CAB Payments Holdings plc (CABP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, everyone, to our H1 2026 results presentation. James Hopkinson, my Group CFO, will be taking you through the numbers a bit later on. But I'll go straight into it. It's a good story to tell. So the headlines, GBP 68 million of income, which is 31% up from last year, and the EPS has also grown 157% from H1 of last year. The return on target capital is 26%, which is up 15 percentage points. The number that really matters, and it's our first interim dividend paid since IPO is 2.1p. Now this comes after a journey of more than 3 years where we have created some real value. And the dividend policy today isn't just about paying an interim dividend, but it is about saying that we will look to pay a 40% dividend of adjusted profit after tax for H1 2026 and then progressively improve upon that from 2027. And why are we doing this? Well, it's a genuine belief in the durability of our earnings. Clearly, the market has helped us this half, but really, the execution is all ours. And the importance there is that it's really repeatable. And what that does is give us real confidence in reaffirming our medium-term guidance. There are really only 3 drivers of our strategy, and it's deliberately simple. The first is about scaling more offices in more locations, more correspondent banking relationships, more central banking relationships. These are the engine rooms of our growth. And that's more of what we're really good at and doing that in more places. I move to new products. We are focusing on emerging market in Stablecoin activity. This needs to be done properly, regulated first, disciplined with known risks, fully understood and dealt with. The next area of importance in our strategic development is technology, of course. We're delivering a new core platform with AI-enabled tools as well as client efficiency for quicker response times and to create a stickier relationship. This isn't just technology for the sake of technology. It is there to help our clients and improve our efficiency and thereby improve our operational leverage. All of these three things underpin the guidance that we gave you last year. And really, this isn't about any kind of heroics. This is about executing well. And that's what this team does. Now growth is easy to claim and quality is actually much harder. And here's some evidence about both. Our clients, 601 active clients, 32 of them new in H1 of this year. Emerging market volumes up 21% and 30 central bank relationships working strongly with us. I mean, central banks don't just casually choose who they deal with. There's a lot of trust between us and those relationships with the central banks, and they are the hardest asset to build. Our network is critical to all that we do in cross-border FX. We have 450 partners in our FX network. And we have added Deutsche Bank to our clearing network alongside Citibank, NatWest, Bank of New York. We've also improved our network in South Korea, and this shows you all about the focus on our quality of network as well as the scale. There have been some really important wins in H1 that are specifically important to our IDO, International Development Organization, mandates, 2 multiyear mandates and the first syndicated trade finance facility, over $100 million that we did for a partner bank. We've also been able to originate the first corporate deals since IPO. And we have 4 locations that are live and 3 in the pipeline to develop our business in territories outside of the U.K. So our franchise is broadening and most importantly, it's deepening. So let's start looking at the investment logic here. What is this all about? Quality revenue is vital to our model as is operational leverage. And that is being delivered through the use of AI to deliver more productivity and reshaping our cost base so that we have investment that drives further operational leverage as we grow. That is the reason we are investing in our infrastructure. This then produces the compounding value growth that I've spoken about before, and that also delivers reinvestment and distribution. So it's not really that complicated. It just needs to be done well and consistently and in complex markets. And that's our real edge. That is what we do. Now I'm going to hand over to James, our CFO, who will take you through our numbers.

Thank you, Neeraj. And as Neeraj said, we're proud of this performance. And indeed, the last 12 months have delivered the highest income on a rolling 12-month basis since our IPO. For us, the even more exciting thing is the opportunity we see ahead of us. So what are the key messages from the first half? First, income progression was strong year-on-year, up 31%. And there was also some encouraging signs on a half-on-half basis. More on this later. Second, take rates remained elevated in the first half. Part of this is strategic execution and part is environmental. And again, I'll come back to this in a later slide. Third, the continued growth in revenue, combined with disciplined cost actions has translated directly into positive operational leverage and capital generation. Fourth, we are confident in the opportunity we see ahead of us, and we are, therefore, reaffirming our medium-term guidance. And finally, because of all of these factors, today, we are also announcing our new capital allocation framework designed to drive total shareholder returns, including distributions, and I'll cover this on my next slide. Our priority remains delivering profitable business growth, but we're also committed to being a capital-light business. We're able to both grow profitability and return capital to shareholders, a true total shareholder return company. So today, we set out our medium-term capital target range for CET1 of between 16.5% and 17.5%. This is a prudent level where the bottom of the range is some 2% above our regulatory minimum capital requirements. The 1% range allows for intra-period movements in capital levels. Our capital allocation framework then sets out how we'll manage capital amounts above our target capital level. First and foremost, we look for opportunities to invest back into our business to underpin future growth. That's organic reinvestment in technology, our platform, our people, and in building out new products. As part of this, we'll continue to target between 8% and 12% of revenue for annual CapEx investment. We'll also consider additional scale investments or potential acquisitions with a strict return-focused discipline. After these business investment priorities, we'll then look to return the remaining surplus of capital back to shareholders. We intend for our inaugural dividend to start a progressive dividend flow. This interim dividend of 2.1p per share will be payable in September and is equivalent to around 40% of the first half's adjusted profit after tax. From 2027 onwards, we intend to grow the full year dividend amounts annually and at a mid-single-digit rate. With a target CET1 of 16.5% to 17.5% and a current CET1 ratio of 21.7% after deducting the declared interim dividend, there remains significant capital available for return via special dividend or share buybacks. This will, of course, be subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals. So looking ahead, the group's CET1 ratio will be adjusted for the new Basel 3.1 framework, which will be implemented from the 1st of January next year. To be clear, we do not currently expect the quantum of our surplus capital will change materially between the current and the Basel 3.1 rules. Now let's turn to the numbers behind this half's delivery. Total income was up 31% year-on-year to GBP 68 million, and it grew again half-on-half, up 1% against what was already a seasonally strong second half of 2025. Adjusting for last year's episodic items, which we previously disclosed, total income was up 5% half-on-half. The contribution from our client segments was also broad-based. Our bank segment, representing about half of our income grew 13% year-on-year. Fintechs and corporates grew income 69%, including our first corporate transactions with Emirates and TotalEnergies. And our international development organization clients grew income 47% year-on-year, not including 2 recently concluded multiyear global payment mandates that we are particularly proud of. In terms of income, excluding net interest income, which our medium-term guidance is built on, this is up 48% year-on-year and broadly flat half-on-half. The year-on-year performance was driven by client acquisitions and both emerging market volume growth and take rate expansion. Net interest income was down year-on-year as previously guided, but was up slightly half-on-half. Offsetting the drag from the interest rate environment, average deposits from customers grew 6% year-on-year or 9% half-on-half with a favorable mix shift towards call accounts. And our NIM benefited from the rollout of our treasury investment strategy. Profit was also significantly up year-on-year at all levels, as you can see from the table. And all of this resulted in an adjusted EPS, that's earnings per share that more than doubled year-on-year to 5.4p per share. Our capital position remains very strong. Our CET1 ratio of 21.7% is after deducting the declared dividend and is substantially higher than our target 17.5%. And finally, I'd like to draw your attention to the new adjusted return on target capital metric, which reached 26.3% this half, up from 17.7% for the full year 2025. As we deliver the capital allocation framework, our headline returns should converge with the return on target capital levels. So turning to this next chart. Momentum has been building and our return to growth is now of better quality than in the past. We are more diversified by product with a fundamentally broader payments offering. We have a greater ability to provide correspondent banking services through multiple global clearing partners, a real driver for us to scale and broaden our ability to serve new clients and markets. We have an increased focus on growing our deposit services for clients. Our trade finance business is starting to realize its potential as an originator for others, including executing our first syndication in the period. And we have a leading emerging markets, foreign exchange platform that is increasingly powerful. We are transacting with more clients, adding 32 active clients in the half, and we have approximately 30 commercial relationships with central banks who are at the core of our refresh strategy. And by currency corridor, we're also more diversified than we were at the peak with our top 5 corridors representing 38% of income. This is higher than last year's 32% for all of 2025, and this is a result of expanding our solutions business and our concentration is broadly stable on the second half of last year and significantly lower than the peak in 2023 that was around 50%. Moreover, within these top 5 currencies, we also now have currencies that cover multiple markets such as the U.S. dollar and the renminbi. And there are no dislocated currencies in the mix, so lower risk overall. This isn't us recovering to where we once were. We're a fundamentally better, more diversified business, looking forward to the opportunity to better serve an increasingly important group of markets and clients. So now let's look at the half-on-half dynamics. As I mentioned earlier, the second half of last year was a seasonally strong performance, but we still posted headline and underlying growth of 1% and 5%, respectively. Moving to the top right of the slide, and you can see that our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 35%, demonstrating positive operational leverage. The bottom left quadrant shows that the core of our strategy, emerging market currency provision, where volumes grew year-on-year, half-on-half and also quarter-on-quarter. G10 currencies, on the other hand, fell as we reduced a number of high-volume but low-value largely G10 transacting clients. And finally, moving to the bottom right, take rates were broadly steady at around 18 to 19 basis points. I'll go into take rates in a little bit more detail now. Emerging market take rates have been increasing since the first half of 2025. As a reminder, we set out previously a broad estimate of the long-run or normalized emerging market take rates. We believe this has been broadly around 30 basis points over the last several years, depending on mix. The majority of our emerging market spread reflects our unique positioning and the capability to deliver for our clients' needs in hard-to-reach markets. On the chart here, we also show the difference between the headline emerging market take rates each period and our assessment of the underlying or BAU take rate. This difference today is made up of strategically targeted, largely fee-based central bank and client solutions activity. In past years, this gap was made up of dislocations. So to be clear, we saw no dislocations in the current period. As you can see, the underlying or BAU emerging market take rates in the first half were slightly above recent historical trends. This is reflective of the generally heightened volatility environment, the mix of currencies that are in demand and growing payments contributions to our FX business over time. Finally, we did see some reduction in emerging market take rates in the second quarter. While it's not clear this trend will continue into the second half, we're driving our business to capture growth through long-term levers such as client acquisition, product broadening and increased client-driven volumes. So turning now to costs and our growing operational leverage. Total income was up 31% year-on-year with costs up only 13%. These positive jaws drove adjusted EBITDA up 82% and the EBITDA margin up 10 percentage points year-on-year to 35%. The GBP 5 million or so increase in operational costs year-on-year is broken down as follows: almost GBP 2 million related to fixed staff costs, largely from the build-out of our international offices and the sales teams, which we previously guided. A further GBP 1.5 million of the increase is higher variable staff costs, reflecting the stronger financial performance that we're setting out today. The cost of sales increase was around GBP 1.3 million, and that largely was volume driven, and these costs are directly attributable to income growth. And finally, there was around GBP 400,000 of costs related to our growing physical footprint, technology estate as well as the impacts of inflation. Now these and other areas of cost growth have been actively managed down through the deployment of AI and process improvements. Overall, each of these steps in the chart reflects deliberate investment in future growth and disciplined cost deployment. We've delivered both half-on-half and year-on-year positive jaws, and we look to continue this going forward. Moving now to investment. And as before, we have a targeted investment program to support our growing organization and to broaden our product capability. The chart shows the lion's share of the investment in the period was into our core platform as we deliver a future-ready system, improve our client connectivity and user friendliness and enhance our ability to scale internationally alongside our aspirations. The majority of the remainder has been focused on product developments, including stablecoin, which Neeraj will cover in a moment, derivatives and deposit products as well as expanding our FX and payments capability range and client experience. Our capital management framework targets CapEx of 8% to 12% of revenue. This half, we spent almost GBP 7 million or around 10% of income. So looking forward, we expect CapEx investment in the second half to continue at around this level. Finally, I want to leave you with a reiteration of our medium-term financial guidance. We serve a growing number of clients and markets who are becoming increasingly material in a changing world shape. We, therefore, target high teens to low 20% compound annual growth rate in total income, excluding net interest income over the next 3 years. We grew this measure 48% year-on-year this half. We also target positive operational leverage. Our EBITDA margin expanded by 10 percentage points year-on-year. As I set out, we are on track against our CapEx guidance. And finally, we expect to remain a capital-light, cash-generative business. We will deploy our capital to drive total shareholder returns, including today's inaugural dividend. Thank you. And let me now hand back to Neeraj.

Thanks, James. Expertly done as usual, and the financials are good. But why will the next set of results be good, too? Well, global expansion, deepening relationships, financial connectivity to the Global South are the themes that I've talked about earlier today, and those are critical. Stablecoin is exactly on plan. The model generates capital and the investment case is clear. These are the reasons that we are a good investment case. What we see in the markets that we operate in is that money is on the move. The capital in the Gulf is moving over to Africa into places like Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, and that's where we are opening offices to catch those flows. Latin America region is also opening up. We have secured offices in Guyana and also are exploring Venezuela and doing that in the right way compliantly, but being one of the first there. Abu Dhabi is delivering the digital asset license has been applied for and will be delivered during quarter 3 of this year. The expansion is very deliberate. Every territory follows a flow, and every flow follows revenue. The offices bring us closer to our trusted relationships. That creates a stronger network and the stronger network creates the increase in revenue. So when we talk about connecting with global South correspondent banking franchise, that is not really fully understood by everybody. So I'm just going to explain that. So we have 5 strategic partners, large banks that help us clear U.S. dollars, euros and sterling. We have 77 live correspondent banking clients, and that's up 48% since the IPO. Now we have 60 new clients in the funnel right now. And in the first half, we generated GBP 17 million of revenue from our correspondent banking clients, and that is a record. So why is this important you're asking? There's been a decade of derisking. Global banks have left the emerging markets for lots of reasons. And what are the consequences of that? Countries get cut off from trade and the ability to make payments efficiently. Examples of this can be simple things like teachers not being paid by NGOs, businesses that can't settle imports. What we do is we support those markets. We support those payments. We don't leave. We stay. We're careful. We do things compliantly. We stay with our eyes open, but we help. And that's why central banks trust us. That's why Deutsche Bank chose us. We're structurally growing and few can do it. Purpose and profit in this organization point in the same direction. And that, to me, is the best kind of business. Coming to stablecoin, I'm setting out our approach to stablecoin, which is both specific and differentiated. The on-ramp of stablecoins is largely solved. But the real challenge is an emerging market off-ramp. Moving stablecoins to currencies like the Nigerian naira and doing it at fair rates through regulated institutions is not a simple matter. What you find is that the liquidity on the ground is thin. Issuers lack emerging market network and licensing and providers lack local expertise. So what fills that, you ask? Well, liquidity and licenses and regulatory standing and trusted relationships. And that equates to us. This takes decades in building and it is exactly what the ecosystem is missing. So the market needs us. So the right way to deal with our regulated first model in stablecoins is to be regulated, to be partner enabled, have full compliance in-house that includes KYC, anti-money laundering, Travel Rule, all of those things dealt with through our experience. Revenue that we understand, FX spread, liquidity, settlement fees, new flows with known risks. The progress to date is great and in line with our expectations. Product is built and in testing. The ecosystem has been mapped out, and I'm genuinely excited about that. Our ADGM permissions to allow us to do this activity have been filed, and I'm expecting those to be delivered in Q3 of this year. So going forward, H2 is an integration and testing period, which will lead us to a H1 full launch of our products in stablecoin. This is about disciplined build of a product clients are already asking for. The opportunities coming in H2 are many. We have our Guyana office opening. We have 2 new Africa offices opening. We have our Venezuela relationship deepening. We have wider LatAm relationships that are being developed for revenue. Honduras, Guatemala, Argentina, Ecuador, all of these areas are developing. These all add to the regions that we have been operating in for many years. The correspondent banking momentum is continuing. The core scaling is continuing. We are still delivering more solutions. We are delivering more customers that are corporates. The fintechs are increasing their activities with us and the new tech build is underway to underpin all of this to create the right efficient environment to deliver increased operational leverage. And I've spoken about digital assets, and they are in production and in client testing. So quite simply, what is it all about? What it comes down to is that we are increasing the number of clients. We are going into more markets, and we are producing more volume. This turns into an investment case, which is genuinely simple. There are 6 reasons to invest and one purpose that brings them all together. Structural growth. This is about development. It's not just about rate cycles, specialized emerging market networks, decades taken to build them and very hard to replicate. Extremely deep relationships, including the central banks, multi-rail platforms ready for stablecoins, high operating leverage and cash generation, which is the core of our profitability and regulated infrastructure that underpins the lot. At the center is a cross-border payments business powering the Global South. So now to land the aircraft. We're cash generative, deeply valued by our clients and the economies they operate in. We're solving the stablecoin off-ramp problem. We're growth-backed. Relationships and regulation are key to what we deliver. The investment case being proven half by half by half. What does this all mean? The strategy is working. We're stronger. We're more purposeful than ever. And I'm really proud of the team and what they have been able to achieve, and I'm very excited for what's coming next. And I know it will deliver what you expect.