Financials

Figures converted from Kazakhstani tenge (KZT) at historical FX rates — see data/company.json.fx_rates and the period-end fx_rate_usd baked into each financial JSON. Ratios, margins, and multiples are unitless and unchanged.

Financials — What the Numbers Say

Kaspi grew from a small Kazakh bank with a loss in 2015 into a $7.8 billion super-app — payments, marketplace and consumer fintech on one platform — in ten years. Through FY2024 it produced one of the highest-quality income statements in emerging-market financials: 88% gross margin, 75% operating margin, 79% ROE, almost no net debt, and ~$2.3B of free cash flow. FY2025 is the inflection. The Hepsiburada acquisition (consolidated from Q1 2025) added a low-margin Turkish e-commerce business that mechanically diluted every margin and return on the page: gross margin fell to 70%, operating margin to 55%, ROE to 51%, FCF conversion to 46%. Current multiples — P/E 7.1x, EV/EBITDA 3.6x, P/B 3.0x — sit well below peers, but the franchise is no longer pure-play fintech. Watch for whether group operating margin stabilises above 55% in FY2026, or whether Turkey permanently rebases the economics.

Financials in One Page

How to read these: Operating margin is what's left after costs of running the business but before tax and interest — Kaspi at 55% is still elite, but down sharply from 75% pre-Hepsiburada. Free Cash Flow (FCF) is operating cash flow minus capital expenditure — the cash truly available to shareholders. Net Debt / EBITDA tells you how many years of cash earnings the company needs to repay debt; below 1.0x is conservative. P/E and EV/EBITDA are valuation multiples — what you pay per dollar of earnings; the lower the cheaper relative to the same company over time.

Revenue, Margins, and Earnings Power

Kaspi reports as a single super-app, but the income statement is a banking-and-marketplace hybrid: revenue is the sum of merchant commissions, payment fees, interest income on consumer loans, and now Hepsiburada GMV-based revenue. Operating income equals reported EBITDA in this dataset — Kaspi runs almost no traditional depreciation outside the new Turkish e-commerce assets.

Eleven-year revenue CAGR is ~43% in USD (FX drag explains the lower USD-CAGR vs the native-currency CAGR of ~56%), but the curve has two regimes. From FY2017–FY2024 (the pure super-app years) revenue compounded at ~28% in USD with operating income growing slightly faster — classic operating leverage. FY2025's +61% revenue jump is acquisition, not organic: about $2.3 billion of the $2.9B year-on-year revenue add comes from Hepsiburada's consolidated take-rate revenue, which carries much thinner margins than legacy Kaspi.

The picture is unmistakable: a vertical climb from FY2017–FY2020 as fintech scale arrived, a five-year plateau at ~78% operating margin (FY2020–FY2024), then a one-step reset to 55% in FY2025. Net margin compresses harder (44% → 26%) because Hepsiburada's losses and lower take-rate revenue pull tax-adjusted profitability down further.

The quarterly view confirms the FY2025 drop is structural, not cyclical: legacy Kaspi delivered 74–76% operating margin every quarter of FY2024, the post-deal quarters cluster tightly at 54–60%, and Q1 2026 sits at 54.6%. Underwriting on Kaspi today means underwriting a 55%-margin business, not the 75%-margin business sell-side notes describe.

Cash Flow and Earnings Quality

Free Cash Flow is the cash a business generates after running operations and after the capital it spends to maintain and grow assets. It is the most honest measure of a company's earnings power because it cannot be flattered by accounting choices.

Three observations matter here. First, in FY2018 and FY2021 operating cash flow is unusually weak — both years are working-capital absorptions tied to consumer-loan book growth, a normal feature of a lender that books interest income immediately but funds the loans on its own balance sheet. Second, FY2022 and FY2023 produced cash conversion above 100% of net income, peak quality. Third, FY2024 and FY2025 broke that pattern decisively: operating cash flow fell from $2.4B to $1.1B (FY2024) and only partially recovered to $1.3B (FY2025), even as net income was flat-to-up.

FCF conversion to net income is now ~46%, less than half its FY2022–FY2023 levels. Three forces drive this drop:

• Working-capital expansion in the loan book. Kaspi's consumer-finance receivables grow with revenue. Every dollar of new credit issued shows up as a non-cash addition to assets and a reduction in operating cash flow until the loan amortizes. The bigger the lending book, the larger the cash sink.
• Capex jumped fourfold to $350M in FY2025 (vs $182M FY2024 and ~$110M FY2022–FY2023), reflecting Hepsiburada logistics infrastructure and Turkey-related investment.
• Hepsiburada is cash-consuming inside Kaspi. Its FY2025 standalone operating income is roughly negative — that flows directly into consolidated OCF before the cash-conversion ratio.

The bigger cash-flow story in FY2025 is not operations — it is allocation. $1.06 billion went out for the Hepsiburada acquisition, $626 million came in from new debt issuance ($600M Eurobond, oversubscribed, BBB- investment-grade rating from Fitch), and dividends went to zero after $1.23B paid out in each of the prior two years. Management redirected the entire dividend pool toward the deal.

Balance Sheet and Financial Resilience

Kaspi looks like a fast-growing tech company on the income statement and a mid-sized bank on the balance sheet. Total assets of $21.3 billion at FY2025 are mostly consumer loans and securities, funded by customer deposits — not equity or long-term debt.

Equity has compounded at ~46% over five years in USD — Kaspi retains more capital than it pays out even with the highest payout ratio among EM fintechs (before FY2025). Long-term debt was just $263M entering FY2025; the $600M Eurobond pushes it to $669M, still equivalent to only about 13% of equity.

This is one of the most resilient balance sheets among EM consumer lenders. Net Debt / EBITDA of 0.16x means Kaspi could repay every dollar of borrowed money out of two months of operating profit. Interest coverage (EBITDA / interest expense) is 2.5x, which understates the picture because most of Kaspi's "interest expense" is actually deposit-funding cost — the same cost-of-revenue line that already sits above gross profit.

Funding mix matters more than debt for a bank-like business. Kaspi's $16.3B of liabilities are dominated by customer deposit accounts, the stickiest, cheapest form of funding available. Q1 2026 disclosures cite customer accounts of $14.9B against loans of $14.9B — a 100% loan-to-deposit ratio, which means Kaspi does not need wholesale debt to grow its loan book. That is the single most important balance-sheet fact about the company.

Returns, Reinvestment, and Capital Allocation

Three metrics measure whether management creates value on the capital they deploy. ROE is net income divided by shareholders' equity — the return earned for the owner. ROIC is the after-tax operating profit divided by the capital invested in the business — the return the business generates regardless of how it is financed. ROA is net income over total assets — the right measure for banks because it strips out leverage and shows the productivity of the asset book.

ROE was 79–97% for five consecutive years, an unusually narrow range for any business — Kaspi was a textbook compounder. The FY2025 step-down to 51% is again the Hepsiburada effect: the deal nearly doubled the equity base via the deconsolidation accounting and added a loss-making subsidiary. ROA, the cleaner gauge of operating productivity, only fell from 21% to 18.5% — most of the asset book is still earning at pre-deal rates.

The five-year capital-allocation story splits cleanly into two eras:

• FY2020–FY2024 — return cash. Roughly $4.6 billion paid out as dividends, only minor buybacks, capex held at 3–4% of revenue. The dividend yield ran 6–8%. Management treated Kaspi as a mature compounder.
• FY2025 — redirect cash. Dividends to zero, capex up 4x, $1.06 billion out for Hepsiburada. New debt funded much of it. This is the largest single capital-allocation swing in Kaspi's history as a public company.

Share count is essentially flat at ~190 million — Kaspi has not used equity to finance growth even during the IPO and the Hepsiburada deal. EPS compounded at 27% in USD over five years; book value per share at 39%. The buybacks (~$42M in FY2025) are tactical, not structural — well below the prior dividend payout pool. Q1 2026 management reinstated an ~$1.74 dividend per share, signaling a return to the FY2020–FY2024 capital-return template.

Segment and Unit Economics

The dataset Dan staged does not include a separate segment file. Kaspi discloses three reporting segments — Payments, Marketplace, Fintech — in its 20-F filings and quarterly transcripts, and from FY2025 also a Turkey segment via Hepsiburada. Based on those filings:

• Payments (merchant acquiring, P2P transfers, government payments) — historically ~25% of revenue but the highest-take-rate, lowest-credit-risk segment. The flywheel of the super-app.
• Marketplace (1P and 3P e-commerce, advertising) — ~20% of pre-Hepsiburada revenue, growing fastest, mid-30s take rate against GMV.
• Fintech / Consumer Finance (BNPL, point-of-sale credit, deposit products) — ~55% of revenue, where the interest-income and credit-loss dynamics sit. Most exposed to Kazakhstan's macro cycle and to Q1 2026's regulator-imposed BNPL repricing.
• Turkey / Hepsiburada — newly consolidated. At a standalone level, Hepsiburada generated $1.97B revenue, a slight operating loss, and a positive 10% FCF margin in FY2025. Inside Kaspi, this segment is the dilution driver.

The right way to read FY2025 results is therefore legacy Kaspi growing low-to-mid teens organically (Payments and Marketplace continuing their compound trajectory, Fintech facing BNPL repricing) plus a low-margin Turkish overlay that quadruples the apparent revenue line.

Valuation and Market Expectations

Three valuation lenses tell the same story: Kaspi trades on absolute multiples normally reserved for cyclical commodity producers, not 55%-margin growth franchises.

In the two years of public-market history we have, every multiple has compressed. P/E from 9.1x to 7.1x, EV/EBITDA from 5.1x to 3.6x, P/B from 6.2x to 3.0x. The simplest read: the market is pricing in either (a) the Hepsiburada drag becoming permanent, or (b) Kazakhstan country-risk (currency, geopolitics, regulator action) being structurally mis-modelled by sell-side bulls, or (c) both.

For comparison: the consensus narrative — articulated in Goldman's late-2025 Buy upgrade and the Kaspi.kz Q1 2026 earnings call — is that legacy Kaspi still earns 75%+ operating margins and that the consolidated number reflects accounting consolidation of a turnaround target. If Hepsiburada normalizes by FY2027, peer-group fintech levels (P/E 15–20x) become reference points. Bears, including the JP Morgan analyst who downgraded to Neutral in 2025, treat 55% as the new run-rate and view the current multiple as fair compensation for execution and country risk.

The scenario range above is built bottom-up: bear case extrapolates FY2025 margin to FY2026 and holds the current multiple; base case assumes Hepsiburada loss narrows by half and the multiple expands one turn toward peers; bull case assumes Hepsiburada breaks even, BNPL repricing rolls through, and the multiple moves toward MELI/NU levels (P/E 14–18x).

Peer Financial Comparison

The peer set Dan validated — HEPS (now owned by Kaspi), MELI, NU, PAGS, SE — is the right one. Kaspi's standout numbers in this group are ROE, operating margin (even post-deal), and valuation discount.

The picture is the punchline of the financial analysis: Kaspi has the highest ROE in the group, near-zero net debt, and the second-lowest P/E. PagSeguro is the only peer trading cheaper, but PagSeguro earns a 14.5% ROE on 3.0x leverage with single-digit revenue growth — the comparison flatters Kaspi. MELI and SE trade at 49–52x earnings on ROEs roughly two-thirds of Kaspi's. The market is pricing Kaspi as a structurally inferior business, not just a country-risk discount. The bull case is that the market is wrong about the structural component.

What to Watch in the Financials

What the financials confirm: Kaspi is one of the most profitable, best-capitalized, and lowest-leverage businesses in EM consumer fintech. Pre-deal returns on capital are exceptional, the deposit-funded balance sheet is self-financing, and capital allocation through FY2024 was disciplined.

What the financials contradict: the simple "high-quality compounder" thesis. The FY2025 income statement is not the same business. Operating margin, ROE, FCF conversion, and dividend payout all reset down in one year, and capex jumped 4x. Whether this is a one-year integration cost or a permanent rebase will determine whether the multiple stays at 7x or expands toward peer levels.

The first financial metric to watch is group operating margin in Q2 FY2026. A reading above 58% would be consistent with Hepsiburada integrating on plan; a reading at or below 52% would support the bear thesis that Kaspi is structurally a 50%-margin business at the current ~7x multiple.