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Nu Holdings Ltd. (NU)

Q4 2025 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 26, 2026

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Nu Holdings conference call to discuss the results for the fourth quarter of 2025. A slide presentation is accompanying today's webcast, which is available in Nu's Investor Relations website, www.investors.nu in English and www.investidores.nu in Portuguese. This conference is being recorded, and the replay can also be accessed on the company's IR website. This call is also available in Portuguese. [Operator Instructions] [Foreign Language] [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Guilherme Souto, Investor Relations Officer at Nu Holdings. Mr. Souto, you may proceed.

Guilherme Souto

Analyst

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining our earnings call today. With me on today's call are David Velez, our Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman; and Guilherme Lago, our Chief Financial Officer. Start with this quarter's result, we're introducing a new managerial reporting framework, including managerial indicators and our managerial P&L. All financial metrics discussed and presented today reflect this framework. Lago will provide additional details during his presentation. These managerial measures are important to how we manage the business but are not financial measures as defined under IFRS and may not be comparable to other companies. A full reconciliation to the most directly comparable IFRS figures is available in our managerial P&L reconciliation report and in the appendix to this presentation. Unless otherwise noted, all growth rates discussed today are presented on a year-over-year FX neutral basis. Today's discussion may include forward-looking statements, which are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. Please refer to the forward-looking statements disclosure included in this earnings presentation for additional information. With that, I will now turn the call over to David. Please go ahead, David.

David Velez-Osomo

Analyst

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. 2025 was a fantastic year for Nubank, and Q4 '25 truly showed the strength of our business model. During the year, effectively, most of our key indicators from customer love to scale, engagement and profitability moved in the right direction, while we continue to invest significantly on long-term growth. We closed the year with 131 million customers adding 17 million net new customers and maintaining an activity rate of 83%. Scale and engagement remained the foundation of our model. ARPAC reached $15 per active customer, up approximately 9% quarter-over-quarter and 27% year-over-year, driven by deeper monetization across our platform. As a result of strong customer growth and higher ARPAC, revenues in Q4 '25 reached $4.9 billion, up 45% year-over-year. Gross profit in the same period reached nearly $2 billion, up 38% year-over-year. At the same time, we maintained discipline with an efficiency ratio of 20% under the new methodology even as we continued investing in our core markets and new technologies. Net income reached $895 million, translating into a record 33% return on equity while maintaining strong capital buffers and scaling our credit portfolio responsibly. These results reflect the priorities we set and the discipline of execution throughout the year. One way to see this execution is to look at what we put in customers' heads. Across our markets, we launched more than 100 new products and features. More important than the number was the intent. Each launch aimed to deepen engagement to expand access and strengthen unit economics. Individually, these initiatives are incremental. At scale, they compound. In payments, we evolved Pix with AI-enabled features, launched instant payments in Colombia and expanded Mexico's cash in and cash out network to more than 30,000 physical points. In credit, we expanded responsibly,…

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

Thank you, David, and good evening, everyone. Now before moving into this quarter's financials, I will briefly explain an evolution in our disclosures. As Nubank has become a multiproduct, multisegment and multicountry platform, we are introducing a managerial P&L to provide a clear view of value creation and internal performance. This evolution does not change economic reality. It only clarifies it. The managerial P&L is derived entirely from our IFRS results and represent our structural reorganization of IFRS line items designed to enhance comparability and better reflect economic contribution. The framework preserves net income, cash flow, equity and regulatory capital and is fully reconciled to IFRS. The key benefit is clear visibility into how margins, operating leverage and value creation evolve as the Nubank platform scales across multiple products, segments and geographies. And to support this new disclosure, we are publishing a detailed managerial P&L reconciliation report on our Investor Relations website, including the full bridge to IFRS and the complete methodology used. We have also updated historical data back to the first quarter of 2021 under this new framework. With that context, I will now walk you through the quarter's performance already used in the managerial P&L. We ended the quarter with a total portfolio of $32.7 billion, up 40% year-over-year, driven primarily by credit cards and unsecured lending. Credit cards increased 12.2% quarter-over-quarter. This was the strongest quarterly growth since the end of 2023. This reflects continued limit expansion in Brazil supported by our foundational credit models, along with typical fourth quarter seasonality. Now unsecured lending balance surpassed $8 billion with record-high originations of $4 billion in the fourth quarter. Secured lending grew 3.8% quarter-over-quarter. Recent changes to FGTS regulations have reduced new originations by more than half, though the impact on outstanding portfolio remains limited given the…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Guilherme Souto, Investor Relations Officer.

Guilherme Souto

Analyst

Thank you, operator. Could you please open the line for Mr. Eduardo Rosman from BTG Pactual?

Eduardo Rosman

Analyst

I have a question for David Velez regarding AI. David, do you see a risk that Nu could be disrupted by AI? Or do you see Nu as a potential winner in this transformation? It would be great if you could elaborate a little bit since I think the stock and then the sector in the U.S. has been suffering lately because of that.

David Velez-Osomo

Analyst

Sure. And the answer is both. It is both a challenge and has potential for disruption as well as significant opportunity. Net-net, we think it's more opportunity than challenge for us. But we have to take it pretty seriously, and we are taking it very seriously. A couple of ways to think about it. I think there is one specific trend or one common denominator across every technology transformation, and this goes all the way to even the internet era, which is any business model that relies on simply moving bytes from point A to point B, where you're effectively a broker, tends to be heard the quickest because one of the things that technology does is remove a lot of that friction in those processes. So I think to some of the commentary that has been around in the market about financial services is, I think, businesses in financial services that are simply moving money from one point to another point will have the higher risk of potential disruption. You need to be able to add more value than that. And I think from that angle, we think -- we have always believed that credit, specifically, credit revenue is actually the most sustainable type of revenue in financial services because of the capital intensity, the regulatory nature of it, the balance sheet aspect and the proprietariness of the data where AI plays a role and ultimately allows you to make a better decision on that. So I think from one angle, there is potential for challenging around the business model, but I think we're very well positioned given the way we are set up and the strength around credit. That we have. I think a couple of our opportunity is really on the revenue side. And as a reminder,…

Guilherme Souto

Analyst

Operator, could you please open the line for Mr. Jorge Kuri from Morgan Stanley?

Jorge Kuri

Analyst

Congrats on the numbers. I wanted to ask a question about your loan growth for the quarter. And I guess it's a two-part question. First, can you help us dimension the impact that your clip increases are having on your credit card growth? To what extent -- I know there is evidence in the seasonality, but if we think at the year-on-year growth, how much do you think came from those clip increases? How much of that acceleration in credit cards, do you think, is still going to roll over into 2026? And then the second part is on FGTS. Is there a way to quantify what was the headwind on your loan book based on FGTS? In other words, excluding FGTS, what would have been the portfolio sequential growth?

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

Thanks for the questions. Let me try to slice them in those 2 parts. So your first question was on the clip. Look, this was a year in which we have deployed this new technologies and approach to credit underwriting very successfully so far in allowing our customers to increase kind of their credit limits, especially in Brazil so far. And the best way for me to kind of illustrate the magnitude of this increase is, Jorge, maybe, refer you to Explanatory Note #32 of our financial statements in which we are then starting to provide, what I call, the unused credit limits. And you can see that unused credit limits went from about $18 billion to $29 billion, so an increase of about $11 billion, which accounts for about 60% increase in unused credit limits. It's a big one. And I think it wouldn't be possible for us to do so if we hadn't been leveraging kind of the entirety of the predictive AI credit underwriting tools that have been kind of developed by us over the past now 18 to 24 months. Have we seen all of those benefits translated into net income? The answer is no, not yet. So usually, I think at least I see kind of credit limits increases playing out in 3 steps. First, you have to offer the additional credit limits. Then the credit limit translates into purchase volume. And then you have to see whether the purchase volume will then translate into IBB. We are starting to see the first step, Jorge, which is, in the fourth quarter of 2025, our market share in purchase volume in Brazil has gone up by about 50 basis points. It was the biggest market share gain that we've seen in Nubank over the past 10…

Jorge Kuri

Analyst

And is there a way to quantify that? Thinking about it on a quarter-to-quarter basis, what would have been the total balance of credit expansion excluding that? So instead of the 11% FX-neutral quarter-on-quarter, what would have been the number without FGTS?

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

Yes, it would have been about 13% to 14%.

Jorge Kuri

Analyst

Okay. So quite significant. That was super clear. Congrats again.

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

Thanks, Jorge.

Guilherme Souto

Analyst

Operator, could you please open the line for Mr. Pedro Leduc from Itau BBA?

Pedro Leduc

Analyst

A little more as you look into 2026 and I'm going to use some of the prepared remarks there, especially in terms of efficiency trajectory. You mentioned that there might be some pressures. I want to see if you can maybe go into detail about it. And of course, it's a ratio. And also as I'm trying to think about revenues, of course, you're ending on a very high pace of loan book, NII. But as I look forward, can you help us understand a bit on the drivers when we see funding costs go up -- go down, sorry, if we can see that continuing a little bit on the portfolio. Just help us think a bit about these drivers now that you are already 35% ROE.

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

Leduc, thanks for the question. Look, I will refer to Slide 16 of our earnings deck, which is -- brings the efficiency ratio evolution. And we have seen, kind of over the past quarters and years, the continuation of the operating leverage potential of the organization. We wanted to highlight very clearly that we may see kind of upward pressure on efficiency ratio in the coming quarters, i.e., in the short term, like the next 4 to 6 quarters. As a result of very deliberate investments, I would bucket them in 3 categories. Number one is we have recently announced a return-to-office policy, right, and which starting on July 1, 2026, employees will start going back up to the office 2 times per week. That means that we're going to have to kind of prepare the offices, increase the leased area to welcome our employees as they prepare to come back to the office. We believe that this will bring enormous benefits to the company, including about kind of ingenuity, kind of innovation, coordination, but it does come with an increase in OpEx in the short term, and we wanted to clarify this. I would say that the return to the office will likely bring kind of our efficiency ratio, all else constant, up by about 80 to 100 basis points. The second bucket, I would say, Leduc, is the -- all of the investments that we are making in AI and new technologies. So that brings new talent that we have to hire, eventually new investments in R&D and research in GPUs that will have kind of a short-term cost, which we believe will be way, way, way more offset by the medium-term gains that we're going to have, but we will not shy away to make investments in talent, R&D and GPU to maximize the impacts of our efforts in AI. And I would say that kind of we have return to the office. You have AI. And the third one is the globalization. So there is a lot of investments that we are making in laying down the foundation for us to go beyond Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. And no, a substantial amount of those expenses are not capitalized and are incurred in 2026, first, to collect revenues and margins in the following years. So that's the direction. I wouldn't be able to provide you, Leduc, at this point in time more kind of a precision on the effect of all of the 3, but we think that they would put some kind of upward pressure in the coming quarters.

Guilherme Souto

Analyst

Operator, could you please open the line for Mr. Yuri Fernandes from JPMorgan?

Yuri Fernandes

Analyst

Congrats on the year. Most metrics, they look very good. But there is one line here that I think investors are a little bit more puzzled this quarter. That is the tax rate, right? And I know there is a managerial adjustments, and we see some incumbents in Brazil also having similar adjustments. So I think it's easy to understand and explain. But regarding this quarter, and maybe Lago can help me here, I would like to understand what drove the lower accounting tax, if this was the DTA? And you have lower DTAs, but just checking if this was DTA, some kind of tax-exempt bond, IOC. And maybe some kind of color going ahead, what should we expect for the tax rate for Nubank?

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

Sure. So Yuri, look, I think the lower effective tax rate in the fourth quarter can be explained by, I would say, largely 2 things: 1 completely nonrecurring and 1 recurring. What's the nonrecurring one? So about beginning of December 2025, the federal government approved an increase in the corporate income tax applicable to fintechs, including those like Nubank that essentially kind of increased progressively the corporate income tax from about 40% to 45% starting in 2026 and then going all the way in the next 2 years. Even though that, in the medium term, is a headwind for our effective tax rate, in the quarter in which this kind of legislation is passed, we have to remeasure our deferred tax assets. So our DTAs remeasure up, and that increase in the DTA, which was about $58 million, Yuri, is recognized in the fourth quarter of 2025, decreasing the effective tax rate in the quarter. So that's the portion that I attribute as a nonrecurring one-off event. The recurring ones is that kind of as we increase the amount of investments that we have been making in technology across the firm in Brazil but also in the other countries, we end up also benefiting from kind of a technology investment tax breaks that some of the governments provide. And that may increase a little bit the OpEx, but they are more than offset by lower effective tax rate. Those are the 2 aspects that have kind of impacted ETR this quarter.

Yuri Fernandes

Analyst

So very clear, Lago. And you also had the nonrecurring on the Prosofipo, like the deposit as you mentioned, so not the same magnitude but also negative versus this tailwind you had in the quarter.

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

No, Yuri. No, that's precisely clear. I think we have basically 3 one-offs in the quarter, right, what I would say. One is the $58 million DTA reassessment that we just discussed. The other 1 was the about $25 million one-off expense of the Prosofipo. And the third one was the $22 million provision expense for the return-to-office program, right? So those are the 3 moving parts that we have: DTA positive, return to the office negative and Prosofipo negative.

Guilherme Souto

Analyst

Operator, could you please open the line for Mr. Mario Pierry from Bank of America?

Mario Pierry

Analyst

I wanted to focus a little bit more on the provision expenses, right, because we did see your cost of risk go up this quarter. And last quarter, if I recall, you were talking about your ability to extend credit to existing clients because you're employing AI and then you're seeing a lower cost of risk in this reverse this quarter. So I wanted to understand a little bit better what happened with provisions in the quarter. Also, if you can talk a little bit -- you showed your NPL relatively stable. But this is a consolidated NPL, correct? And before, you were showing us Brazil NPL only. It seems like your NPL on a consolidated basis is lower than the previous number. Just trying to understand why the NPLs, as you're expanding into Mexico especially, are you seeing lower NPLs in Mexico than you had in Brazil?

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

Mario, thanks so much for the questions. Let me try to address each of them in order. So the first one is we did have an increase in CLA item this quarter. And I would be very clear. This was entirely attributed to growth, not to any type of asset quality deterioration experienced in the quarter. So we didn't see -- we saw asset quality performing very much in line with our expectations, including the seasonality trends. And now we are on like February 25, and we continue to see kind of our asset quality metrics. They're trailing our expectations very well in all asset classes in Brazil, in Mexico and in Colombia. So we watch this kind of quite closely, but as of now, we have not seen any signs of degradation in our asset quality. What we have seen to justify the increase in CLA is not only the increase in the credit book in itself, which you can see kind of in Slide 11 that grew by about 11% quarter-over-quarter, but also, Mario, in the increase in credit limits, unused credit limits, which do not show up as credit portfolio per se but are exposures for which we do need to build CLA. So again, CLA growth, entirely driven by growth in exposure, not degradation of assets. The one thing that I would highlight, at least, Mario, that I like to see going on a recurring basis when I look at those numbers is like NPL formation was fairly stable, 3.6 to 3.5, Stage 3 formation fairly stable. And one metric that I personally look as a ballpark, Mario, is the CLA divided by average credit portfolio. So it used to be like 3.9 fourth quarter '24, then 4.3, then 3.9. Then in the third quarter of…

Guilherme Souto

Analyst

Operator, could you please open the line for Mr. Gustavo Schroden from Citi?

Gustavo Schroden

Analyst

My question is regarding credit products and also client mix. We could see a relevant increase in loan book for credit cards and personal loans, but I'd like to explore more the secured loans. Lago explained about -- Lago, you explained about the FGTS change recently, indeed, has impacted the evolution of this portfolio. But I'd like to understand the appetite for payroll loans, I mean, public and private payroll loans, how the bank sees these products, we should expect some, let's say, replacement of FGTS by this private payroll loans mainly. So any view on that would be great. And also about the client mix, should we -- could you explain us how the bank is evolving in this, let's say -- exploring the affluent market, I mean, mid- to high-income customers, especially after this increase in credit limits? That would be great.

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

Thanks for the question. Let me try to address the first one on the breakdown of originations of our secured loans, and then David may address the second one on our performance in both the, what we call, super core and high-income segments. So I would basically divide our, what we call, secure loan portfolio in 3, right? So we will have the FGTS. We have the public payroll loans, and we have the private payroll loans. So FGTS is the one that has recently received kind of a negative impact of the new regulations starting on November 1, 2025. It has dropped kind of our originations by about 50%, and we continue to have a very good dialogue with the government to try to influence the agenda for 2026 and 2027. We have become market leaders in FGTS. It was a very -- it is and it used to be a very good product, and we believe it will continue to play an important role in the formation of our secured lending book. Even though if regulations don't change, will probably play a smaller role than it could have played before. But that's bucket number one. Bucket number two, public consignado or public payroll, which I put here, including both SIAPE and INSS, we are very bullish on this. We think it is still a market that has kind of a lot of opportunity to increase efficiency in the intermediation and in the distributions. We can offer products at materially lower cost than most of the other market participants. And it's now finally entering into time in which we will see interest rates drop in Brazil. And with that, we hope that kind of portability will pick up, and we like to believe that we're going to be one…

Gustavo Schroden

Analyst

All clear, Lago.

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

Perfect.

David Velez-Osomo

Analyst

I think I'll say on the secured lending side is it is -- continues to be a very significant opportunity for us. I think growing within that existing profit pool has been probably more complicated than we expected given the significant operational complexities that the product has. There is a fair amount of features that need to be built into the product, specifically around portability. Most of the growth of those products are portability and when customers are doing that portability, you need a lot of different integrations. There's also a fair amount of fees. All of that friction is going away. I think the tailwind, if there's one consistent tailwind in Brazilian financial services, is that all those -- all that friction and cost that historically have improved -- or had made it harder to move towards the best product, it's going away. So we're seeing accelerating market share gain, and we are ready to -- we're building a lot of those features, and we're getting significant share on the secured line. So while I wish the traction to date had been significantly higher, I think every single month, we're seeing an acceleration of market share and the tailwinds are helping. On the high-income side, we continue to see a very good growth. Again, this is a competitive environment. It's a competitive segment. A lot of banks, incumbent banks and others are going upmarket. We define upmarket for us as customers are making above BRL 12,000 per month. So this is not 1% of Brazilians. This is probably closer to 10% of Brazilians. And within this consumer base, we already have 2 out of 5. About 40% of those Brazilians in that bracket are customers of Nubank today. They're just not really using us as their primary card. We…

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

And Gustavo, just one additional point. We mentioned about the mass market, which, in our definition, our customers will earn up to BRL 5,000 per month. And then you asked about what is called high income, which are customers who earn more than BRL 12,000 per month, which was the answer that the David had provided. But in the middle, which is what we call super core, i.e., customers who earn from BRL 5,000 to BRL 12,000 per month, it is the segment in which we are growing the fastest, right? So as David mentioned that in the high income, we've been growing at about 40% per year. In what we call super core, we are growing at about 100% in 2025. So I would kind of invite you and others to kind of segment this at least in 3 parts. And I think there's a massive opportunity for us to go into the super core there as well.

Guilherme Souto

Analyst

Operator, could please open the line for Neha Agarwala for HSBC?

Neha Agarwala

Analyst

Keep it short. Just wanted to follow up on the private payroll segment. We do understand your concerns regarding operational complexities at this point, but we do see a lot of other lenders being more aggressive in this market. And the market has doubled during 2025. Do you see the risk of some of your customers who might have personal loan with you going -- or have a credit card with you going to other banks and taking private payroll loans and ultimately, their leverage increases and that could impact the asset quality for those customers for you on the unsecured side?

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

Yes, very good question. And yes, we are very mindful of those 2 risks, which I call kind of the cannibalization, i.e., customers borrowing from another bank and kind of us losing the primary banking relationship. That's one. The second one is structural subordination, right? So customers borrowing and providing the collateral and ourselves becoming structurally subordinated to someone else. The same can be made when we lean in into this product. Even though we have been very mindful of this, we have not yet seen any evidence that any of those 2 risks that you've laid out are materializing within our customer base. In fact, most of the customers who have been applying for private payroll loans have been customers with higher credit risk, at least that has been our experience, and most likely customers who would not be entitled to have access to an unsecured personal loans or even sometimes to unsecured credit cards. But it -- but we are tracking this very, very closely. In terms of the growth of the market that you've also pointed out now, I would highlight that there are a few things to adjust in this growth. One is there's just a natural shift from asset classes that were considered private consignado without the collaterals that were instituted by the government and are just now migrating to the new private consignado. Those are usually loans that have been carried by kind of the more traditional incumbent banks, and they account for a fairly substantial portion of what is seen as the growth of this new asset class, i.e., is just migration from the old to the new. The second one, we now see kind of players playing in this space with very 2 kind of different approaches. The incumbent banks who have relationships with the corporates when it comes to payroll loans, they are more focused on the lower risk customers, and the digital players are more focused on the higher-risk customers. But when we step back, we are seeing kind of this market operating with first losses of low double digits, which is not yet conducive to the quality of the collateral that this product can have. Once we see kind of a credit improving as the product will deliver, we will not shy away to leaning very heavily and the term cannibalization is just not a term that we use. We will be there offering the best product for our customers irrespective if they will actually use the proceeds to prepay or repay higher yield assets. We are not moving ahead with this as strongly as others not because of the risk of cannibalization but more because of conservatism with credit risk.

Neha Agarwala

Analyst

Understood, Lago. And in terms of cannibalization, yes, your NIMs might go down, but risk-adjusted NIMs might not be impacted as much even if you replace the credit from unsecured to secured with some of your customers, right?

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

That's correct. The other component of that, Neha, is that you may see, at some point in time, the amount of capital that you have to allocate to private consignado possibly being lower than the ones for unsecured. So not only risk-adjusted NIMs may be preserved or even increased in an absolute amount, but the return on equity may be as appealing, if not more appealing because you have to post lower capital to that. Yet to be defined.

Neha Agarwala

Analyst

I just wanted to understand why not offer the private payroll. And I understand that there are complexities, and you can price for those complexities and collateral not working smoothly. Why not offer it to some of the customers whom you deem to be riskier and you don't want to give them an unsecured loan at this point? Why not start off with the secured private payroll loan with them and price it accordingly?

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

Yes, we most certainly could. I think what we are saying is that the benefits of the collateral for the higher-risk customers have not proven to be material enough to justify a substantially different credit underwriting or pricing policy to date. But again, just to be super clear, I think it is a matter of when, not a matter of if. This is a good product. This is a good structure. This will benefit kind of consumers, by and large. We just don't think that is yet ready to be kind of the product in which we will lean in that heavily at this point.

Guilherme Souto

Analyst

Operator, could you open the line for Mr. Tito Labarta from Goldman Sachs, please?

Daer Labarta

Analyst

I guess my question is following up a bit more on expenses. First, you talked about 2026 being an investment year and thinking more about the global expansion. Just help us think a little bit about what investments are needed there because, I mean, you got the initial license pre-approval, I guess, in the U.S. But is there more investments that you need to make in the U.S. already in 2026? Just help us think about what are these investments that you need to lay this global foundation. And then also just specifically in the quarter, because if I look at the accounting P&L, which, I guess, is more comparable to the estimates that are out there, there was a big jump in expenses, and I know there was the one-off from the return to office but marketing expenses jumped quite a bit. G&A expenses jumped a bit. If you can just give some more color, what specifically drove those increases in operating expenses in the quarter would also be helpful.

David Velez-Osomo

Analyst

Thanks, Tito. Quickly on U.S., we will continue to invest. I mean, kind of we are investing more, mostly on team building and product. It's de minimis. It's not a significant source of investing for launch in the U.S. We did announce a number of bigger marketing partnerships over the past couple of months. And those really are related to both our core markets as well as U.S. and potentially future markets around the world. So there is an increased a bit on marketing. There are team increases that we're having for the U.S. launch. But I wouldn't say they're going to -- they expect to be significant in 2026.

Guilherme Marques do Lago

Analyst

And then, Tito, on your questions about the breakdown of our OpEx in the fourth quarter of 2025, I think the marketing one is a traditional seasonal one. It usually spikes a little bit in the fourth quarter of the year. The other one was incorporated in the tax breaks related to technology investments. So many of the increases in Lei do Bem that are recognized as OpEx, but they actually drive quite a bunch of off-tax efficiency. But nothing extraordinary or nonrecurring other than those 3 moving parts that we've mentioned.

Daer Labarta

Analyst

Okay. No, super helpful. And maybe just one quick follow-up for David. Any just initial thoughts on what the expansion plan in the U.S. will be, like just a high-level footprint on what you're targeting segments, go to market there? Any color or thoughts that you can provide would be super helpful.

David Velez-Osomo

Analyst

Sure. On a very high level -- and we're not really ready yet to disclose specifically what the strategy there is going to be, but at a very, very high level, this is the largest market in the world. And while, at a very high level, it seems like a very saturated or competitive market in certain segments, when you dig in into subsegments in certain niches that, by the way, happen to be the size of Brazil, we actually find opportunity to solve a number of consumer problems that are similar to what we've done in the past. So we're going to have a very targeted strategy. We're going to be very disciplined on investing. There are a lot of focuses on certain potential geographies or subsegments that we are interested about. You're not going to see us kind of shooting in all directions here because it's a bit of a long journey, and we fully acknowledge that this is a very competitive and sophisticated market in certain areas. But we do think that it's -- there are opportunities for us to create a meaningful business in certain subareas of the United States.

Guilherme Souto

Analyst

So thank you, everyone. We now have approached 60 minutes of the call, so we are now concluding today's call. On behalf of Nu Holdings, our Investor Relations team, I want to thank you very much for your time and participation on Nu earnings call today. Over the coming days, we will be following up with questions received tonight but we are not able to answer. And please do not hesitate to reach out to our team if you have any further questions. Thank you, and have a good night.

Operator

Operator

The Nu Holdings conference call has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.