

These customer and use cases span North America, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. That matters because it shows demand for OwlPay Harbor is not isolated to one geography or one vertical. We are seeing the early formation of global payment corridors across regions and industry. Among the example we can publicly reference today are Gravel through Oval Technologies, DexPay, and Hope for Haiti. This relationship reflect a range of use cases from blockchain and fintech applications to cross-border payment workflow to a real-world payment deployment. More importantly, they give us confidence that OwlPay Harbor is being built for real customers, real use cases, and real transaction opportunities, and even that does not capture this full opportunity ahead.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

As of March 31st, 2026, based on our signed customers, customer in onboarding, and active pipeline at that date, we conservatively estimate the corresponding annualized transaction volume to be around $5 billion. This reflect a first quarter 2026 snapshot only and should not be interpreted as full year 2026 assumption, as we expect additional customers signing and onboarding actively over the remaining three quarters of the year. To be clear, this is not revenue guidance, but it does indicate that early in 2026, our platform is already beginning to serve global payment demand at a meaningful scale. Since that March 31st snapshot, our commercial momentum has continued.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

As of April 2026, OwlPay Harbor has 29 contracted enterprise client and an additional seven in onboarding, with aggregate annual payment volume across these clients on existing business growing from over $5 billion to over $6 billion. What is especially encouraging is the diverse of the client base by industry, blockchain and Web3 platform representing approximately 36%, cross-border payment client approximately 30%, financial institution approximately 16%, and digital wallet approximately 9%. This tell us the demand is not concentrated in one place. We are seeing early formation of global payment corridors across diverse regions and industries. Say simply, 2025 was the build year. 2026 is the year commercialization begins. Before we move on, I want to briefly reiterate how we think about the long-term opportunities. As discussed on our last earning call, our internal strategy framework remains unchanged.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

We continue to see a path toward approximately $500 million in annual revenue from our stablecoin infrastructure business by 2030 based on the infrastructure we have already built and the enterprise use cases we are actually supporting today. To be clear, this is not financial guidance or a forecast, but a directional framework reflecting how transaction value can scale across our platform as adoption of settlement infrastructure accelerate globally. I also want to be clear about how we think about monetization because it is not a single take rate model. For core enterprise settlement flows, we use a conservative framework of approximately 25-35 basis point. Visa Direct enable payout, remittance, and wallet-to-card use cases are designed to carry meaningful higher fee economies and margin compared to our core settlement flows, depending on corridor, partner structure, and transaction type.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

I also want to highlight an emerging structure trend that we believe is highly relevant to our platform. We are entering an era where transactions are increasingly shifting from user-initiated to AI-initiated. Events in AI are enabling agent to not only guide discovery, but also execute transaction directly, accessing approved wallet, selecting asset, and completing payment autonomously. Protocols like ERC-x402 are being developed to support the shift, enable AI-driven checkout experience that significantly reduce friction and accelerate transaction completion. We believe this represent a meaningful evolution in global commerce. As these AI-enabled flows develop, they require fast, programmable, and borderless settlement infrastructure. At the same time, we believe AI agent will become a new class of user within the financial system.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

Over time, many may require their own wallet, and we see potential for our Visa Direct-enabled infrastructure to support a future where AI agent can be linked to existing debit credentials to automate transaction in a compliant and user-authorized manner. OwlPay is already positioned to support this transaction through our stablecoin-backed checkout and multi-rail settlement capabilities. In parallel, we have also broadly integrated AI into our internal operations and product development process. We see AI as more than a productivity tool. We believe it will become a key driver of operating leverage, allowing us to scale engineering and operation with limited incremental headcount. As a result, we do not currently expect significant workforce expansion. We believe it will become a core driver of product capability, customer experience, and operating leverage.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

Going forward, we plan to continue embedding AI across the organization, including customer onboarding, risk and compliance support, operation, internal knowledge system, and the product experience. We are also continuing to evolve the organization toward a leaner and more efficient operating model with AI collaboration as a core enabler that should improve operating leverage, increase development speed, and enhance productivity across teams. Before I turn into the financial, I want to highlight a few structural indicators that we believe are important. In 2025, our revenue mix continued to shift toward payment and higher-margin software service. Payment service represented 56% of total revenue. Within that, online system revenue growth 25.3% year-over-year. Hospitality-related software service growth 19.3%. We believe this trend reflect more than steady execution in our Taiwan business. They also point to improving revenue quality and stronger platform economies.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

I also want to address one important point on reporting earnings. Our reporting loss for 2025 was significantly affected by share-based compensation expenses. Under IFRS, these expenses must be recognized in the income statement, but they are non-cash in nature. They affect reporting result, but they do not represent an equivalent cash outflow. When evaluating our 2025 performance, we believe it is important to look not only at statutory earnings, but also at our operating cash profile, our improving revenue mix, and the platform foundation we have built for future growth. Let me close with this. 2025 was a pivotal year for OwlTing. It was the year we completed our Nasdaq listing. It was the year we further improved the quality of our revenue base. Most importantly, it was the year we completed the core infrastructure for our future stablecoin-enabled cross-border settlement business.

Darren Wang
Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing

At the highest level, the story is very straightforward. In 2025, we build the infrastructure. In 2026, we begin to scale commercialization. We are not building another short-cycle fintech app. We are building a compliant-first settlement infrastructure for the future of cross-border money movement. We believe our team should not be evaluated only by its 2025 reporting revenue, but by the infrastructure completed in 2025 and the enterprise transaction demand that is beginning to fall around the infrastructure in 2026. To all of the shareholders who have supported us through the building phase, thank you again. We appreciate your trust, your patience, and your support. With that, I will turn the call over our CFO, Winnie, to walk through the financial and operating result.

Winnie Lin
CFO at OwlTing

Thank you, Darren. Before working through the full year numbers, I want to frame where 2025 sits in our multi-year trajectory and what the financials actually tell us about where this business is headed. First, completing what we set out to do. When we spoke to you at our first half earnings call, I described 2025 as a deliberate investment year in which we intentionally prioritize system completion over short-term revenue acceleration. As Darren mentioned earlier, we delivered on that commitment. We complete our Nasdaq delisting, launched our OutPay Cash with Visa, integrated the Circle Payments Network, expanded our U.S. regulatory coverage to 40 states as of year-end, and built out our OwlPay Harbor as an enterprise-grade settlement API. Just after year-end, we added Nevada, bringing us to 41 states. Second, understanding what the 2025 income statement is reflecting.

Winnie Lin
CFO at OwlTing

Our reported net loss of $31.9 million will be the first number investors see. I want to be direct about what's behind it. Approximately $16.8 million is non-cash share-based compensation from RSUs and RSAs granted under our shared incentive plan. Another $6.9 million is non-recurring legal, professional, advisory, and marketing expenses related to our Nasdaq listing. Together, these two items account for $23.7 million. Strip those out, the underlying loss was approximately $8.2 million, an improvement from $10.3 million in 2024. This is an important distinction. The headline loss reflects the accounting cost of going public and compensating our team, not a weakening in our underlying business economics. Third, the operating leverage thesis is now becoming real.

Winnie Lin
CFO at OwlTing

In the first half call, I told about the potential for operating leverage once volume moves onto our infrastructure. We are now beginning to see early proof of this. As Darren mentioned, as of April 2026, we had 29 contract enterprise clients and an additional seven in onboarding, representing over $6 billion in estimated annual payment volume based on their existing business prior to integration with our platform. From a financial perspective, what matters is not only the size of this potential volume, but also the structure of the model. For core enterprise settlement flows, we typically earn fees in the range of 25-35 basis points per service component. As a single transaction may involve multiple services, the overall transaction economics reflect a combination of these components. Our blended take rate remained consistent, while our cost structure is largely fixed across compliance, licensing, engineering, and infrastructure.

Winnie Lin
CFO at OwlTing

As volume scales onto our platform, we expect incremental economies to become increasingly favorable, with certain Visa Direct-enabled and card-linked use cases designed to carry higher margins. While these volumes are not revenue guidance and remain subject to activation, compliance review, and ramp up, they are important indicators of the commercial momentum we are seeing. Lastly, our balance sheet is in good shape to support the activation phase. We ended the year with $9.4 million in cash and restricted cash, up from $8.7 million a year ago. Subsequent to year-end, we secured a $10 million senior secure convertible note from Lind Global Asset Management, with access to up to $15 million in total funding subject to mutual consent. This strengthens our liquidity position as we execute on our 2026 priorities. Now, turning to the full year 2025 result.

Winnie Lin
CFO at OwlTing

All figures are in US dollars, and all comparisons are year-over-year unless otherwise stated. Before I go through the numbers, one thing to highlight. In 2025, we recognized share-based compensation, or SBC, across our cost line. This represent the non-cash cost of compensating our team in equity, primarily through Restricted Stock Units and Restricted Stock Awards under our share incentive plan, along with other form of share-based compensation. We have no SBC in 2024, which means it distorts almost every year-over-year comparison. The adjustments we are presenting relate specially to SBC associate with RSUs and RSAs, while other components of share-based compensation, if any, are not adjusted. As I go through each line, I will provide both the reported numbers and adjusted figures, which exclude RSU and RSA related SBC, so you can better understand the underlying performance of the business.

Winnie Lin
CFO at OwlTing

SBC will continue going forward as grants vest, and the amount will depends on future grant activity under our share incentive plan. With that context in mind, let me walk through the numbers. Our total revenue was $7.9 million, up about 4% from last year. Modest growth, and that was intentional. We were building, not harvesting. Payment service was the bright spot, up nearly 10% and now more than half of our total revenue. This came entirely from our traditional payment gateway business through fiat. Our newer products, OwlPay, Wallet Pro, OutPay Cash, were effectively pre-revenue in 2025. Those are the 2026 story. Our nets continue to grow nicely. Subscribers up 9.5% to over 2,800, and ARR up over 11% to about $1 million. Cost of revenue was up about 17%, outpacing revenue growth.

Winnie Lin
CFO at OwlTing

Most of that increase was SBC, something we didn't have last year. Strip that out, costs were up less than 3%. Reported gross margin looked like it fell off a cliff from 13% down to under 3%, but that's almost entirely the SBC effect. On an adjusted basis, margin actually improved slightly, driven by better revenue mix as our net subscriptions grows as a share of total revenue. Total operating expense was $32.4 million, up from $9.9 million. That number needs context. Marketing and sales reported up significantly, but excluding SBC, we actually spent less than 2024. That reflects our adoption of AI-assisted tools for content creation and marketing production, which reduce our reliance on third-party service providers. That's the efficiency we want. G&A, this is the big one. $21.7 million, up from $5.2 million.

Winnie Lin
CFO at OwlTing

Two things explain almost all of it. 10 million of SBC and about $6.9 million in listing-related fees. Exclude both, and the recurring G&A base was around $4.8 million, actually slightly lower than 2024. This listing-related costs will not recur at this level going forward. R&D, the increase is mostly SBC. Excluding SBC, R&D was up about 7% with the same engineering team size as 2024. This investment support the continued development of our payment infrastructure and compliance capabilities. To put it simply, strip out the SBC and the listing cost, and the underlying business was running at roughly the same cost base as 2024. That's the framework I would like investor to carry when evaluating our expense trajectory going forward. Net loss was $31.9 million, but again, $23.7 million of that was SBC and listing cost.

Winnie Lin
CFO at OwlTing

Strip those out and the underlying loss was approximately $8.2 million, better than $10.3 million in 2024. Operating outflows were $11.5 million, up from $9.1 million, driven by listing-related payments. Financing brought in $30.6 million, primarily from $16.6 million in equity raises, partially offset by preferred share redemption and lease payment. We ended the year with $9.4 million in cash, up from $8.7 million. That bring us to where we stand today and more importance, where we are headed. Let me close with the framework I would like investor to use when thinking about where we are. 2025 was the build year.

Winnie Lin
CFO at OwlTing

We listed on Nasdaq, assembled a full OwlPay products suite, built a regulatory footprint across the U.S., Poland, Japan and absorbed a one-time cost that come with taking a company public. The reported financial reflects those investment. 2026 is the commercialization year. As Darren was through, enterprise clients are now onboarding onto OwlPay Harbor. OutPay Cash is live. Visa Direct is integrated. From a financial perspective, what matter is that the non-recurring listing costs are away. SBC will continue as part of our ongoing cost structure, and the overall expense base becomes a cleaner reflection of our underlying operations. Huoz Lab is a business with a largely fixed cost base, expanding transaction-based revenue, and a clear pace to operating leverage. The structural thesis hasn't changed. We continue to believe OwlTing should be evaluated as settlement infrastructure provider.

Winnie Lin
CFO at OwlTing

We own the compliance license, the settlement technology, and the multi-rail architecture required to move money across border. As volume scales across our infrastructure, we expect the unit economics to compound in our favor. With that, I will turn it back to Henry for closing.

Henry Fan
Investor Relation Director at OwlTing

Thank you, Darren and Winnie. Before we conclude, I would like to extend our appreciation to our shareholders, partners, and customers for your continued trust and support. I also want to recognize the dedication of our global OwlTing team, whose effort over the past year have been instrumental in advancing the company through a pivotal stage of development. As we move forward, our core mission remain unchanged. We are focusing on leveraging blockchain technology to build more transparent and reliable system for data and value transfer while enabling more efficient global payment flows for business and consumers. We believe the progress made in 2025 has established a strong fundamental for the next phase of our growth as we transition from infrastructure build to broader market activation. On behalf of everyone at OwlTing, thank you again for your time and support.

Henry Fan
Investor Relation Director at OwlTing

We look forward to continue the conversation in the months ahead. Thank you and goodbye.

Analysts
    • Darren Wang
      Founder, Chairman, and CEO at OwlTing
    • Henry Fan
      Investor Relation Director at OwlTing
    • Winnie Lin
      CFO at OwlTing
Powered by Quartr