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DATE

Monday, May 11, 2026 at 8 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

  • Chief Executive Officer — Mikheil Lomtadze
  • Chief Financial Officer — David Ferguson

TAKEAWAYS

  • Consolidated Revenue -- Up 31% year over year, reflecting broad platform growth.
  • Adjusted EBITDA -- Increased 9% year over year, signaling profitable expansion.
  • Net Income -- Flat, down 1% year over year, impacted by higher funding costs and COGS from Hepsiburada consolidation.
  • Board Dividend Recommendation -- Approximately 64% payout ratio, with ₸850 per share, matching prior quarter guidance.
  • Marketplace GMV -- Up 19% year over year on a constant currency, pro forma basis, excluding inorganic effects.
  • e-Commerce GMV -- Rose 41% year over year on a like-for-like constant currency basis; transaction count grew 43%.
  • e-Commerce Purchase Frequency -- Average consumer purchases per quarter increased 44% to 15, up from 10.4 last year.
  • Marketplace Take Rate -- Increased 90 basis points to 15.8% on the back of higher value-added service adoption.
  • Advertising and Delivery Revenue -- Up 73% year over year, indicating accelerated value-added monetization.
  • Payments Total Payment Volume (TPV) -- Up 14% year over year, with revenue growth lagging due to mix-driven take rate compression.
  • Interest Revenue (Payments) -- Accounts for about one-quarter of payments revenue; rose approximately 26% year over year.
  • Fintech Average Net Loan Portfolio -- Expanded 23% year over year, as the company emphasized longer-duration, revenue-generating loans.
  • Transaction Fee Equivalent (TFE) -- Declined 2% year over year, running below full-year guidance of 5% TFE growth.
  • Fintech Segment Revenue -- Advanced 25% year over year, aided by stable yields and a shift toward merchant and auto finance.
  • Fintech Segment Adjusted EBITDA -- Rose 12% year over year, despite higher funding costs.
  • Loan Portfolio Duration -- Lengthened from 7 months to 9.3 months, reflecting move away from BNPL to longer-term lending.
  • First and Second Payment Defaults -- Remained low at 0.9% and 0.4%, with stable trends since early 2023.
  • Portfolio Delinquency Rate -- Held steady at 2.2%, indicating consistent credit quality.
  • NPL Ratio and Coverage -- NPL ratio increased due to a portfolio shift toward lower-risk, secured loans, resulting in lower required coverage per management’s explanation.
  • Marketplace Revenue -- Up 49% year over year; Marketplace segment EBITDA up 12% year over year, primarily reflecting Hepsiburada consolidation.
  • Marketplace Revenue Mix -- e-Commerce represents approximately 60% of Marketplace GMV; m-Commerce and travel account for the remainder.
  • Geographic Revenue Balance -- Roughly half of e-Commerce GMV now originates from Turkey, with the balance from Kazakhstan.
  • Hepsiburada Operating Performance -- Business near EBITDA breakeven for the full three-month period, consistent with company target.
  • Full-Year 2026 Guidance -- GMV growth of 20%, TPV growth 15%, and TFE growth of 5% remain unchanged.
  • Capital Raise -- $600 million raised at 5.9% interest rate for general corporate purposes across Kazakhstan and Turkey.

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RISKS

  • Net income flat, down 1% year over year, "There's 2 things that are really driving it. One, higher interest expense. So I mentioned funding costs in Kazakhstan have gone up 20 bps year-on-year. So as funding costs actually in both Kazakhstan and Turkey, number one; and number two, COGS, what does that mean? That is just driven by the inclusion of Hepsiburada, which has this one key business that comes with COGS for 3 months versus 2 months previously," and increased COGS due to full consolidation of Hepsiburada for three months.
  • Payments segment margins pressured by mix shift, as "it's largely being driven by Kaspi at 95 bps and Kaspi B2B payments, which is a lower take rate product, growing gain share."
  • Fintech segment impacted by "higher fund of increased around 220 bps year-on-year," leading to ongoing EBITDA growth pressure.
  • TFE (origination) in fintech segment down 2% year over year, below guidance, attributed to strategic prioritization of longer-duration loans over short-term origination growth.

SUMMARY

Joint Stock Company Kaspi.kz (KSPI +0.76%) reported 31% year over year consolidated revenue growth and maintained guidance for full-year 2026 GMV and TPV expansion. The e-Commerce segment showed a pronounced increase in both GMV (41%) and purchase frequency (44%), propelling higher take rates and rapid growth in value-added revenues such as advertising and delivery. Fintech lending pivoted toward longer-duration, higher-revenue loans, with the average portfolio duration extending to 9.3 months, offsetting a reported 2% decline in origination volume. Despite challenging funding cost dynamics and mix-driven take rate compression—particularly visible in flat year-over-year payments EBITDA—the company managed a 9% increase in group adjusted EBITDA and reaffirmed a dividend payout aligning with the prior quarter. Management highlighted further operating improvements in Turkey and emphasized the ongoing shift toward sustainable, engaged consumer and merchant ecosystems across both core markets.

  • The company confirmed that about half of e-Commerce GMV now comes from Turkey, reflecting substantial progress in geographic diversification following the Hepsiburada acquisition.
  • Advertising and delivery services are materially boosting monetization, as revenue from these value-added components outpaced overall e-Commerce revenue at a 73% year-over-year growth rate.
  • Net interest revenue, constituting roughly one-quarter of payments segment revenue, grew approximately 26% year over year, yet was not reflected in the reported EBITDA figure.
  • First and second payment default rates (0.9% and 0.4%, respectively) and delinquency rates (2.2%) remained low and stable, which management cited as key real-time risk indicators.
  • The company completed a $600 million capital raise at a 5.9% rate, offering "more flexibility in how we fund those initiatives." across Kazakhstan and Turkey.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

  • GMV (Gross Merchandise Value): Total value of goods sold via the marketplace platform, excluding returns and cancellations.
  • TPV (Total Payment Volume): Aggregate value of transactions processed through the payments platform.
  • TFE (Transaction Fee Equivalent): A management-reported metric tracking new loan origination volume, used internally for fintech segment guidance.
  • Hepsiburada: Turkish e-commerce platform and subsidiary, fully consolidated by Kaspi.kz as of Q1 2026.
  • BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later): Short-term consumer lending product allowing deferred payments, referenced here as part of Kaspi.kz's fintech portfolio.
  • Kaspi QR: The company's QR-based payment solution, now dominant within its payment mix and directly affecting segment take rates.
  • B2B Payments: Business-to-business payments platform component, cited as a driver of mix-related take rate changes.
  • Take Rate: Ratio of segment revenues to underlying volumes (GMV or TPV), expressing platform monetization efficiency.
  • COGS (Cost of Goods Sold): Direct costs associated with goods sold through owned e-commerce channels, highlighted due to Hepsiburada acquisition impact.
  • NPL (Non-Performing Loan): Loans past due and unlikely to be repaid on schedule, referenced in portfolio quality discussion.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Mikheil Lomtadze: Thank you, David. Hello, everyone. So our -- we have started the year in the first quarter with the good growth and strong growth in e-commerce, which was driven by the also higher purchasing frequency and some of the services, value-added services showing additional monetization faster than the GMV growth itself. So our e-Commerce still grew 41% year-over-year on a constant currency and pro forma basis. And importantly, the transactions grew 43% year-over-year. And then frequency of the quarterly purchases now reached 15%, which is also quite a substantial growth of 44% year-over-year. We are remaining a very profitable company, and we're happy that the Board recommended a dividend of [indiscernible] or EDS, which represents about 64% payout ratio.

I mean the general sort of message for everyone is pretty simple that we are creating a much larger bigger, more diversified more diversified business. And now we're happy with both building on our strength of the Super App leading positions in our home work in Kazakhstan, but also creating additional growth in Turkey. The one thing which I wanted to mention briefly that e-Commerce for us is important. As I mentioned before, we are the company which is focused on the front end of the consumer and merchant relationship.

And when I say front end of consumer and merchant relationship, I mean to the point where the purchase and sale decision is happening and the purchase and sale decision is happening on e-commerce where consumers are searching, reviewing and buying goods on the one hand, in the future with the help of the AI agents. And on the other hand, you have merchants that are also creating those listings. And getting additional sales. And when you combine this together on top of it, you do have additional value-added services. The simplest today would be advertising and delivery value-added services, which have grown actually quite substantially about 73% year-over-year.

So we remain very optimistic, we believe in the future of our company. As you've probably been already learned that I have made investment myself alongside with Tencent and other long-term shareholders. and I remain fully aligned and true believer in the company, and we are really excited about some of the services we're working on. So hopefully, during the year, as David mentioned, we'll be providing more detail overview of some of the products we have been already launching, and we'll be sharing with you how excited we are about the range of innovations which companies is launching and working on. So that's pretty much everything from me at this stage. Back to you, David.

David Ferguson: Sure. So thanks a lot, Mikheil. I'll run through the financials, both at the platform at the group level and then guide on the guidance. So just quickly to sort of summarize consolidated revenue up 31% year-on-year and adjusted EBITDA up 9% year-on-year. I think the simple message, the first quarter, on track with where we expected to be. On the dividend, as Mikheil, [indiscernible] 850 per share. This is the same amount as when we brought back the dividend for the fourth quarter, and we said at the time, extrapolate the amount throughout the 4 quarters of this year. So it's consistent with what we've said and what you can assume for forecasting purposes.

And then at a divisional level, marketplace GMV growth of 19%. This is constant currency pro forma. So just to remind people, we acquired Hepsiburada at the end of January. So on a reported basis, it's in the numbers for 3 months this quarter versus 2 months approximately 2 months in the first quarter of last year. Pro forma constant currency gives you the true indication the real growth in the business. So Marketplace GMV up 19% on the same basis, e-Commerce GMV, up 41% year-on-year. So that's sort of the true rate of growth in e-commerce.

TPV, up 14%, not affected to any material extent by Hepsiburada TFE, down 2% with average loan portfolio up 23% and I'll talk a little bit more about that later on. So moving on to the segments. As we talked about, both at the full year results and for that matter over the last 12 months, e-Commerce is one of our most important areas of focus and will be one of the main drivers of growth over the next couple of years. e-Commerce GMV up 41% and year-on-year. So again, constant currency pro forma like-for-like, driven by purchases up 43% year-on-year.

And here, again, we've spoken about the importance of driving order growth both in Kazakhstan and in [ Turkey ]. You see the result of this or another way of looking at this purchases for consumer on commerce up from 10.4 last year to 15 this year. That's really an indication that the existing consumer base is becoming more engaged as we sale an engaged consumer base, it drives more opportunities for monetization around advertising, delivery fintech and so on. And it's the foundation of sustainable, healthy, long-term profitability in e-Commerce. So that metric moving very much in the right direction and contributing to the take rate increasing, up 90 basis points year-on-year to 15.8%.

And Today, around half of the GMV is coming from Kazakhstan and Turkey. So the businesses are broadly equal in size and importance with the bulk of the Marketplace business being 3P component is coming primarily from Hepsi, around 1/3 of their GMV is one with e-Grocery in Kazakhstan also contributing. Again, to reinforce that point, you now see e-commerce revenue growing faster than GMV because of take rate expansion or because of growth in value-added services. In this case, this is advertising and delivery. Revenue up 73% year-on-year versus e-commerce revenue growth, up 58% year-on-year. So again, with a more engaged user base, more opportunities to drive monetization and you see this coming through here.

The revenue growth is, just to be clear on the reported basis. And then if we look at marketplace growth, so organic just to keep in mind, e-commerce is around 60% of market GMV marketplace GMV. The other 40% comes primarily from m-Commerce to a lesser extent, travel being Kazakhstan, GMV growing at a slower rate, up 19% year-on-year. but with revenue growth up 49% and EBITDA up 12%. What we are seeing really is that, that transition from offline to online retail or that transition from commerce to e-commerce is gathering momentum. Hence, the stronger growth from e-commerce versus overall marketplace GMV growth. Revenue up 49% from marketplace and EBITDA up 12%.

On the EBITDA, that primarily reflects the inclusion of Hepsiburada, for the 3-month period versus 2 months in 2025. As you know -- as we've said previously, the aim we have [indiscernible] keep it around EBITDA breakeven this year. So you've got a full 3-month consolidation of a business that's around EBITDA breakeven, slightly positive, hence, the slower EBITDA growth versus the revenue growth. Moving on to payments. Our payments, 15% TPV growth versus -- sorry, 14% TPV growth versus the guidance of around 15%, revenue growing at a slower rate, up year-on-year as a result of take rate compression.

That is consistent with long-run trends, driven by a change in product mix in favor of Kaspi QR and particularly Kaspi B2B payments and overall flat EBITDA growth. Keep in mind that EBITDA excludes interest revenue. Interest revenue is around 1/4 of payments revenue. And the EBITDA metric doesn't capture that. So it's around 1/4 of revenue, and it grew about 26% year-on-year. So overall, payments is large, more pure business but still highly profitable and highly cash generative as well as strategically being the driver of engagement across our other businesses in Kazakhstan. And then moving on to fintech, and I'll spend a bit more time on this slide.

So first of all, average net loan portfolio growth of 23% and versus TFE decline of 2% versus the guidance for the year of 5% TFE growth. We're deliberately choosing to prioritize longer duration loans that generate revenue that generate more revenue. So TFE is an indication of origination, but TFE in itself doesn't drive revenue for financials its average loan portfolio that drives revenue that drives bottom line of the business. So we're favoring longer-duration loans, which generate more revenue. You can see the duration of the portfolio has increased from 7 months to 9.3 months.

Effectively, what's happening is BNPL, small-ticket short duration is becoming smaller in the portfolio mix. and merchant financing and the general purpose loan, which has a longer duration loans to becoming larger in the mix. And while this change is going on, you have this sort of divergence between loan portfolio growth or widening between loan portfolio growth and [indiscernible] growth. So the combination of 23% loan portfolio growth with stable pricing, fintech yield of 6% year-on-year translates into 25% revenue growth and 12% adjusted EBITDA growth year-on-year.

And as we've talked about for now several years, the EBITDA growth is being impacted by higher fund of increased around 220 bps year-on-year on the back of the interest rate increases in Kazakhstan last year, and continues to pressure growth rates start to move down. And hopefully, now we are at the point where rates have peaked. That will be very helpful to growth next year, profitability growth next year. I'll also just talk a little bit on the risk metrics because I've had a lot of questions on this over the last couple of months.

If we look at sort of understand our risk in the portfolio and the dynamic, how it's changing first and set payment default, number one, and delinquency rates are some of the best sort of real-time metrics that we can look at. So first and second payment default, people who have taken a loan and immediately missed a payment. You can see that, number one, the levels of default are low. 0.9% and 0.4%, it's extremely low. And number two, if you look at the trend going back to the beginning of 2023, it's broadly stable. There can be some variation at different periods, particularly due to seasonality. But overall, it's a pretty flat chart, pretty flat line.

And similarly, on delinquency rates, so looking across the portfolio, people who've just missed a payment, a good indication, a good lead indicator for credit quality, again, exactly the same sort of conclusion, 2.2%, a very low delinquency rate. And again, the trend broadly stable over the last couple of years. So whilst a lot of people are focused on peers and then NPL metrics, it's also important when you look at peers to actually look at the sort of real-time risk metrics to get a true understanding of the health of the portfolio. On the back of those comments, cost of risk and broadly flat year-on-year or 10 bps to 0.7% versus 0.6%.

But on the NPL ratio, NPL ratio moving up, again, the same comments that I've made previously is the portfolio is shifting towards lower-risk merchant finance and [indiscernible] being secured that means is that the probability of collection on NPLs is improving. So we keep more NPLs on the balance sheet. This ratio is effectively just the time -- driven by the timing of write-off rather than the quality of the portfolio. As we keep more loans on the balance sheet because the probability of collection is improving with higher probability, lower NPL coverage, particularly for the car loan which is a secured product. So effectively, this coverage ratio is just a function, the change in the coverage ratio.

It's just a function of the change in mix of the lower portfolio in favor of lower risk products that require lower levels of coverage. And as mix changes, that will determine how the NPL ratio -- coverage ratio changes over time. It's not a change in the underlying coverage of a specific product necessarily. So here are the reported consolidated numbers. Revenue up 31% year-on-year up 9% year-on-year and net income flat, down 1% year-on-year. So just to put a bit more color around the net income trend. There's 2 things that are really driving it. One, higher interest expense. So I mentioned funding costs in Kazakhstan have gone up 20 bps year-on-year.

So as funding costs actually in both Kazakhstan and Turkey, number one; and number two, COGS, what does that mean? That is just driven by the inclusion of Hepsiburada, which has this one key business that comes with COGS for 3 months versus 2 months previously. Thereafter, if you look at the other cost lines, yes, we're making investments into Hepsiburada [indiscernible] if you look at the weight of the extent to which [indiscernible] product spend or sales and marketing spend is weighing on profitability is actually relatively minor under control where we'd expect it to be. On the guidance, GMV, around 20% for the full year on track, unchanged, same comment [ TPV ] 15% on track, unchanged.

And on the TFV, the around 5% whilst trending below that currently. To some extent, it's a mute point. The key is to drive faster revenue growth rather than necessarily to drive 5% TV growth Overall, that's trending to around 5%. We're on track for around 5% EBITDA growth for the year. Clearly above that in the first quarter, therefore, implying slower growth in subsequent quarters, but pretty much exactly where we want to be at this point in time. So on that note, let's open the call up to Q&A. Please, Elliot.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] First question comes from [ Gabor Kemeny ].

Gabor Kemeny: This is Gabor Kemeny from Autonomous Research. I have a few questions. First one will be on Turkey, where your loss is narrowed. -- significantly in Q1. You are guiding us towards breakeven EBITDA going forward. Can you give us a sense of what sort of losses shall we assume over 2026 in Turkey. Second 1 will be on the marketplace stay great, which showed a very decent increase in the first quarter. Can you give us a flavor how much seasonality did you notice there in the first quarter? And what shall we model here going forward? Some guidance would be helpful.

And then finally, you made a point that Kaspi interest rates falling might impact your NII next year. Can you give us some sensitivities to your funding costs and your NIM to fall in Kaspi [indiscernible] and can you comment on what you actually expect? How you actually expect CASA rates to develop from here?

David Ferguson: Thanks for the question. Maybe I'll start and then Mike may add some additional comments. So I'll do it in reverse order. On the last one on intrastate cuts, we don't assume any interest rate cuts in the guidance. this year. I think all you can do -- or we can do and all you can do is just look at trends in inflation data, and you can see that inflation has peaked in Kazakhstan. In September and has started to fall at quite a decent rate over the last couple of months. So that's an encouraging lead indicator.

In terms of sensitivity, I would just advise just to look at the full year results presentation from last year because there you see the impact -- we called out the impact of last year's interest rate increases on the net income in Kazakhstan. So I think broadly, if I remember correctly, if you look in 2025 in Kazakhstan, interest rates moving or our cost of funding moving up by somewhere between 100 to 150 bps knocked around sort of 4% of the net income growth in Kazakhstan, but that was also the set out last year. So that would be some proxy for you to take.

On the marketplace take rate, I wouldn't say it's sort of anything to do with [ seasonality ]. It's a function of advertising in the brand there's been a trend over many years of growing value-added services. which has been additive to take rate. And I would just look at again the sort of the increase that you've seen last year, year-on-year and use that as a proxy for what you might expect to see this year. On Turkey, we guide EBITDA breakeven. We've also talked about free cash flow positive as the guardrails, we're putting around this business. I wouldn't specifically comment on net income.

And I would also just comment that the main focus is really driving engagement, making the investments to drive engagement on the platform which will -- you'll see, first of all, through the orders, and that's the best sort of lead indicator for the progress that we're making in [indiscernible].

Operator: We now turn to [indiscernible]

Unknown Analyst: I appreciate your comments regarding the first call being more focused on financials. But I have to ask about the Tencent recently acquired a minority stake. So how should we think about any potential strategic synergies going forward from that? And whether it changes in any way you're positioning the super app in Kazakhstan and Turkey? That's the first question. The second one is about the marketplace growth in Kazakhstan specifically and the updates on smartphone situation? Has it normalized? And whether you see any impact from the from the currency ratio in the Middle East on the electronic supply.

And the third one -- final one is on the guidance, and we saw EBITDA growth trending above the full year guidance, it's 9%, but your guidance hasn't changed. So what kind of factors do you take into account on kind of maintaining the guidance? Should we expect some heavier investments in Turkey or any other reasons?

David Ferguson: All right. Thanks for your questions, Max. I'll take the questions on sort of marketplace growth and guidance and then maybe Mike will make a comment on both the Tencent and in investment. So just keep in mind, it's the first quarter. The first quarter is exactly where it's the smallest quarter of the year. Q4 is the most important quarter of the year is pretty much where we would expect it to be. And you will see in subsequent quarters, the timing of investment, having more of an impact on EBITDA and the bottom line. So I wouldn't get carry away. That's the first thing. On the marketplace growth, I'd say no material.

There may be some -- there have been some disruption, but I'd say no material disruption as a result of what's going on in the Middle East and supply chain disruption and broadly speaking, and he's a very general comment, the current macro situation is probably or the current geopolitical situation is probably more positive than negative for Kazakhstan macro, but a lot depends on how things evolve. Over time. So that's on your second and third question on Tencent. Mikheil, is there anything you'd like to add?

Mikheil Lomtadze: I mean it's exciting to have such a shareholder and the team that was working on the transaction in general, we have been quite admirers of Tencent believing that Tencent is the pioneer of the super app business model. So -- but I don't really have anything specific to comment. But in general, when you look at Kaspi -- Kaspi is the type of company, which is in the team, which is really hungry for knowledge and constant development and improving and developing some of the really incredible innovative services, which -- yes, which we always have a very strong pipeline of.

So I guess having this relationship with the Tencent and some other companies actually benefiting really us, but also we have a lot to share. There is nothing really specific at the moment, which I would like to discuss on this call. But again, you should always keep in mind that you are working with the company and with the management team, which is as hungry as ever is constantly learning and constantly thinking what is the next breakthrough product, which is going to change consumer realize actually the consumer experience and the merchant experience. So having such a shareholder is a good thing for us.

Operator: We now turn to James Friedman.

James Friedman: It's Jamie at Susquehanna. So when you originally bought as [indiscernible], your observations were that the service quality was below what you are accustomed to delivering and that you needed to invest in Hepsi, especially in terms of delivery. I was wondering where you think you are in that journey now is -- and the metrics that you use, what are you focused on? How have you improved the service? And what are your future objectives with it?

Mikheil Lomtadze: So I guess I will take this [indiscernible] Yes. So in terms of the strategy, the strategy in our understanding of the world strategy is this is not the thing which you sort of turn off from one call to another. So we did have a substantial discussion about some of the metrics, which we would like to bring our Turkey business towards and those metrics are really the Kaspi metrics and they are related to the frequency of the consumer purchases, speed of delivery, and accessibility of the financial options on the marketplace, which again drive the GMV per consumer. So those metrics have been improving quite nicely during last year, and we see pretty much the same trend.

Again, we retain the game exactly the same focus. So everything we do I need to make one sort of comment that it's -- where we would like that we deliver the same quality of the experience in Turkey like we do in our home market. So that's our goal. It does mean that the experience currently is -- I mean is as good as other players in the market.

And again, all the investments we're doing, they are around technology that are around organizing the data so that it's readily available in the structure for real-time decision-making and some of the models, which we're currently building to enhance consumer and merchant experience and then to deliver as quickly as possible and deliver on weekends or deliver on holidays, but actually deliver the items when consumers want them. So if you think from the number perspective, this is where all the investments are going and the increase that you saw in the investments were actually around those priorities. So we're quite pleased, and that's what is reflected in the growth as well.

And the reason why we're pleased is that these decisions which we are making and the new initiatives, which were sort of rolling out and completing on the, again, delivery payment options the advertising products, personalization, risk management, marketing, all those are giving the results which you see in the growth. And that's what keeps us really excited for such a large market. And just to go back again to our strategic strategy is that the e-Commerce. In Kazakhstan when we started our business, we started from sort of financial fintech payments and then e-commerce. And in Turkey, we're working backwards because we actually do have very strong consumer base. We do have the strong base of the merchants.

And we do have a the online interaction and traffic and the engagement from both. So now what we need to do is we really need to roll out some of the services and technology, which we have in-house and that's what you actually see in some of the numbers for the first Q.

James Friedman: Okay. Great. And when you think about -- so the engagement is increasing significantly. When you think about where that could potentially go? How do you see that traveling? I think the statistics are that the average U.S. consumer transacts e-commerce 4 a year. I think the average Brazilian is about 10x a year. So what do you think that, that will travel to over long term in Turkey, Mikheil?

Mikheil Lomtadze: Yes. Well, I mean, James, in our case, our sort of benchmark is really what we have already achieved in our home market. And if you think in terms of our home market, if I'm not mistaken, the numbers which we have discussed in the year-end, was it about 27 purchases for consumer and I think in our [indiscernible] in Kazakhstan, and there are about 7 purchases per consumer in Turkey. So that just gives you an understanding what we're really focused on. And again, we're not inventing anything. We're basically taking our playbook, and we're focused on execution and making sure that technology and data supports it.

So that's where our primarily focus on -- and of course, this sort of engagement, you are required to make some investments in order to explain your user experience in order to market it. And that's why this year is more of the, I would call it, an investment year. We do have a rules, which we would like to still remain a very profitable dividend-paying company. We do have a [indiscernible] for the decisions we make, but that's our focus. So we want to increase the consumer engagement. We want to have the right assortment for that engagement. We want to have the right merchant base. and delivery and the payment methods, which support that.

But the difference, again, as I mentioned, around 7 in Turkey and around in Kazakhstan. And Kazakhstan growing really, really fast. So it will be even bigger this year. So basically, that would be our sort of goal for [ Turkey ]

Operator: We now hand over to [indiscernible]. Please state your company name and proceed to your question.

Unknown Analyst: I'm [indiscernible] JPMorgan. And if I may, I would like to ask you questions on your strategy for Hepsi. Actually, this question has been partially answered like you have been consuming some cash in Turkey after stepping up in marketing campaigns in the past 5 quarters. And this also seemed to put some pressure on the working capital outflows. I mean, particularly in this quarter, which may be -- so a seasonal shift. I wonder how long will you continue on this strategy? And is there a specific KPI target that you would like to reach before normalizing the marketing activities? That's my first question.

The second one is we have also observed some decline in consumer financing activities in the first quarter in Turkey. Is this a deliberate decision like pausing on Hepsi products before you finalize your license approval in Turkey. And the third one is that after the initiatives that you have taken into care like listing of the small ticket items which you have been quite successful, actually. Have you achieved a more diversified category.

Mikheil Lomtadze: Yes. Thank you for the questions. So in terms of -- if I got them right, but please tell me if I miss anything. So in terms of the consumer finance and the consumer finance side, we have our sort of way of really working both on the product side, but most importantly, risk management. It's not only about originating consumer finance, but actually, it's about originating that to the right person at the right time with the right amount, but also in a way that the people are sort of repaying you basically. So originating is when you originate the wrong consumer finance, it's not an asset, it's a liability for the company in terms of the risk.

So we have been really happy with the way we have rolled out the new risk management system. And as we were rolling out the risk management system, we basically slow down the origination for everybody's benefit on the call, the Hepsiburada has fully owned consumer finance subsidiary. So actually, we, in Turkey, can originate consumer loans. But we wanted to get first the whole system, which Kaspi has to bring it to the to our business in Turkey. And then we feel now increasingly comfortable with opportunities to do more in the consumer finance. So that's on the consumer finance side. Again, we were not in a hurry.

We didn't want to originate anything above the normal course of business, and we're putting together the risk systems and data management in order to do it at the extraordinary quality, which is acceptable at our level, like we have cost of risk a bit over [indiscernible], which is the world class. So that's on the consumer finance side.

In terms of the diversification, what we have done really last year which gave us, as you said, the very strong results is we are focused on the merchants and we have realized that if we want to promote the merchants and give them ability to sell the low-ticket items we actually had to improve our delivery experience but also provide the reasonable delivery fees. So that's what we have done last year. We continue doing it this year.

We also rolled out our data-driven logistics platform, we're actually completing this in the first Q, and that's something which with the help of our LLM and forecasting models that will give us a substantial improvement in the speed of delivery and the quality. And we're quite happy with the performance, and we see the low ticket items growing really fast, but also 3P growing faster than 1P. So that's on the merchant side and low tickets. In terms of the marketing, again, we're a data-driven company. So we're not really focused on just making sort of driving the traffic in the short term.

So we're not driven by the weekly targets or whatever we're really driven by putting the system in place, which enables us to be -- to have a profitable growth in the future. So from that perspective, we -- when we do marketing we're not solving the short-term targets. We are actually building the engine to generate very sustainable curing and repetitive target traffic from our consumers. And yes, that's what we have done last year, and that's what we will continue doing this year. And our goal is simple that the consumers that we acquire, they continue to be engaged with us and deliver value and the profits in the future.

But initially, you really do need to invest in orders for consumers to experience your products and services.

Unknown Analyst: So is it reasonable to say that your initial target is more like frequent to focus, I mean, to take up to Turkey's frequency numbers close to Kaspi.

Mikheil Lomtadze: Well, our focus is engaged consumer base. An engaged consumer base comes with the frequency. So frequency is just one indicator that consumers love your products, and they come back come back to you and with you frequently. So yes, you're correct.

Operator: We now turn to [indiscernible] This is Sergey calling from Greyhound Capital. Good to see a result improvement in Turkey. I have 2, 3 questions. One is on Rabobank. Has there been any update? Or is there any reason for the delay? And then on -- in Kazakhstan on the payment take rate, you mentioned already, it has come down quite a bit. Is that the reason -- what are the reasons behind that? Is that the shared QR code and have we seen the worst in terms of the drop? Or -- and what can we expect going forward? And lastly, on net you already briefly touched on it.

I would like to understand, is it purely passive investments from Tencent or more deeper operation? And is there a potential that the acquire a bigger stake in your company from maybe other larger shareholders who want to [indiscernible]

David Ferguson: All right. Thank you for your questions. I'll say start. Payments take rate is nothing to -- I know we've spoken before about National Payment System. It's nothing to do with that. Either you look at the sort of take rate decline and you look at it over the last 3 years -- 3 to 5 years for that matter, I think you'd see that it's broadly consistent each year. And it's largely being driven by Kaspi at 95 bps and Kaspi B2B payments, which is a lower take rate product, growing gain share. So it's purely mix mechanical and it will continue -- to the extent that Kaspi QR continues to outperform other payment products.

But I guess, can't broadly go below 95 bps. It's kind of the floor. So that's on that. On Rabobank, no update, nothing to report. Base case remains that we have to close the transaction over by the summer. It's kind of out of our hands. The wheels turn slowly, but we continue to work and aim for closing at that point. On Tencent, I'm not sure if there's much we can add and I wouldn't want to sort of speculate on their behalf about what they might do or might not do in the future. Maybe that -- I think your question is a question for Tencent, not a question for Kaspi.

Unknown Analyst: Well, perhaps just if it's pure passive investment or maybe if you could answer that, that would be great

David Ferguson: Yes. All right. Sorry, yes, fair question. It's primarily a financial investment.

Operator: [indiscernible]

Unknown Analyst: This is [indiscernible]. Maybe I looked about 3 questions. one, I guess, is just a follow-up from the previous call. So on the payment side, obviously, the decline in take rate is understood, and you can see that in the revenue reduction. But I was just trying to understand what other factors are driving the drop in EBITDA because you could see the EBITDA was flat on a year-on-year basis. So if you comment on what the drivers there were. Then going to the fintech space, like you mentioned, the focus is to grow the car finance and merchant loads. Could you maybe give some guidance on what the implications of that would be in terms on the NIMs.

What are the respective lending rates for those segments vis-a-vis unsecured loans and NPL. And then last one just on the recent capital that you raised, the $600 million. If you could just give some insights into how that will be deployed will all of that be injected into Turkey. Or will there be some sort of split between Turkey and Kazakhstan.

David Ferguson: Yes. Thanks, Ronak. On the last question, the official line is general corporate purposes. What does that mean? There's no one specific big bang project, but across both Kazakhstan and Tech, there's multiple initiatives, growth initiatives. And this just gives us more flexibility in how we fund those initiatives. And we're pretty pleased that we were able to raise the $600 million at the 5.9% rate that we were able to do that at. So more flexibility at a cost that makes a lot of sense for us. So that's on that side of things. on fintech take rate, I think you should look at the trend over the last 12 of fintech pricing.

You should look at the trend over the last 12 months at the gross level, it's been broadly stable. I wouldn't want to provide guidance going forward, but I wouldn't expect it to be dramatically different to that going forward. And I think it was another question that I forgot.

Mikheil Lomtadze: Take rate on payments. I think the take rate on more payments answer is exactly the same and quite simple and that was something which we have said on every quarter of our results. It's basically that 0.95% is the acquiring fee on the [indiscernible] codes and the share of [ QR codes ] is increasing. And there is about point file roughly on the B2B payments, which is increasing even faster. So it's a function of the faster growing bigger numbers on the payment side. And in terms of the EBITDA margin or -- I mean, this is like, what, 50-plus percent EBITDA margin business. So I mean from that perspective, I mean, it's really a very profitable business.

It's just such a huge scale that there is no really economies of scale at this stage. I mean it's a big business. It's mature. We do are making some innovations in this field, like pay by [indiscernible], for example, which has closed to the 1 million registered users already and growing quite nicely. But again, this is really a business which delivers profitability. On the one hand, but also most importantly, it actually delivers the engagement from the consumers and merchants, which is the backbone for anything we do now, whether you think in terms of the e-commerce or if you think in terms of AI technology and things like that, that's the big bone for future innovation.

So the direct monetization is nice, very important. But actually, as far as I'm concerned from 5, 10 years' perspective, it's secondary. What it really gives us is gives us this huge advantage of having incredibly high-quality data, which enables us to train our models to be very precise in their decision-making.

Operator: We have no further questions. I hand back to you, David, for any final remarks.

David Ferguson: All right. So thanks, Elliott. Thanks, everyone, for your time today. Please feel free to reach us if you'd like to follow up on anything. We've got a few you guys in Kazakhstan this week. So looking forward to seeing you. So thanks a lot, and speak soon. Take thank you. Bye-bye.

Mikheil Lomtadze: Thank you. Bye-bye.

Operator: Thank you, everyone. This concludes today's webinar. You may now disconnect from the call.