Rohith Murthy
Analyst · William Gregozeski with Greenridge Global
Thank you, Georgina. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss MoneyHero Group's first quarter 2025 financial results. I'm pleased to report that we are executing strongly on our profitability road map. We remain on track to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA in the latter part of the second half of 2025, a key milestone marking our transition to a self-sustaining profitable growth trajectory. Our Q4 2024 results already reflected this ongoing transition, achieving the best quarterly performance since going public, with adjusted EBITDA loss narrowing to just $2.9 million. This momentum has continued into Q1 as we sharpen our focus on higher quality revenue and operational efficiency. Our gross margins are also improving substantially, driven by deliberate initiatives we executed over the past year. We reduced low ROI paid marketing, enhanced the user experience and interface and diversified revenue streams into higher-margin verticals like wealth and insurance. As a result, our unit economics are significantly stronger today than a year ago. While top line revenue in Q1 fell year-on-year due to a strategic pullback in aggressive marketing spend, this was an intentional trade- off to prioritize revenue quality over volume. We are encouraged to see this strategic pivot already yielding results with improving profitability. Our net loss has narrowed considerably in Q1, as adjusted EBITDA continues to improve quarter-after-quarter. We are building a leaner, more profitable business with the goal of hitting $100 million revenue for full year 2025 and delivering positive adjusted EBITDA during the latter part of the year. In short, our path to profitability has never been clearer, and we are executing with discipline to accelerate it. Now let me turn to our Q1 operational performance and the progress we've made across our business lines. A core part of our strategy is diversifying our revenue mix towards higher-margin verticals, and we are already seeing tangible results with wealth and insurance verticals contributing approximately 25% of our total revenue in Q1, an increase of 11 percentage points Y-o-Y and growing quickly. These verticals are now meaningful contributors to our top line and are driving gross margin expansion. We expect their growth to continue outpacing other segments, supporting our $100 million revenue target for 2025. Importantly, this diversified revenue mix is also improving our profitability without sacrificing growth opportunities, it's growth with quality. Now credit card remain the largest revenue driver, contributing 57% of our total revenue in Q1, down from over 70% in previous years and reflecting successful diversification. This business is becoming more efficient and strategic, performing stronger on lower spend and generating higher profitability per unit. Credit cards continue to be a core customer acquisition engine, bringing in a steady flow of new users and reengage existing ones. Our deep partnership with leading banks, including Citi, HSBC, Stan Chart, BPI, RCBC among many others, not only fuel our credit card business, but also allow us to broaden product engagement into wealth and lending products. In other words, customers who come to us for credit cards today can also choose investment accounts, personal loans or insurance down the line, increasing their lifetime value. So while the credit card share of revenue has moderated, it remains absolutely vital. It's now a more optimized strategic platform for broader growth. Our Insurance segment is building significant momentum, particularly in car insurance. As a licensed digital broker, this high-margin vertical is made even more compelling with our new end-to-end purchase journey, launched in partnership with bolttech in Hong Kong. Customers can now compare real-time quotes and purchase car insurance policies directly on our platform and avoid getting redirected to third-party sites and industry-first in Hong Kong. The result is a smoother user experience that drives higher conversion rates and generates recurring revenue through policy renewals. We now essentially own the entire customer journey for car insurance. Early results are very promising, with increased traffic and conversions in the car insurance funnel. We were excited about scaling this model to other insurance products and markets. Insurance overall is scaling nicely for us and now represents about 13% of revenue, and it continues to climb with strong unit economics that bolster our margin profile. Our personal loans business is another growth pillar, accounting for roughly 70% of revenue in Q1, and reflecting robust expansion as we help more users secure personal loans and other financing. A big development here is our upcoming Credit Hero Club launch in Hong Kong during the second half of the year in partnership with TransUnion. Building on the successful pilot last year, the Credit Hero Club will offer consumers free credit scores, credit monitoring and personalized financial product recommendations. While leveraging TransUnion's credit data, we can tailor product offers to each user's profile, such as showing them credit cards or loans they are more likely to be approved for. This personalization is expected to drive higher approval and conversion rates for our lending partners, while helping consumers make smarter choices. Essentially, we're using data and AI to benefit everyone. Customers get better offers and enhance transparency and bank gets more qualified, engaged borrowers. We anticipate the Credit Hero Club will not only deepen customer engagement, but also boost our lending revenues. It's a great example of how we are innovating products to fuel growth in a margin-accretive way. Geographically, I want to highlight the progress we are making in the Philippines, an important market for us. Last year, our operations faced headwinds when a major banking partner exited the market, impacting our revenue. We took swift action to recalibrate our strategy, and I'm pleased to report a recovery is underway. In the past couple of months, we've signed strategic partnerships with 2 of the top banks in the country, BPI and RCBC, which significantly expand the range of products we offer them. In short, we've replenished and even enhanced the product supply after the partner exited. These new partnerships reinforce our position as the go-to digital customer acquisition channel for banks in the Philippines, and expect to start seeing our performance improve there in the second half of the year as these offerings gain traction. It's a great example of how we can rebound from challenges by leveraging our regional scale and relationships, our ability to partner with leading financial institutions that remains a competitive advantage across all our markets. Now beyond our high-quality revenue growth, operational efficiency has been a major focus for us and is also a key driver for improving our margins. We have embraced an AI-first strategy across the organization to automate processes, reduce costs and enhance productivity. Over the past few quarters, we have been implementing AI and machine learning solutions across everything from customer service to product development. For instance, intelligent chat bots and self-service tools have been deployed and are significantly reducing manual customer service or customer support inquiries, improving the efficiency of content creation and also helping us optimize our marketing spend. Over the past year, our operating expenses have come down substantially as a result, including a 26% Y-o-Y reduction in employee- related costs. I want to stress that these efficiency gains go beyond cost cutting. They are driving better overall results. Our product and engineering streams are more productive than ever, rolling out new features fast with the help of AI-driven coding and testing tools. Our content and marketing teams are also personalizing at scale using AI insights. All of these mean we can scale our business without a proportional rise in headcount or expenses. We are essentially doing more with less, which is a key reason we remain confident about reaching breakeven in the coming quarters. Alongside improving operational efficiency is our focus on building a high-performance company culture. In Q4 last year, we rolled out a broad-based RSU program effectively making most MoneyHero employee's shareholders. Our goal is for the team to think and act like owners because they're truly our owners. This initiative has energized the team, fostering a stronger sense of accountability and long-term commitment. Every team now has a skin in the game, aligning incentives to deliver results for shareholders. I firmly believe that a culture of aligned incentives and personal ownership will drive better execution. Through this RSU program, we are investing in our people and reinforcing that when MoneyHero succeeds, we all succeed. This approach will also help us attract and retain top talent and ensure that our internal motivation supports our ambitious growth objectives. Let me touch on capital allocation and how we are thinking about shareholder value. We expect continued market evolution and consolidation in the months ahead. As a well-capitalized market leader with $36.6 million in cash and no debt, we are in a strong position to capitalize on opportunities in a highly disciplined manner. We remain focused on maintaining shareholder value, and currently we have no plans for equity funded M&A, while our stock trades below what we believe to be its intrinsic value. That said, if the right opportunity arises to consolidate the market inorganically, we'll evaluate it, but only when it aligns with our long-term strategy and value creation goals. Finally, we are broadening investor engagement to improve our visibility and reestablish credibility in the market. Now since our listing, our stock liquidity has been below our expectations. We are actively working to expand our shareholder base and meet with sell-side analysts to improve coverage and raise awareness of our growth story. This quarter, we onboarded a new Investor Relations partner to strengthen our communications and targeting efforts. As our performance improves, we expect increased analyst coverage. We're also engaging with long-term investors, including family offices and smaller funds in our regions to share the MoneyHero story and invite them to join us on our growth journey. Additionally, we strengthened our corporate development and strategy team to better communicate our growth strategy to the market and explore strategic partnerships that can unlock value. The key message here is that we are not only improving our internal fundamentals, but also proactively working to reestablish our visibility and credibility in the public markets to ensure the investment community clearly recognizes the value and growth potential of MoneyHero. Now before I conclude, let me reiterate the key takeaways and our vision going forward. We are at a pivotal moment and have taken the hard, but necessary steps to transform our business over the past year, focusing on higher margin revenue, lowering our cost base and innovating our product offerings. These efforts position us for sustainable growth and profitability. We expect to hit positive adjusted EBITDA during the later part of the year, and from that point onward, we expect to expand our bottom line as our revenue ramps towards our $100 million target. Our strategy is clear, maintain leadership in our core categories such as credit cards, aggressively grow new verticals like insurance, wealth and lending that boost margins and leverage technology, including AI and data to drive efficiency and superior user experiences. Looking at our performance over the past 2 quarters with improving margins, growing higher-quality revenue streams and a sharply narrowed loss, it's clear this strategy is already yielding results. Looking ahead to the rest of 2025 and beyond, we are confident that MoneyHero will emerge as one of the most profitable and trusted personal finance platforms in the region, with a unique ecosystem of product and partnerships as well as a strong brand presence in our markets. With our renewed focus on operational excellence in ROI, we can capitalize on growth opportunities without deepening our cash burn. Importantly, we remain accountable stewards of capital, both in how we invest for growth and how we approach shareholder returns. I want to thank our team members for their incredible effort and alignment with our mission to drive this transformation. I also want to thank our shareholders for their continued support and patience. We are committed to delivering the value we expect and served. The management team and I are laser-focused on executing quarter-by-quarter, and we believe the best days for MoneyHero are ahead of us. We are building a business that can grow robustly, generate cash and create long-term value for our investors. With that, I will now turn the call over to Danny Leung, our Interim CFO.