Financials

Financials — What the Numbers Say

Figures converted from Kazakhstani tenge (₸) at historical FX rates — see data/company.json.fx_rates and the period-end rates baked into `data/financials/.json`. Ratios, margins, and multiples are unitless and unchanged.*

Kaspi.kz reports in Kazakhstani tenge; this view restates every line in US dollars at the period-end rate to which it applies, so a 2018 figure converts at the 2018 rate, not today's. The Hepsiburada (Türkiye) consolidation that began in January 2025 is the single most important context for reading the FY2025 statements: it roughly doubled revenue, mechanically halved consolidated margins, and absorbed a significant share of cash and balance-sheet capacity. Read every line below with that pivot in mind.

1. Financials in One Page

Kaspi is a Kazakhstan-built super-app that converts payments, marketplace, and fintech traffic into one of the world's most profitable consumer-finance franchises. From FY2019 to FY2024 revenue compounded at roughly 32% per year in USD terms (38% in tenge — the gap reflects KZT depreciation) while operating margin held in a 75–79% band — a profile only a handful of listed businesses anywhere can match. In January 2025 the company consolidated Hepsiburada (a low-margin Turkish marketplace, now ~85% owned), so FY2025 reported revenue jumped 45% in USD to $7.8B but consolidated operating margin fell to 55% and net income dipped slightly to $2.07B. The core Kazakhstan business kept compounding — Kazakhstan-only net income grew 13–18% for the year — but the consolidated optics are now mixed. The balance sheet remains exceptionally strong (long-term debt only $693M against $5.18B of equity), free-cash-flow conversion has compressed from 1.6x net income to roughly 0.46x as Türkiye consumes working capital and capex, and the equity trades at ~8.6x trailing earnings — a deep discount versus history and global fintech peers. The single financial metric that matters most right now is Kazakhstan-only underlying net income growth, because consolidated GAAP optics now bury the actual unit economics.

Definitions used throughout: Operating margin = operating income ÷ revenue. Free cash flow (FCF) = operating cash flow minus capex; it is the cash the business generates after running and reinvesting in itself. ROE = net income ÷ average equity; how productively shareholder capital is being put to work. Net debt / EBITDA = (debt minus cash) ÷ EBITDA; how many years of cash earnings would be needed to repay net debt. P/E = price per share ÷ earnings per share; how many years of current earnings the market is paying for.

2. Revenue, Margins, and Earnings Power

Revenue scaled from $217M in FY2015 to $7,791M in FY2025 — a ~43% ten-year USD CAGR. The trajectory has two regimes. From FY2016 through FY2024, growth was organic, high-margin, and almost monotonic — Kazakhstan adoption of payments, BNPL, and the marketplace flywheel. In FY2025, the Hepsiburada acquisition shifted the company from a pure-play Kazakh super-app to a two-country business with a low-margin 1P/3P retail operation bolted on, which is the single largest reason consolidated growth was 45% in USD while net income growth was -6%.

The FY2017 operating-margin dip (to 19%) reflects a credit-cost spike in the legacy bank book before the model migrated decisively toward fee-based payments and marketplace revenue. From FY2019 onward, margin structure stabilised in a remarkable 75–79% operating band — a number more typical of asset-light software platforms than of consumer-credit issuers — driven by very low cost of revenue (gross margin 87–92%) and operating leverage on a fixed cost base shared across three platforms.

The FY2025 break is the single most important visual in this tab. Gross margin dropped from 87% to 70%, operating margin from 75% to 55%, net margin from 41% to 26%. This is not a structural deterioration of the Kazakhstan business — Kazakhstan-only net income still grew 13–18%, per management on the Q4 2025 call — it is the mechanical effect of consolidating a 1P retail marketplace with very different unit economics. Reading the numbers without this context will misprice the franchise.

The quarterly sequence makes the regime change unmistakable. Q4 2024 operating margin: 75%. Q1 2025 (first quarter consolidating Hepsiburada): 60%. By Q1 2026 it has restabilised around 55% — a new, lower, but consistent baseline. Net income has been essentially flat for six consecutive quarters in absolute USD terms, which is the headline that has compressed the multiple even as the business is still growing.

3. Cash Flow and Earnings Quality

Free cash flow is the cash the business generates after running operations and after the capital it spends to maintain and grow its asset base. A healthy quality test is whether FCF tracks net income — if FCF chronically lags, accounting earnings are not converting to cash, and growth is being funded by something other than the business itself.

Two things are happening in this chart. First, FCF/NI swings violently year-to-year because a large share of Kaspi's operating cash flow is determined by the lending book — when consumer loan growth is heavy (FY2021), operating cash flow temporarily sinks because the bank is funding new loans; when growth slows (FY2020, FY2022, FY2023), OCF surges. This is normal for a balance-sheet lender embedded in a consumer-finance super-app and is not a quality flag in itself. Second, the structural step-down from ~1.3x in FY2022–23 to ~0.46x in FY2024–25 reflects three real distortions worth naming explicitly.

Capex roughly doubled in each of FY2024 and FY2025 as Kaspi built out logistics for marketplace and absorbed Hepsiburada's fixed assets (PPE grew from $333M to $1,420M over two years on a USD basis, but the period-end FX swings amplify the optics). Dividends — historically the dominant use of cash — were suspended in FY2025 to fund the Hepsiburada acquisition ($1,065M cash outlay), partially financed with new debt issuance ($628M). The FY2025 dividend pause and the acquisition together are the cleanest explanation for the FCF/NI step-down. None of this is forensic — it is a deliberate capital-allocation choice that should reverse as Türkiye integration normalises.

4. Balance Sheet and Financial Resilience

Kaspi is unusual: the consumer-finance / payments engine sits inside a regulated bank entity, so the balance sheet looks more like a small bank's than a software company's. Total assets reached $22.05B at FY2025 year-end (up from $16.00B a year earlier — the jump is mostly Hepsiburada consolidation). Long-term debt is only $693M against $5.18B of shareholders' equity. Net debt / EBITDA stands at 0.16x — comfortable by any standard, and exceptional for a consumer lender.

For a balance-sheet lender, the more important resilience numbers are interest coverage and the assets-to-equity ratio (a banking leverage proxy). EBIT/interest expense is 2.5x in FY2025 — adequate but down from 3.6x in FY2022 as funding costs rose. Assets-to-equity is now 4.26x, which is well within bank prudential norms and substantially below where universal banks operate (10–15x). This is a balance sheet with significant unused capacity, which matters for the acquisitions optionality the company has clearly chosen to use.

The single new line worth a careful read is goodwill: $33M → $890M. That ~$860M step-up is the price Kaspi paid above book value for Hepsiburada control. Goodwill is now ~4% of total assets, ~17% of equity — material but not dangerous. The forensic question for the next four to eight quarters is whether Hepsiburada's underlying profitability supports that goodwill or whether an impairment will become unavoidable. The Turkish lira's instability and Hepsiburada's still-negative reported margins (combined ratio under cost-of-capital) make this the single largest balance-sheet risk to track.

5. Returns, Reinvestment, and Capital Allocation

Returns on capital have been extraordinary for a decade. ROIC sat at 18–21% from FY2020 to FY2024 — high enough to suggest a wide moat in payments and consumer credit inside Kazakhstan. ROE peaked near 97% in FY2021 (a function of high payouts keeping equity small) and has settled at 51% in FY2025 as the Hepsiburada deal expanded the equity base and diluted earnings power.

Capital allocation has historically been dividend-heavy. Total dividends paid in FY2019–FY2024 cumulated to roughly $4.5B in USD — a meaningful fraction of cumulative earnings. The pattern is unmistakable: Kazakhstan generates more cash than the business can reinvest at attractive returns inside Kazakhstan, so management returns it. FY2025 broke that pattern decisively.

The FY2025 chart is a single tall red bar — the Hepsiburada acquisition ($1.07B) replaced the dividend ($1.37B in FY2024 → zero) as the dominant capital use. Buybacks have been a rounding error. Share count has barely moved (191.8M in FY2020, 191.9M in FY2025), so there is no dilution issue, but there is also no significant per-share leverage from buybacks. Book value per share has compounded from ~$4.90 in FY2020 to ~$24.85 in FY2025 — a ~38% USD CAGR — which is the cleanest measure of long-term per-share value creation. The judgment investors must make: did management compound shareholder value by buying Hepsiburada, or did they trade certain dividends for an uncertain growth call option? The answer will be visible in returns on incremental capital over the next three to five years.

6. Segment and Unit Economics

Detailed segment financial breakdowns are not available in the structured data, but Kaspi reports three operating platforms: Payments (TPV-driven fees), Marketplace (GMV-driven take rates plus advertising and delivery), and Fintech (consumer credit + savings). Management commentary from the most recent earnings calls gives the working picture below.

The economics are unambiguous: Kazakhstan Marketplace is the highest-quality marginal dollar in the business right now — the Q1 2026 acceleration to +41% GMV and +44% purchase frequency, alongside take-rate expansion via advertising and delivery, is the most attractive growth vector. Kazakhstan Payments is the cash machine but is showing take-rate compression from competitive pressure and from the launch costs of Kaspi Alakan ("Pay by Palm") biometric checkout. Türkiye is the strategic call — it lives or dies on whether Kaspi can lift Hepsiburada's unit economics toward Kazakhstan-like margins over five to ten years. Without segment-level GAAP financials it is not possible to put precise margins on each, but management's directional language is consistent across the last four calls.

7. Valuation and Market Expectations

Where the market prices Kaspi today versus its history, peers, and own financial quality is the single most consequential financial judgment on this page. The equity trades on NASDAQ as an ADR; latest close was $92.85 on 26-May-2026, implying a market cap of roughly $17.8B. Enterprise value sits a touch below market cap because cash exceeds long-term debt.

Three things explain the discount: country (Kazakhstan: small EM, oil-linked, recent regulatory volatility around BNPL), the Hepsiburada-induced margin compression that made FY2025 net income flat, and the FY2025 dividend pause. None of these are about deteriorating Kazakhstan unit economics; all of them are about the market temporarily losing the thread between consolidated reported numbers and underlying earnings power. The sell-side consensus seems to agree — the average 12-month price target of $126.33 (Buy consensus from six covering analysts; high $175, low $87) implies roughly 36% upside, in line with what closing half the discount-to-peer would deliver mechanically.

Bear, base, and bull are anchored on Kazakhstan-only earnings power (still 70%+ operating margin) and Türkiye trajectory. The asymmetry favours patient capital because the entry multiple already prices in significant continued disappointment — i.e. the bear case is roughly the current price.

8. Peer Financial Comparison

Kaspi sits at the intersection of three peer types: Latin American fintech super-apps (NU, MELI), Brazilian acquirers (PAGS, STNE), and the recent Türkiye marketplace acquisition target (HEPS, now consolidated). Halyk Bank (HSBK) is the in-country banking benchmark but trades and reports differently. The table below uses each peer's most recent annual figures, with all market-cap and revenue figures restated in USD.

KSPI's row tells a striking story: best-in-peer operating margin (55%, and still 70%+ on a Kazakhstan-only basis), best ROE among the group (51%) by a meaningful margin, lowest leverage (debt/equity 0.13), and the highest reported revenue growth (60% in tenge, ~45% in USD) — yet it trades on a single-digit P/E while MELI commands an EV/EBITDA in the high-twenties. The market clearly demands a Kazakhstan / EM / Türkiye-integration discount; the question is how large that discount should be. On any reasonable read of fundamentals KSPI is the highest-quality balance sheet and the highest-quality earnings stream in the table; the relative discount is in the ~40–60% range versus MELI/NU on multiples versus what underlying quality would suggest, which is the central thesis the consensus 12-month $126 target reflects.

9. What to Watch in the Financials

What the financials confirm: Kaspi's Kazakhstan business is one of the world's most profitable consumer-finance / payments platforms, with returns on capital that imply real moat, a pristine balance sheet, and a 10-year compounding record. What they contradict: the headline narrative that growth has stalled — consolidated net income was flat in FY2025 only because Hepsiburada was added to the denominator, not because the underlying franchise weakened. The metric that will most change the investment view between now and the next 20-F is Kazakhstan-only underlying net income growth — if it stays in the mid-teens, the discount almost certainly closes; if it dips below ten, the Türkiye risk dominates and the discount could persist or widen.

The first financial metric to watch is Kazakhstan-only underlying net income growth.