PensionBee Group plc ($PBEE)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the PensionBee Group plc Full Year Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Throughout today is a recorded meeting [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'm sure the company will be most grateful for your participation. I'd now like to hand over to the management team from PensionBee, Romi, Christoph, good afternoon.

Thank you very much for joining us today. And for those of you who are new to the PensionBee story, we exist to help our customers prepare for and enjoy a happy retirement. We operate in the enormous defined contribution pension market representing over $30 trillion in assets. Our customer-focused offering helps consumers to feel retirement confident. We enable our customers to combine their old retirement accounts into a new online account. We enable them to make contributions to invest in line with their objectives with money managed by the world's largest asset managers and ultimately, to withdraw and spend their retirement savings. Our long-term ambition is to build a lifelong relationship with our customers. This approach not only delivers value to them throughout their retirement journey, but also drives predictable, scalable revenue for our business and strong returns for our investors. We were pleased to conclude 2025 with GBP 7.4 billion, approximately $10 billion of assets under administration, GBP 51 million of annual run rate revenue, 305,000 invested customers and GBP 1 million of group adjusted EBITDA. In the U.K., we continue to invest in our brand, increasing our marketing budget from GBP 9.1 million in 2024 to GBP 12.1 million in 2025 and thereby reaching 305,000 total invested customers. We recorded approximately 60% brand awareness, placing PensionBee among some of the most trusted brands in consumer financial services. We invested in our AI search visibility, resulting in high visibility on AI overviews, the new interface for traditional Google search. We also invested in our technology, recording a 22% increase in productivity. This increase was delivered through new automations, the launch of our new interface, which modernizes and unifies the customer experience on web and mobile and also our AI advancements. We refined our internal copilot Beetrix to serve BeeKeepers and used our learnings to develop Beebot, our customer-facing chat agent who will increasingly serve our customers on live chat. Overall, we recorded strong customer satisfaction ratings, including an NPS score of 67 for 2025. Over 2026, we will continue to focus on customer growth, deploying an increased marketing budget through our data-led multichannel approach. We will continue to raise the company's prominence through consumer advocacy, sports sponsorships and commercial partnerships. We will also continue to modernize our user interface and invest in our customers' experience, encouraging them to continue preparing for and enjoying a happy retirement. We will take steps in our AI journey, increasing our productivity through more automation in our customer communication. Turning now to the U.S. We were pleased to refine our strategy in partnership with State Street. We established our long-term goal of national brand awareness and refined our localized approach to the market. Our national brand awareness benefits our individual business in the $1 trillion annual rollover market. We help our customers to consolidate old retirement accounts into one new IRA easily, giving them access to simple, high-quality investments. Our investment in our brand also benefits our business line, where we offer our automatic rollover IRA to employers through advisers, helping those employers to manage 401(k) plan terminations or small balance rollovers from former employees. Our superior value proposition enables employers to reduce their fiduciary risks and achieve better outcomes for their stakeholders in this $55 billion annual inflow market. Importantly, our U.S. business model is synergistic with customers acquired through our business line being served our individual product and being encouraged to consolidate accounts and advisers being attracted to our high-quality consumer offering as a key point of differentiation for their clients. Given the importance of brand for our long-term success, we made significant strides in growing our online presence on social media, reaching customers in large metropolitan areas through our billboard campaign and growing our share of voice in the press. We recorded strong initial brand awareness of 5% and a high of 12% in our home state of New York. We also completed a strong investment in our U.S. technology infrastructure, developing multiple sources of inflows, including individual rollovers, transfers and contributions as well as bulk transfers for our business line. We established a variety of accounts, including a traditional IRA, Roth IRA, SEP IRA and Automatic Rollover IRA. Within the individual Beehive, customers can monitor their investment performance, use our tools to plan for retirement, manage their accounts and take distributions. This investment was delivered alongside group adjusted EBITDA profitability. We are now focused on reaching the $1 billion milestone in our U.S. business. We will deepen our national brand awareness, continuing to invest in marketing and highlighting the simplicity and effectiveness of our customer experience. Over 2025, we created a sizable and robust pipeline of new business for our automatic rollover IRA, which we will continue to grow over 2026 while onboarding new clients. I would now like to hand over to Christoph Martin, our Chief Financial Officer, who will cover the financial update for the year.

Thank you very much, Romi. Hello, and a warm welcome to everyone. I'm pleased to cover the financial section of the full year results. Turning to the financial overview, I would like to start with a summary of our full year performance before diving into details behind each value driver. For the full year 2025, the U.K. delivered strong financial performance with 27% year-on-year growth in our AOA to GBP 7.4 billion and plus 33% year-on-year growth in ARR to approximately GBP 51 million. U.K. adjusted EBITDA profitability of GBP 5.4 million at a 12% margin compares to 7% the prior year. At the group level, top line growth, coupled with continuous cost discipline led to an improvement in our adjusted EBITDA margin, achieving profitability of approximately GBP 1 million at a 2% group EBITDA margin for 2025. These continuous achievements are derived from the core value drivers of our business, which are: first, predictable and recurring revenue; and second, business scalability. Furthermore, they are a testament to our ability to consistently and reliably execute against our public market guidance. I would cover each of them in turn next. The first value driver is PensionBee's predictable and recurring revenue, which is generated from a durable base of assets under administration, a function of the assets of existing and new customers. In 2025, we achieved a 27% year-on-year AUA growth to GBP 7.4 billion. The vast majority of our AUA base is derived from existing customers, customers who remain with PensionBee for a long period of time and continue to build up their pension savings with PensionBee, resulting in value generation for decades to come. Our average customer is in their early 40s, and they build up their pension savings with PensionBee, which means that cohorts on an underlying value basis, i.e., before any impact on market appreciation are resilient over time. AUA is also derived from new customer acquired through our proven cost disciplined approach to customer acquisition. Over 2025, we onboarded circa 40,000 new invested customers onto our technology platform. And over 2025, customers joining were slightly younger than in 2024, aged approximately 39.7. The prior year, it was 40.6, in line with our marketing strategy for 2025. The younger customer cohorts acquired resulted in a slightly lower average balance of new customers in 2025 compared to the prior year. As a result, the compounding AUA base is subsequently converted into our revenue growth owing to the resilient gross revenue margin of mid-60s. In 2025, we saw a revenue margin of 65 basis points, which enabled us to convert the 27% of year-on-year AUA growth into revenue growth of 28% and annual run rate revenue growth of 33%. In conclusion, thanks to our compounding AUA base and resilient revenue margin, we have generated predictable and recurring revenue, which represents PensionBee's first value driver. The second value driver is PensionBee's business scalability due to the controllable nature of our cost base. Our cost base has continued to decline as a proportion of revenue. This scalability dynamics of predictable and recurring top line growth, coupled with cost discipline led to an improvement in operating margin. On a 2025 basis, the adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 12%, up from 7% in 2024 for the United Kingdom. Furthermore, the operating margin pre-marketing, a measure of scalability for the U.K. improved to approximately 40%, up from 33% last -- the year prior, resulting in an inherent strong scalability and margin potential for the business. Reflecting on our long-term track record, PensionBee has delivered revenue growth since our IPO of a CAGR or compounded annual growth rate of almost 50% to 2025 and strong margin expansion in the U.K. with an adjusted EBITDA margin improvement from negative 166% pre-IPO to now positive 12% for 2025. Further, operating margin pre-marketing improved from negative 35% pre-IPO to positive close to 40% for 2025 in the U.K. This underscores strong delivery against our growth and business scalability objectives. With respect to our guidance framework for PensionBee as a group, we have outlined our short, medium and long-term targets. In the short to medium term, by year-end 2029, we expect the group to be generating revenue of above GBP 100 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 20% by the year-end 2029 with the U.K. considerably contributing to those targets. In the long term, by year-end 2034, we expect the group to generate above GBP 0.25 billion in revenue and an adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 50% by year-end 2034. Our circa GBP 33 million of cash balance puts PensionBee in a very strong position to further scale the U.K. business as well as invest in the tremendous U.S. market opportunity, continuing to execute on our long-term strategy and delivering on our public market guidance. I would now like to hand back to Romi for concluding remarks.

Thank you very much, Christoph. It's a pleasure to be here again with everyone today, and we hope that some of the additional context that we have provided on the 2025 results is helpful to you. we'd love to take some questions.

That's great, Romi and Christoph, thank you very much indeed for updating those on today's call. I'm just going to bring your cameras back up. Thank you very much indeed. [Operator Instructions] Thank you to everybody. We've got a number of questions, Romi. So if I may, I'll start off with one from Paul. Thank you, Paul. 67% NPS is an excellent result. Congratulations. Could you just confirm the actual number of investors who responded to the request to score you?

This is a very excellent and precise question for which I do have a precise answer, which is 7,177 responses on the NPS questionnaire. And yes, we are pleased with the number. We always feel that there is However, more that we can be doing for our customers, but of course, very happy to have it at this level and to be positive on that.

Great. A question from Jonathan. Thank you, Jonathan. Do you expect the U.K. revenue margin to increase or decrease or to be maintained at 65 basis points? And what drove the expansion to 65 basis points in full year '25?

Yes, I'm happy to take this one. So generally speaking, on the margin, the gross revenue margin, we do guide that it will be in line with historical figures. So you can see clearly that it has been pretty much in the mid-60s since inception. So it's a very resilient margin. We do expect it to remain at those kind of levels going forward. And the very slight change has to do with a mix effect across the funds. So there is some movements that results from the blend or the mix across the AUA is still spreading through the fund. But generally, again, going forward, looking forward, we expect the revenue margin to remain with historical figures, and it has been very resilient pretty much since inception of the business.

That's great. I've got a question from James. Let me just see if I can unmute your microphone [Operator Instructions] there we go.

Congrats on another good set of results. Just one question for me. I think at the end of Q4, from memory, there was around $3 million of AUA onboarded from U.S. customers. Are you able to kind of give us any sort of steer as to what that number is, say, at the end of February so far in Q1?

You're going to have to wait for the Q1 results, I'm afraid, which will be out in April. We'd really like to focus on the 2025 results. What I can give you some commentary on is that we are exceptionally busy in both countries. In the U.K., we are obviously approaching tax year-end, very similar in the U.S. And we also see some increasing developments in our business line in the U.S. as well, where we work with employers and advisers to help them solve their needs around terminating 401(k) plans or around small balance rollovers, but you will have to wait for the exact details until the end of the actual quarter.

Yes. I thought it was worth a try anyway.

Let's move on to a question from Jonathan, if I may. How are you thinking about the split of investment between the U.K. and the U.S. going forward?

I'm happy to take this one. So the split between investment, I think, was the question. And the best way to think about our 2 geographic segments is the U.K. and the U.S., as you alluded to, you can think about that the U.K. is actually -- is generating its own profit and cash and is therefore fully self-funded. So the U.K. business will, at this point, continue to scale. We expect the marketing budget to continue to increase while we're keeping the U.K., of course, profitable. So the profitability is something that is very firmly established, and we want to grow it and scale it as quickly as we can by basically reinvesting the excess profit into the organization and the U.K. business. On the U.S., on the other side, the U.S., we specifically raised, think about now 1.5 years ago, around $20 million to fund the entirety of the U.S. business plan, and that is solidly earmarked for scaling the U.S. business. So in short, the U.K. is self-funding, so to speak, and the U.S. has sufficient funds to fund the business plan to its profitability point. I hope that answers the question. But if there is a follow-up, happy to take this one.

Great. Thank you very much, Christoph. Turning to 3 questions here from William. Thank you very much indeed, William. Q1 '26 is almost over. Are there any developments that we should know about in the U.K. or the U.S.

I would refer to my earlier commentary on the U.K. and the U.S. Obviously, the quarter will end at the end of March, and we will be reporting back to you in April on that. And what I can say in the meantime is that we are exceptionally busy on both fronts.

Great. Follow-up question. Can you update us on the expected time line to the USD 1 billion milestone, Slide #14?

We will update on the U.S. development as we continue to proceed. Obviously, $1 billion is a significant number. It's certainly a number that we feel puts a very strong marker in the sand. There are a number of milestones that we will, of course, report to you in advance of that number, but we wanted you to have in mind the same kinds of figures that we do and that we envisage for the business. And of course, the constituents in terms of getting there, we have the individual business where we continue to see strong interest from individuals with very large accounts. And we have our business to business to consumer line, too, where some of the deals that we are looking at are well worth $100 million alone. And so we feel that we have the pipeline to be able to achieve that number, and we will report on milestones against it as we continue along.

That's great. And William's final question, where are you seeing the most and least demand for the fund offerings in your U.K. suite?

Well, we continue to believe that customers deserve a simple and straightforward approach to high-quality investing. And therefore, we spend a considerable amount of time and attention to our default solutions. This is a very well-established framework within the U.K. and ensures that even if customers are kind of not financial PhD holders that they can receive access to excellent investments. And so we continue to see very strong interest within our default products. Those are products for under 50-year-olds and products for over 50-year-olds. And our product for over 50-year-olds, in particular, is very focused on managing volatility, which, as I'm sure you will agree, is very important in this particular time.

Thank you. William, I hope that addresses your questions. Jude from RBC. Jude. A couple of questions. I think you can take one of them. I'm not sure about the other, but let's see. Can you elaborate more on your AI comments from earlier? It sounded like you've got some really interesting developments there, and it would be good to get any additional color. And then as we are nearing the end of Q1, are you able to give any update on customer acquisition so far? So over to you.

I am certainly able to take the first question about AI developments, which I believe we've been keeping you fairly apprised of. And of course, last year, we spent a lot of our time developing and implementing Beetrix, which is our internal copilot. Beetrix helps our BeeKeepers to answer customer queries and is trained on our proprietary internal knowledge of pensions, pension transfers and all things in the world of retirement savings. Recently, we have taken steps to develop Beebot. Beebot is our customer-facing chatbot and will imminently begin serving customers. Beebot is expected to begin answering the first 20% of queries that are regular nonpersonalized queries. quickly moving to address another 40% of those types of queries before moving into slightly more personal account-based questions such as did you receive my contribution, how far along is my transfer and so on. But the initial expectation is that Beebot will be serving about 20% of our live chat coming through. Now you may ask what proportion of our communication is through live chat. The answer is that it is actually still a small component of our overall kind of communication framework with our customers. As you know, we have live chat, we have phones and we have e-mails. But over time, we will be transitioning written communication more into our Beebot live chat environment, which we think customers will enjoy more than e-mail anyway. But you can always rest reassured that when a customer wishes to speak with an individual at the company with their BeeKeeper, that BeeKeeper will always be available. I hope that helps to give a bit more color.

Great. Thank you. A question from Paul. Paul, thank you. When do you expect to be regularly reporting on AUA from the U.S. Not sure who wants that one.

I believe Christoph is taking that one on mute.

Go ahead, Christoph. Let me just take control there, Christoph. Just press aloud for me, sorry, one second. Okay. Go ahead, Christoph, we can hear you.

Yes, with regards to the reporting question, this -- we will commence the reporting on the U.S., specifically when the AA becomes and other metrics becomes material. You will see that in the announcement that some of that is already reported on a segment basis. But I think we will embed it more formally into the regular presentations as well as the numbers become more material.

Question from Andrew. Please, can you comment on the actual audited P&L results rather than management figures, excluding many costs from when will the company make a profit?

So with regards to profit before tax, we -- is one metric that we obviously have in our KPI framework. We primarily focus on adjusted EBITDA because that is the best approximation for cash. So this is the reason why adjusted EBITDA was chosen. With regards to profit before tax, that is again another metric that we monitor. I think -- but primarily, we focus on the adjusted EBITDA number in the meantime, given that it's about the self-funding element and also when we still want to scale the U.K. business, we want to do it while basically being self-funding. Therefore, we're using the adjusted EBITDA number as the primary guide. And then I think once we have scaled the marketing number to a level where we feel comfortable with to keep it more stable or slower growing, this is I think when the other metrics would come more and more into the fore.

That's great. Gautam, thank you for your question around retention rates. Could you split the churn between pension withdrawals versus customers moving to other platforms? And on the latter, where do people typically move to traditional incumbents or new wealth techs?

Yes. So crudely speaking, it's roughly half-half the split, and it has remained that kind of split for a while. And with regards to the attrition question, where do consumers go if they choose to go to another providers, this tends to really be a very idiosyncratic question in a way that many consumers have very specific needs and aspects of why they are going to another provider, for instance, some quote that we record in our exit interviews. For instance, they want to consolidate the workplace pension, some prefer to pay a premium price for an adviser. Some want to have a very specific asset exposure. So there tends to be very individual specific or idiosyncratic reasons of why consumers are leaving. But I think what is important for us is that the retention is very high. So it has been 95% pretty much since inception of the company, and that is what we primarily are focused on.

That's great. A question from Tom around marketing. Thank you for your question. Are you able to provide any commentary on the dynamics between spending and customer acquisition? For example, if each customer acquisition costs, say, GBP 250 per customer, is it roughly proportional if we spend 10x that, the amount that you normally see in terms of 10x the amount of customers being onboarded?

In certain parts of the funnel, broadly speaking, yes. So certainly, in the earlier parts of the funnel, where we see kind of the early parts of the conversion. So for example, when a customer first registers interest by leaving a name and an e-mail address, there is certainly a very strong correlation between sort of instant marketing spend and instant registrations. Where things then become a little bit more different is how long it takes for any particular individual customer to ask us to transfer their pension or their account. And of course, depending on the nature of the customer, how busy they are, how big their assets are and various other life factors, that is not always an instant request. And then, of course, the second kind of aspect of the time line is how long it takes for a pension provider to save -- to send that money. And we've seen in our experience, both in the U.K. and in the U.S. that some can be as quick as 5 days and others can take many months and throw additional roadblocks into the process which our BeeKeepers and operations executives are very well equipped with dealing with, but which can obviously take time. And so broadly speaking, yes, at the earlier parts of the funnel, we can absolutely see a strong and early correlation. It does, however, because of the nature of the transaction, this is not a video game, for example, takes some time for the conversion to actually flow through. But we feel very confident in terms of the numbers that we see moving through the funnel, and we have a lot of systems and processes in place to actually keep each and every single pension moving through that funnel of ours.

Christoph, Romi, that's perfect. Thank you very much indeed. We've taken all the questions that we've had through from investors today. So thank you to everybody for your engagement. Romi, Christoph, I know investor feedback will be particularly important to you both. I'll shortly redirect those on the call to give you their thoughts and expectations. But perhaps, Romi, I could just ask you for a couple of closing comments.

Well, thank you very much for attending today. We're pleased to offer some additional color on the 2025 annual results beyond what we offered at the trading update. We hope that you will join us again for the Q1 results later on this year, and we look forward to seeing many of you later on in the coming weeks and then as well. Thank you.

That's great. Romi, Christoph, thanks once again for updating those on today's call. Can I please ask attendees not to close this session as we're now...