Joint Stock Company Kaspi.kz

Hello everybody and welcome to the Caspi KZ first quarter 2026 financial results. My name is Elliot and I'll be your coordinator today. If you would like to ask a question, please press the raise hand icon if you have drawn a call via Zoom. If you have drawn us on the phone, please press star one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand over to David Ferguson, Head of Investor Relations at Caspi. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Elliot. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Caspi KZ's first quarter 2026 financial results call. I'm David Ferguson from Caspi. As usual, with me on the call, I've got our co-founder and CEO, Mikhail Lomtadze. The rest of the management team, key members of the management team, Tengiz Mesidze and Yoridi Denko, a deputy CEO. of the company. We're going to do things a little bit differently to how we've done them in the past. So for today and going forward, we're going to make the first quarter and the third quarter calls financial updates and where relevant updates to the guidance. There's no change to today. And then we'll keep the full year results and the interim results for more detailed calls where Michael will talk about the strategy, products, other initiatives going on in the company. So I think this should be a more efficient way of doing things, particularly I know a lot of you have multiple companies reporting at the same time, and it should make for more interesting full year and interim results calls. So on that note, I will hand over to Mikael. He'll make a couple of introductory comments, and then I'll take you through the rest of the presentation. Mikael, over to you.

Thank you, David. Hello, everyone. So we have started the year and the first quarter with 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 GAV growth itself. So our e-commerce did grow 41% year over year on average. 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 850 TENGAP per 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 business. And now we're happy with both building on our strength of the super app leading positions in our home market, 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've 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 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 products 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've made investment myself alongside with Tencent and other long-term shareholders, and I remain fully aligned and true believer in the company and you know, we are really excited about some of the services we're working on. So, you know, hopefully during the year, as David mentioned, we'll be providing more detailed 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, you know, Pretty much everything from me at this stage. Back to you, David.

Sure. So thanks a lot, Mikael. I'll run through the financials, both at the platform, at the group level, and then up 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 Mikael said, 850 Tenge a 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 four 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 Hepsi Barada at the end of January. So on a reported basis, it's in the numbers for three months this quarter versus approximately two months in the first quarter of last year. Proforma 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 Hep C virada. TFV down 2%, but 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% 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 results of this, or another way of looking at this, purchases per consumer on e-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 scale 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%. today around half of the gmv is coming from kazakhstan and turkey so the businesses are broadly equal in size and importance um with the bulk of the marketplace business being 3p the 1p component is coming primarily from hep c around a third of their gmv is 1p 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 again, just to keep in mind, e-commerce is around 60% of market GMV, marketplace GMV. The other 40% comes primarily from m-commerce and to a lesser extent travel in 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 M-commerce to e-commerce is gathering momentum. Hence, the stronger growth from e-commerce versus overall marketplace GMB growth. Revenue up 49% for marketplace. And EBITDA up 12%. On the EBITDA, that primarily reflects the inclusion of Hep C Barada for the three-month period versus two months in 2025. As you know, as we've said previously, the aim with Hep C Barada is to keep it around EBITDA break-even. So you've got a full three-month consolidation of a business that's around EBITDA break-even, 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 7% year on year as a result of take rate compression that is consistent with long run trends driven by change in product mix in favor of Caspi QR and particularly Caspi B2B payments and overall flat EBITDA growth. Keep in mind that EBITDA excludes interest revenue. Interest revenue is around a quarter of payments revenue And the EBITDA metric doesn't capture that. So it's around a quarter of revenue and it grew about 26% year on year. So overall payments, this large, more mature 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% versus TFV decline of 2% and versus the guidance for the year of 5% TFV 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 or financials. It's 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 is increased from 7.9 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 are the longer duration loans, are 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 TFV growth. So the combination of 23% loan portfolio growth with stable pricings, 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 funding costs, increased around 220 bps year-on-year on the back of the interest rate increases in Kazakhstan last year and continues to pressure growth. If 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 year. couple of months. If you want to look at sort of understand a risk in the portfolio and the dynamic, how it's changing, first and second 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've 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%. That'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 their their 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 again broadly flat year on year up 10 bps to 0.7 percent uh versus 0.6 percent and on the mpl ratio mpl ratio moving up again the same comments that i've made previously as the portfolio is shifting towards lower risk merchant finance and car loan, the car loan being secured. What that means is that the probability of collection on MPLs is improving. So we keep more MPLs on the balance sheet. This ratio is effectively just 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 MPL 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 is just a function of the change in mix of the load portfolio in favor of lower risk products that require lower levels of coverage. And there's mixed 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. EBITDA 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 two things that are really driving it. One, Higher interest expense. So I mentioned funding costs in Kazakhstan have gone up 220 bps year on year. So it's 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 Hepsi Barada, which has this 1P business that comes with COGS. for three months versus two months uh previously thereafter if you look at the other cost lines yes we're making investments into hep c barada but if you look at the the weight of the the extent to which tech and product spend or sales and marketing spend is weighing on profitability it's actually relatively um minor under control where we'd expect it to to be On the guidance, GMV around 20% for the full year, on track, unchanged. Same comment for TPV, 15% on track, unchanged. And on the TFV, the around 55% was 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% TFV 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.

Thank you. For our Q&A, if you would like to ask a question, please press the raise hand icon found on your screen if you've joined a call by Zoom. If you've joined us on the phone, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. When preparing to ask a question, please ensure your line is unmuted locally. First question comes from Gabor Kemeny. Please state your company name and proceed with your question.

Hi there. 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 break even needed going forward. Can you give us a sense of what sort of losses shall we assume? over 2026 in Turkey. Second one will be on the marketplace take rate, 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 Kazakh interest rates falling might impact your NII next year. Can you give us some sensitivities to your funding costs and your NIM to falling Kazakh rates? And can you comment on what you actually expect, how you actually expect Kazakh rates to develop from here? Thank you.

OK, Gabor, thanks for the questions. Maybe I'll start and then Mikael may add some additional comments. So I'll do it in reverse order on the last one on interest rate cuts. We don't assume any interest rate cuts in the guidance this this 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 advise just to look at the full year results presentation from last year, because there you see the impact we pulled 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 all sort of set out last year. So that would be a decent 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 and delivery, and there's been a trend over many years of growing value-added services, which has been additive to tape rate. And I would just look at, again, 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. at least EBITDA break even. 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'd also just comment that the main focus is really driving engagement, making the investments to drive engagement on the platform, which you'll see first of all through the orders. That's the best sort of lead indicator for the progress that we're making.

It's very clear. Thank you, David.

Thanks, Gabo. Next question, please.

We now turn to Max. Your line is open, please go ahead.

Hi, Max. Hi, sorry. Thank you for the presentation. I appreciate your comments regarding the first goal being more focused on financials, but I have to ask about the Tencent recently acquiring a minority stake. So how should we think about any potential strategic synergies going forward from that and whether it changes in any way your positioning of 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 the smartphone situation. Has it normalized? And whether you see any impact from the current situation 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 when maintaining the guidance? Should we expect some heavier investments in Turkey or any other reasons? Thank you.

All right. Thanks for your questions, Max. I'll take the questions on sort of marketplace growth and guidance, and then maybe Mikael will make a comment on both the Tencent and his own in investment. So yeah, 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'd 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 carried away. That's the first thing. On the marketplace growth, I'd say no material. There may be some disruption, but I'd say no material disruption. as a result of what's going on in the middle eastern or supply chain uh disruption and broadly speaking and there's a very general comment the current macro situation is probably or the current geopolitical situation is probably more positive than negative for kazakhstan um macro but a lot depends on how things evolve over time so that's on your second and third question on tencent mikhail is there anything you'd like to add

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 I don't really have anything specific to comment, but in general, When you look at Caspi, Caspi 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 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. So 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 hungarian as as ever is constantly learning and constantly thinking you know what is the next uh breakthrough product which is going to change consumer uh revolution arise actually consumer experience of the merchant experience so having such a shareholder is a good thing for us thank you great thank you so much

We now turn to James Friedman. Please state your company name and proceed with your question.

Hi, good evening, good morning. It's Jamie at Susquehanna. So when you originally bought Hep C Barada, your observations were that the service quality was below what you expected. are accustomed to delivering and that you needed to invest in Hepsby, especially in terms of delivery. I was wondering where you think you are in that journey now. And the metrics that you use, what do you focus on? How have you improved the service and what are your future objectives with it?

So I guess I will take this call, David, right? Yeah, so in terms of the strategy, you know, the strategy in our understanding of the word strategy is this is not the thing which you sort of turn on or off from one call to another. So we did have a substantial discussion about some of the metrics which we would like to bring forward. our Turkey business towards, and those metrics are really the Caspis metrics, and they're related to the frequency of the consumer purchases, speed of delivery, and accessibility of the financial options on the marketplace, which again drive the the the gnd per consumer so those metrics have been improving uh quite nicely uh during last year and we see pretty much the same uh the same trend again we we re retain the game you know exactly the same focus so everything we do i i need to make one sort of this 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 as good as other players on the market. And again, all the investments we're doing, they are around technology, they 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 the 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're making and the new initiatives which we're 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, where 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 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 what you actually see in some of the numbers for the first queue.

Okay, great. And when 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 40 times a year. I think the average Brazilian is about 10 times a year. So what do you think that that will travel to over long term in Turkey, Mikael?

Yeah, well, I mean, Jamie, 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've discussed in the year end, was it about 27 purchases per consumer? And I think in our whole market in Kazakhstan, and there are about seven 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 know, 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, you know, 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 quadrails 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 seven in Turkey and around 27 in Kazakhstan and in Kazakhstan growing really, really fast. So it will be even bigger this year. So basically that would be our sort of goal for Tokyo.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. I'll drop back in the queue. Thank you, James.

We now hand over to Hansad Kalikaran. Please state your company name and proceed to your questions.

Mihael, David, thank you for the presentation. I'm Hanzade Kılıçkıran, covering Hepsi Brother at JP Morgan. If I may, I would like to ask a few questions on your strategy for Hepsi. Actually, this question has been partially answered, but you have been consuming some cash in Turkey after stepping up in marketing campaigns in the past few quarters. And this also seemed to put some pressure on the working capital outflows. I mean, particularly in this quarter, which may be 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 HepsiPay products before you finalize your license approval in Turkey? And the third one is that after the initiatives that you have taken in Turkey, like listing of the small ticket items, which you have been quite successful, actually, have you achieved a more diversified GMB ads per category? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for the questions. So in terms of if I got them right, but you please tell me if I missed anything. So in terms of the consumer finance and the consumer finance side, you know, we have our... sort of way of really working both on the product side, but most importantly, you know, 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, uh, really happy with the, with the way we have, uh, rolled out the, you know, the new risk management system. And as we were rolling, rolling out the risk management system, you know, we basically slow down the origination. If for everybody's, um, benefit on the call, the Hepsiburada has fully owned consumer finance subsidiary. So actually, you know, we in Turkey can originate consumer loans, but we wanted to get first the whole system which, you know, Kaspi has to bring it to our business in Turkey and then, you know, we feel now increasingly comfortable with the 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. Ivan Medennikov, 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. Ivan Medennikov, At the at the at our level, like we have you know cost of risk a bit over two in custody, which is the world class so that's on a consumer finance side in terms of the diversification well 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 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 roll out Our data-driven logistics platform, we're actually completing this in the first queue, 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 driving the traffic in the short term. So we're not driven by the weekly targets or whatever. We're really but putting the system in place, which enables us to have a profitable growth in the future. So from that perspective, when we do marketing, we're not solving the short-term targets. We are actually building the engine to generate very sustainable, recurring and repetitive target traffic from our consumers. And yeah, 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 in the future. But, you know, initially, you really do need to invest in orders for consumers to experience your products and services.

And thank you, Mihail. So is it reasonable to say that your initial target is more like frequency focus? I mean, to take up the Turkey's air frequency numbers close to Kaspi?

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

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Handel.

We now turn to Sergei Belezarov. Please state your company name and proceed with your question.

Hi, this is Sergey calling from Greyhound Capital. Good to see a results improvement in Turkey. I have two or three questions. One is on Rabobank. Has there been any update or is there any reason for the delay? And then in Kazakhstan on the payment take rate, you mentioned already it has come down quite a bit. What are the reasons behind that? Is it the shared QR code? And have we seen the worst in terms of the drop or... What's the current situation? And what can we expect going forward? And lastly, on 10 cents, you already briefly touched on it. I would like to understand is it purely passive investments from 10 cents or more deeper cooperation? And is there potential that they acquire a bigger stake in your company from maybe our larger shareholders who want to sell? Thank you.

All right, Serge, thank you for your questions. I'll certainly start. Payments take rate, it's 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 three years, three to five years for that matter, I think you'd see that it's broadly consistent each year. And it's largely been driven by Caspi QR at 95 pips, and Caspi B2B payments, which is a lower take rate product growing in share. So it's purely mixed mechanical. And it will continue to the extent that CaspiQR continues to outperform other payment products. But I guess can't broadly go below 95 pips. It's kind of the floor. So that's on that. On Rabobank, no update, nothing to report. Base case remains that we hope 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 Caspi.

Well, perhaps just if it's pure passive investment or a deeper cooperation, maybe if you could answer that, that would be great.

All right. Sorry. Yeah. Fair question. It's primarily a financial investment.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

We now turn to Ronat Gadhia. Please state your company name and proceed with your question.

but Ronaki might be on mute.

Hey, good afternoon. I hope you can hear me now. Yes, this is Rana from Danros. Maybe I've got about three questions. First one, I guess, is just a follow up from the previous caller. 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 are the factors that are driving the drop in EBITDA? Because you could see the EBITDA was flat on your basis. So if you could just 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 loans. Could you maybe give some guidance on what the implications of that would be in terms of on the NIMS? What are the respective lending rates for those segments vis-a-vis unsecured loans and BNPL? And then the 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? Thank you.

Yeah, 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 Turkey, 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. I mean, 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've forgotten.

Take rate on payments. I think, you know, take rate on payments, its answer is exactly the same and quite simple. And that what's something which we have said on every quarter of our results is basically that 0.95% is the acquiring fee on the QR codes. And the share of QR codes is increasing. And there is about 0.5 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, 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, you know, economies of scale at this stage. I mean, it's a big business. It's matured. We are making some innovations in this. Pay by Palm, for example, which has close to the 1 million registered users already and growing quite nicely. But again, this is a really big business which delivers profitability on the one hand, but also, most importantly, 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, you know, future innovations. So the direct monetization is nice, very important, but actually, as far as I'm concerned, from five, 10 years perspective, it's secondary. What it really gives us is gives us this huge advantage of having, you know, incredibly high quality data, which enables us to train our models to be very precise in their decision-making. That's it.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

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

All right. So thanks, Elliot. Thanks, everyone, for your time today. Please feel free to reach out if you'd like to follow up on anything. I know we've got a few guys in Kazakhstan this week, so looking forward to seeing you. So thanks a lot and speak soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

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