MoneyHero Stock

Good day, and welcome to the MoneyHero Group Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the call over to Gretchen Kwan, Head of Corporate Affairs and Communications. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to MoneyHero's 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. I'm Gretchen Kwan, Head of Corporate Affairs and Communications at MoneyHero Group.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that today's call will include forward-looking statements, which are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties and may not be realized in the future for various reasons as stated in our earnings press release, which was issued earlier today and is also available on our IR website. In addition, please note that today's discussion will include both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures for comparison purpose only. For our reconciliations of these non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures, please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings. Lastly, a webcast replay and the script of this conference call will be available on our IR website.

Joining me on the call today is Daniel Leung, Interim CEO and CFO, who will go over our strategy and business updates, operating highlights and financial performance for the second quarter of 2026. Please note that we will not be holding a Q&A session today. If you have any questions, please contact our Investor Relations team after the call.

With that, let me turn the call over to Danny.

Thank you, Gretchen. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss MoneyHero Group's second quarter 2026 financial results. The underlying trajectory of the business remained resilient with the second quarter delivering continued improvement in unit economics, approval quality and cost discipline alongside sustained operational strength in our core markets of Hong Kong and Singapore.

Net loss for the quarter was $1.2 million, which reflects foreign exchange rather than any change in our operating trajectory. Adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed 17% year-over-year to $1.6 million in the quarter and 49% year-over-year to only $2.7 million for the first half of 2026. While constant FX EBITDA loss, which excludes unrealized foreign exchange impact, narrowed 64% year-over-year to $0.9 million. We ended the period with $28.2 million in cash and no debt. This progress is alongside a deliberate decision on how we acquire customers, which also shaped our reported revenue. Revenue was $15.8 million in the second quarter, down 13% year-over-year. While for the first 6 months of 2026, revenue remained essentially flat year-over-year at $32.3 million.

However, these headline figures understate the underlying progress we have made due to strategic decision to deploy cash rewards in Singapore and Hong Kong, where there is a growing consumer preference for flexible cash incentive. This allows us to attract high-intent customers more cost effectively. Under IFRS accounting rules, these cash rewards are deducted from revenue rather than recorded as a cost. Cash rewards totaled $5.1 million in the quarter, up 77% year-over-year from $2.9 million in the prior year period.

On the 6-month basis, cash reward totaled $9.2 million, up 66% year-over-year, with Singapore representing the largest share at $7.3 million and Hong Kong at $1.9 million. Adding these rewards back in, the total transaction value of our business becomes clearer, holding flat year-over-year in the quarter at $20.9 million and up 9% year-over-year to $41.5 million over the first 6 months of the year. This growth over the past half year reflects a deliberate choice against a dynamic market environment, we prioritized margin quality, conversion and operating efficiencies over chasing lower-yielding volume even as application volumes softened.

I will now walk through our performance by market and product verticals, our operating metrics, cost management and AI transformation, bottom line performance and financial position. Hong Kong, still our anchor market, held broadly flat year-over-year at $7.8 million, representing half of total group revenue and grew 15% year-over-year to $16.3 million on a 6-month basis. This performance underscores the resilience of our leadership position in Hong Kong and provides an important anchor for the group during a softer quarter in some of the other markets.

On an operational volume basis, the total transaction volume of Hong Kong grew 21% year-over-year in the first half. That strength is showing up in profitability, too. Hong Kong segment profit surged to $0.5 million in the first half from $0.1 million in the prior year period. At the same time, we remain focused on identifying sustainable opportunities to deepen customer engagement, increase cross-selling and grow our product relationships in Hong Kong.

In Singapore, the underlying operating momentum continued to expand. Because our cash rewards deployment was heavily concentrated in Singapore, reported revenue declined 20% year-over-year to $6.2 million, mainly reflecting the impact of the cash rewards. On a 6-month basis, Singapore revenue moderated by only 8% but our disciplined focus on higher-margin conversions successfully translated into improving underlying unit economics. When adding back those cash rewards, however, our total transaction value in Singapore actually grew 9% year-over-year in the first half of 2026. In fact, on a 6-month basis, Singapore delivered segment profit of $0.2 million, a powerful turnaround from $0.5 million loss in the prior year period.

Credit card revenue declined 18% year-over-year to $8.9 million, and this is where the shift toward cash rewards is concentrated. Combined revenue from Wealth and Insurance was $4.7 million, representing 30% of total revenue, up from 27% in the prior year period. Within that, Insurance revenue declined 7% year-over-year to $2.4 million. And so the increase in contribution reflects the relative resilience of these verticals against credit cards rather than growth in absolute terms during the quarter. On a 6-month basis, the underlying product mix trend was more evident. Combined Wealth and Insurance revenue grew 11% year-over-year to $9.3 million, representing 29% of total revenue, with Wealth up 22% year-over-year to $4.8 million. Personal Loan and Mortgages revenue declined 2% year-over-year to $2 million for the quarter. The first half growth in combined Wealth and Insurance revenue continued to validate our product diversification strategy.

We continue to scale our AI transformation initiative during the second quarter with a focus on simplifying our technology platform, automating engineering and operational workflows and improving productivity across the organization. Technology costs fell 50% year-over-year to $0.5 million through platform consolidation and AI-driven automation. Advertising and marketing expenses fell 12% year-over-year to $4 million, supported by more disciplined data-driven campaign allocation. Employee benefit expenses were $3.9 million, up 6% year-over-year, balanced against those savings by targeted investment in employee capabilities to support our higher-margin verticals and AI initiatives.

Total operating costs and expenses, excluding net foreign exchange difference, declined 12% year-over-year to $18.2 million. Because cash rewards are recognized as deduction from revenue under IFRS, while noncash rewards are recognized as a cost of revenue, the same shift that reduced reported revenue also drove a 17% year-over-year decline in our cost of revenue to $7.6 million, supported by the more selective customer acquisition spend and higher converting traffic. Cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue improved 3 percentage points year-over-year to 48%. The reduction in technology costs and advertising and marketing are separate from reward mix and from the movement in the top line. Even in a quarter of lower revenue, we held spend down across customer acquisition, technology and other operating costs.

Approval rate nonetheless expanded 9 percentage points from the prior year period to 48% and approved applications declined by a smaller 15%, alongside continued growth in revenue per approved application in both the quarter and the first half of the year, clear evidence that we are converting a smaller but higher quality funnel more efficiently.

Let me turn to Product & Technology. Last quarter, I described AI as our engine. This quarter, I want to show what it has delivered and what it is building next. Our in-house voucher management system went live in Hong Kong in July for Apple gift cards, which is our largest reward type, cutting delivery time to customers by half and eliminating third-party handling fees. We will extend it to Singapore and to more reward types, including travel, e-commerce, and supermarket vouchers. A single engineer on our team took it from prototype to production in under 3 months. Versus a conventional build, we estimate would have needed a team of around 10 working for most of a year. And every release still goes through our standard engineering review and sign off.

We are applying the same approach to 2 more projects. First, a fully AI-assisted conversational experience that combines customer support and product discovery. A user describes what they need in their own words and is guided directly to our right products, content and rewards. We are also structuring our product data and content, so third-party GenAI platforms and search engines can cite MoneyHero directly. So wherever a customer's journey begins, it completes on our platform with the applications, the rewards and the member relationship staying with us, both rolled out market by market within our compliance and control frameworks in Q4 this year.

Second, which is the member dashboard. Which is a rebuilt experience that gives members one place to track rewards issued directly through the voucher system, live in Singapore this month and expanding to Hong Kong and other markets later this year. Upcoming releases add insurance policies, single log-in and personalized suggestions. Rewards status queries are one of our largest source of support contacts. So this also lower support cost while giving members a reason to return between transactions. And returning members is one we don't need to acquire again, which meaningfully cuts our acquisition cost.

Finally, the least visible piece and maybe the one that matters most over time. We're rebuilding the internal system behind rewards, insurance operations, customer service and our data. Many built or bought at different stage of our growth, some still carrying external fees and dependencies. The voucher system is a template. We are now applying the same approach group-wide, including legal and compliance within the controls of a regulated financial business. Each system we rebuild lower our run cost and give our products a cleaner foundation. And as before, savings fund the next build, so we don't expect that this to require significant additional capital expenditure. Together, this is how the AI capability I've described turns into product, cost and revenue. One platform owned by us, serving members wherever they need us.

It is also worth noting we have also advanced several partner-led wins in Singapore this quarter. We secured exclusive partnerships with 2 of the country's largest retail banks, moved to a fixed fee arrangement with a global banking group and signed an exclusive partnership with a digital brokerage platform. Exclusivity and fixed fee economics both make our partner revenue more predictable and reduce our exposure to auction-based acquisition costs.

To provide a closer look at how we are executing on these growth opportunities and expanding our product suite, I want to highlight 2 key initiatives across our platforms. First, starting with Singapore. This month, SingSaver is expected to officially be launching a brand-new home loan comparison category, closing a category gap in our vertical mix, complementing our existing credit card, personal loan insurance, and brokerage offerings. We are bringing this to market through a pure affiliate partnership with Redbrick, a leading mortgage broker in comparison platform in Singapore. This allows for an asset-light entry. Redbrick manages the broker relationships and the bank panel, while SingSaver contributes our strong brand and high intent traffic. We simply earn a percentage of the loan value disbursed on each successful conversion, meaning that we take on absolutely 0 underwriting and balance sheet risk.

The opportunity here is significant. Housing loans are Singapore's single largest household debt category by a wide margin. In the first quarter of 2026, outstanding housing loans reached SGD 296 billion, representing 50% of total household debt, and this balance has grown for 10 consecutive quarters. Further, falling borrowing rates down from highs of around 3% towards 1.2% to 1.5% are supporting increased comparison and refinancing activity among both new buyers and existing owners. Targeting this market extends the higher ticket lending trend that is already contributing to our growth in personal loan and brokerage.

And now turning to MoneyHero in Hong Kong. We have been actively developing our online life insurance revenue streams. Over the last 2 years, our life insurance income came mainly from selling ad space and running small-scale lead generation campaigns. However, we are seeing a shift. More insurers are putting life products online and the local market is increasingly comfortable buying these products in a self-serve manner post-COVID. In response, we launched our first life insurance marketplace in the second quarter of 2026 to test the waters. The results have been encouraging across traffic, policies sold and insurer response, driving our 2026 run rate to roughly to double that of last year.

Given the clear early momentum, we plan to double down over the next 12 months, adding products such as critical illness in Q3, along with short-term savings, tax deductible medical, and personal accident insurance. Importantly, the incremental product effort is minimal, requires no API integration, allowing us seamlessly duplicate and adjust our initial marketplace. While competitor in Hong Kong focus on deep complex content, our strategy is distinct. We know that for simple products, many customers actually prefer a frictionless no-frills experience where they can get in and out quickly. Our substantial existing insurance traffic, particularly from travel insurance, give us a solid foundation in capturing this demand.

Looking ahead, we are also doubling down on our efforts to reaccelerate organic traffic with a specific focus on our core high-value markets of Hong Kong and Singapore. Over the past few quarters, our strategic discipline has yielded a smaller but significantly higher quality funnel with our approval rates expanding by 9 percentage points. Because we have successfully optimized the underlying conversion mechanics, any incremental growth in top of funnel traffic will now generate outsized highly profitable returns for the business. To capitalize on this improved efficiency, we are aggressively expanding our content generation and distribution engine. We are actively structuring our platform data, financial guides and product comparison to ensure that whenever consumers are navigating traditional SEO channels or querying in next-generation AI search engines, MoneyHero is consistently surfaced as an authoritative source.

By dominating these emerging search ecosystems, we will sustainably drive high-intent organic traffic directly into our new high-margin verticals, such as the home loan insurance in Singapore and life insurance in Hong Kong. Furthermore, the organic inflows perfectly complements the rollout of our newly rebuilt member dashboard. Once these organic users land on our platforms, they are immediately integrated into a sticky personalized ecosystem designed to encourage cross-selling, facilitate direct insurance renewals and maximize lifelong values without incurring additional customer acquisition costs.

Now going back to our financial headline. Impacted by foreign exchange, net loss for the quarter was $1.2 million compared with net income of $0.2 million in the prior year period, mainly driven by the net foreign exchange differences, swinging from a $3 million gain in the prior year period to a $0.1 million loss this quarter, a swing of approximately $3.1 million. Excluding the unrealized foreign exchange impact, constant FX EBITDA loss narrowed 64% year-over-year from $2.6 million to $0.9 million. On a 6-month basis, the improvement is more modest, 14% year-over-year from $5.8 million to $5 million.

Because that figure still carries roughly $1.6 million of nonrecurring legal and professional fees and other expenses, which we excluded from adjusted EBITDA, but not from this measure. And if we look at adjusted EBITDA loss, it narrowed 17% year-over-year to $1.6 million for the quarter and 49% year-over-year to $2.7 million for the first half of 2026, reflecting continued cost of revenue efficiency and lower operating spend. We end the quarter with a debt-free balance sheet, $28.2 million in cash and cash equivalents and $32.6 million in net current assets as of June, both stable versus March end. This position, together with a member base of $10.1 million, which is up 17% year-over-year, continues to fund our organic growth road map and support broader market reach.

Looking ahead through the remainder of 2026, we remain focused on translating the structural efficiencies we have established into continued full year adjusted EBITDA improvement. Our second half product and commercial catalysts include the home loan launch in Singapore, the rollout of our AI-assisted natural language search experience, the critical illness launch in Hong Kong during the third quarter, the rollout of the rebuild member dashboard to Hong Kong and the expansion of our voucher management system to additional markets and reward types. At the same time, we are taking targeted actions to stabilize and reaccelerate volume in Singapore and to rebuild our underlying volume in Taiwan on a more profitable basis amid dynamic market conditions.

Across the group, we will continue to sharpen execution, optimize customer acquisition and conversion and invest selectively in the markets, in the products, technology, and talent that support profitable long-term growth. These initiatives are designed to broaden our product mix, deepen member engagement, strengthen partner monetization and support the rebuilding of volume on a more profitable basis. We remain confident in our strategy and committed to advancing our key strategic initiatives and building a core diversified, scalable, and resilient business.

So thank you all for joining us today. While the broader macroeconomic environment has presented some near-term challenges, our second quarter results clearly demonstrate the underlying resilience of our core business and the tangible financial benefits of our strategic initiatives. We believe our prospects for the second half of the year are highly promising. By leaning heavily into our AI transformation and expanding into higher-margin verticals, we are actively unlocking new avenues of sustainable, profitable growth. We are particularly excited about our market, the launch of our brand-new home loan comparison category in Singapore and the rapid expansion of our online life insurance marketplace in Hong Kong.

When you combine these new growth categories with our upcoming tech rollouts, including our in-house voucher management system, the AI-assisted search experience and our newly rebuilt member dashboard, we are creating a much stronger, more efficient and deeply integrated platform for our 10 million-plus members.

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to our incredible team across the group for their relentless execution and adaptability as well as to our shareholders for your continued support and belief in our long-term vision. The path ahead is incredibly promising, and we look forward to speaking with you again and updating you on our continued progress next quarter. Thank you.

Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Good day.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to MoneyHero Group First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would like now to turn the conference over to Gretchen Kwan, Corporate Communications lead. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to MoneyHero's 2026 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. I am Gretchen Kwan, Corporate Communications Lead at MoneyHero.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that today's call will include forward-looking statements, which are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties and may not be realized in the future for various reasons as stated in our earnings press release, which was issued earlier today and is also available on our Investor Relations website.

In addition, please note that today's discussion will include both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures for comparison purposes only. For reconciliations of these non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measure, please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings. Lastly, a webcast replay and the script of this conference call will be available on our Investor Relations website.

Joining me on the call today is Danny Leung, Interim CEO and CFO, who will go over our strategy, business updates, operation highlights and financial performance for the first quarter of 2026. This will be followed by a Q&A section.

With that, let me turn the call over to Danny.

Thank you, Gretchen. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss MoneyHero Group's first quarter 2026 financial results. When we closed out 2025, we signaled that our multiyear strategic turnaround was complete. Today, I'm very pleased to report that our first quarter 2026 results reflect continued progress towards sustainable, profitable scaling.

While we delivered encouraging revenue growth and improved operating efficiency during the quarter, we remain highly focused on executing against our broader full year 2026 objectives while navigating a dynamic operating environment. We delivered total revenue of $16.5 million for the quarter, up a solid 15% year-over-year.

More importantly, what stands out is the quality of the growth. Our disciplined focus on optimizing unit economics has translated into meaningful operating efficiency gains and stronger monetization across our core markets and verticals.

For the next few minutes, I want to take you on a deep dive into the mechanics of this performance. I'll walk you through our geographic markets, breakdown our vertical product mix, highlight the structural leverage we are unlocking through our AI initiatives and conclude with a review of our financial position and capital allocation strategy.

Let us begin with our geographic performance. Our strategy over the last year has been to ground our growth in the most mature high-yielding markets while optimizing emerging markets profitability rather than chasing low-margin volume. This quarter, our performance was driven by our 2 core markets, Hong Kong and Singapore, which together accounted for over 85% of our group revenue.

Hong Kong had a particularly strong quarter. Revenue surged 33% year-over-year to $8.5 million, further solidifying our market leadership. We are capitalizing on stronger consumer demand for higher-margin wealth and insurance products. And the real story is our unit economics. Because of our disciplined customer acquisition strategies, gross profit in Hong Kong grew substantially. We are acquiring high intent users at a lower cost, resulting in meaningful margin expansion.

Singapore delivered steady revenue growth of 11% year-over-year to $5.6 million. This market is highly competitive, but our deep commercial partnerships and localized campaigns allowed us to also improve on GP. We view Singapore as a highly stable cash-generative foundation that funds our broader regional innovations. But perhaps the most compelling evidence of our strategic maturity is found in our emerging markets, Taiwan and the Philippines.

In previous years, these markets were characterized by aggressive marketing spend designed to capture market share, often at the expense of profitability. We have moved away from that approach. Taiwan and the Philippines continue to recover, supported by the structural leverage created through our strategic pivot to these regions.

In Taiwan, we successfully optimized our localized product yields, driving enhanced conversion efficiencies across our core verticals.

In the Philippines, we prioritized core profitability by pulling back on lower-margin volume. These initiatives led to respective year-over-year revenue declines of 17% in the Philippines and 12% in Taiwan, reflecting our prioritization of margin quality over volume to accelerate our path towards group level profitability. We are doing more with less and it is driving adjusted EBITDA optimization.

Turning to our product verticals. That same quality over quantity discipline applies, and it continues to accelerate our margin expansion story. For years, the personal finance comparison industry within our markets has been heavily reliant on credit card acquisitions. While credit cards remain vital to our business, they carry lower margin due to the heavy rewards and promotional costs required to drive volume.

Our thesis has been to compound our earnings profile, we must transition our users into higher-margin verticals such as wealth and insurance products. That thesis is now being validated by our results. Combined revenue from our higher-margin wealth and insurance verticals grew 31% year-over-year to $4.7 million. These categories now represent over 28% of our total group revenue, up from 25% in the prior year period.

Our wealth vertical was a highlight this quarter. Revenue expanded by an impressive 53% year-over-year to $2.5 million. This growth is being driven by successful complying partnerships with licensed digital asset platforms and top-tier retail brokerage, which are highly efficient and require minimal customer acquisition subsidies.

Insurance revenue grew 12% to $2.1 million. This is a direct result of our transition toward end-to-end real-time pricing journeys. By utilizing embedded architecture such as our partnership with Bolttech, we keep users on our platform to complete the purchase. This reduces friction, eliminates drop-off to third-party sites and lock in high-margin recurring renewal revenue.

Meanwhile, our core banking products continue to perform well. Personal loans and mortgages delivered 13% revenue growth, rising to $2.8 million. Because we are targeting high-intent borrowers, GP in this segment grew substantially. Finally, credit cards generated $9 million, growing 10% year-over-year and remains our primary volume engine.

As part of our reward optimization strategy, we intentionally recalibrated our promotional spend here. While this slightly compressed credit card GP, it ultimately drove a much healthier, more sustainable lifetime value for the accounts we acquired.

I would like then to dedicate a few minutes to our AI transformation strategy, which has become the backbone of both our day-to-day operations and long-term product development road map. Over the past 2 years, our AI investments were primarily focused on driving incremental operational efficiencies. Today, we are witnessing a far more meaningful structural shift.

AI is reshaping how we build products, the solutions we develop in-house and how we deepen exclusive direct customer relationships. First, AI has become the primary engine of our engineering work. Our team spent the time directing, refining and validating AI-generated [ work stream ] rather than writing code by hand. This shift enabled our team to deliver product updates and new features at a materially faster cadence and is the core driver of our sustained low technology and employee cost base even as we scale development output.

Importantly, every AI-generated deliverable undergoes engineering testing and sign up to the same standard we have always applied. To put a number on it, around 90% of our new code is now written by AI and then reviewed and approved by our engineers. This reporting methodology aligns with the standard disclosure framework adopted by a large global technology peers.

Consistent with industry practice, we view this metric as directional rather than a precise fixed figure. Our results speak for themselves. We ship faster. Our technology costs are lower, and we can do more without adding people in proportion. The practical impact matters more than any single number. Work that would have required a small team multiple months to complete can now be finished in weeks, sometimes just days.

AI is also reshaping our internal work of workflow. Traditional boundaries between product design and engineering teams are blurring. More team members can independently build functional prototypes while our engineers spend less time on manual coding and more time designing system architectures that let the broader organization build products safely.

Our biggest challenge is no longer technical development itself. It is redesigning internal workflows and upskilling our product to leverage, our people to leverage AI effectively, all within strict compliance and control frameworks required for our regulated financial service business. With in-house development becoming far cheaper and faster, thanks to AI, our focus has shifted to internal development.

Insurance is one vertical we are reviewing closely. Greater ownership of insurance workflows enable faster product launch, higher retained margins and better customer journeys, powered by our own first-party data. This remains an ongoing assessment rather than a fixed formal plan, and we will advance any such change cautiously on a market-by-market basis. Even so, it illustrates how AI can broaden the scope of work we can build internally.

Second, AI reinforce the strategic value of owning direct customer relationships. Our membership ecosystem represents our own channel independent of third-party search engines or external AI platforms. This channel brings together repeat engagement, personalized recommendations and our full suite of financial products. So we are investing heavily to expand it. We are evolving memberships from a one-off product comparison tools into an ongoing customer relationship. We will roll out these expanded capabilities in phases across individual markets. This strategic direction aligns naturally with our established capital-light member-centric business model.

Our next key AI priority is group-wide cross-functional integrations, moving beyond silo AI deployments within individual product teams to embed intelligent automation across every layer of the organization. That requires unified data sharing, streamlined cross-functional hand-offs and AI automation across all internal operations, including legal and compliance.

As a regulated fintech operating across multiple greater Southeast Asian markets, all AI deployment must operate within our existing governance and control structures. Much of this work centers on unlocking additional value from our internal members data set, and we are collaborating closely with our data platform partners to standardize and structure data assets for scalable AI use case. This work is still in early stage, and we will adjust our road map based on measurable operational outcomes.

Let me address the question we received frequently. Does AI pose a threat to our comparison platform like MoneyHero? We believe the opposite holds true. Generic standard product list can be easily replicated, but a trusted relationship cannot, especially one that aggregate offering from dozens of banks and insurers, retain direct ownership of its member base and runs on in-house AI technology.

Consumers still rely on trust guidance to navigate fragmented complex regional financial markets and our commercial partners efficient high-intent consumer acquisition channel. AI strengthens our performance on both fronts. When deployed responsibly with our ecosystem, AI enhances our competitive position instead of creating risks.

Most of the AI progress I've covered, deliver tangible efficiency gains, but the larger long-term opportunity lies in revenue growth. The same tools that have driven structural cost optimization are now being deployed across our consumer acquisition funnel and convert high-intent users. Our strategic direction is clear. AI will evolve from purely a cost reduction lever into a meaningful driver of sustainable top line growth.

The cost savings we generate will largely fund further AI iterations, so we do not expect outsized incremental capital expenditure to execute our road map. This is how we translate AI-driven operational efficiencies into a lasting defensible competitive edge for MoneyHero. This progress is already reflected in our results.

Our combined technology, employee benefits and advertising and marketing costs fell by 13% year-over-year to $8.5 million, down from $9.8 million in Q1 of last year. Let me break that down.

Technology costs declined through full stack simplification and AI accelerated engineering workflows. Employee benefit expenses declined because our AI automation now handles up to 70% of all frontline consumer services inquiries, allowing us to absorb significant volume spikes without adding proportional headcount.

Advertising and marketing expenses declined through data-driven AI-assisted targeting that concentrates spend on higher converting traffic. Despite this lean marketing framework, our approval rate increased meaningfully from 36% a year ago to 48% this quarter, and total approved application still grew year-over-year, reaching 156,000.

We are also capturing these users into highly defensible data mode. MoneyHero Group members grew by 24% year-over-year to 9.8 million registered users. We leveraged our first-party data assets together with AI-enabled analytics and recommendation capabilities to deliver more relevant and personalized product recommendations.

Consequently, all of this leverage flows directly to our bottom line. Our adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed sharply by 68% year-over-year to $1.1 million, setting a clear near-term path towards sustainable profitability.

Turning to our bottom line. It is important to address our net loss, and it is important for our shareholders to understand the mechanics beneath the operating line. While our net loss of $6.7 million for the quarter widened compared to the $2.4 million loss in the prior year period, this was mainly driven by noncash and currency adjustments. Specifically, we absorbed $1.1 million noncash fair value accounting adjustment from warrant liabilities and a $2.4 million unrealized FX loss resulting from regional currency fluctuation against a strong U.S. dollar.

I want to be clear, these are macroeconomic noncash accounting adjustments. Once you look at the actual cash generating power of the business, our underlying core operational metrics remain robust. From a balance sheet perspective, we are operating from a position of significant growth -- significant strength. We ended the quarter with a debt-free balance sheet, $28 million in cash and cash equivalents and $32.8 million in net current assets as of 31st of March. These financial runway give us strategic flexibility. It allows us to comfortably fund our organic road map and the regional rollout of our AI existed insurance journey without needing to raise dilutive capital.

Furthermore, having a strong balance sheet in the current macroeconomic environment is a meaningful competitive advantage. We are proactively evaluating business expansion opportunities in a disciplined manner. In closing, the first quarter of 2026 proves that the foundation we built is solid. We are growing our top line organically by double digits. We are compounding our GP by shifting our mix towards wealth and insurance.

We are utilizing AI to structurally optimize our operating costs, driving significant improvement in adjusted EBITDA. These results also reflect the strength of the team and leadership structure behind them. The recent Board changes are aligned with this next phase of MoneyHero's journey as we move from restructuring and cost optimization into profitable growth and scale.

The Board is focused on building a more efficient, scalable and profitable platform that can create long-term value for shareholders. Every new Board member brings deep experience in fintech scaling, digital consumer platforms and capital allocation, precisely the capabilities this chapter demands.

On the CEO search, as previously disclosed, the process remains active with a focus on finding a long-term leader to steer MoneyHero through its profitable scaling phase, someone who will bring disciplined execution, product innovation and sustained shareholder value creation. We will share updates at the appropriate time.

In the meantime, the management team remains fully focused on execution. Our strategy has not changed, and the Q1 results demonstrate that clearly. We entered the remainder of 2026 with confidence in our long-term strategy and growth opportunities while continuing to focus on disciplined execution, talent retention, operational efficiency and the successful implementation of key strategic initiatives.

I want to thank our incredible team for their dedication, our commercial partners for their trust and our shareholders for their continued support.

Thank you. And I will now hand the call back to operator to begin the Q&A session. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question is going to come from Calvin Wong with Spica Capital.

I'd like to have 3, if I may. First one is about your financials. Your adjusted EBITDA loss actually narrowed significantly by 68%, bringing you very close to breakeven. However, the statutory net loss widened to USD 6.7 million. Can you walk us through the main bridge items explaining this divergence?

Okay. Thank you, Calvin, for your questions. We welcome the opportunity to share the operational reality of our business, which we believe is best reflected in our shifting adjusted EBITDA trajectory.

Our focus remains entirely on disciplined execution and our adjusted EBITDA loss narrowing by 68% year-over-year to $1.1 million give us clear visibility on our path to sustainable profitability. This major step forward is a direct result of our permanent efforts to improve cost efficiencies, streamline our headcount and optimize revenue quality across the group.

Actually to understand the statutory net loss of $6.7 million, it will be helpful to look at the macroeconomics and noncash accounting factors and onetime items that impact our P&L, but did not affect our actual cash run rate. To answer that specifically, these include during the quarter, a $1.1 million noncash fair value accounting adjustment from warrant liabilities.

We also have $2.4 million in unrealized FX fluctuations, which was mainly due to the stronger U.S. dollars compared with our other functional currency within the group and another $1.6 million in nonrecurring legal and professional fees.

So if you strip away these noncash and onetime items, our core operating cost base actually declined compared to the same period last year, even as our top line grew strongly by 15%. This proves that our management team is scaling the company responsibly, protecting a healthy cash balance of $28 million and keeping core spending strictly under control.

Okay. Very clear. My second question is more on the key performance metrics. Your total applications actually fell from 434,000 to 329,000 and the absolute clicks dropped from 2.1 million to 1.4 million and you lost significant traffic in Taiwan and the Philippines. So does this drop in your operational funnel and user base mean your brand engagement is collapsing? And how can you sustain your 15% revenue growth?

Okay. That's a very good question. Thanks again, Calvin. The trends you see in our user traffic reflects our deliberate transition from a model focused on raw volume to one that actually focused entirely on revenue quality and profitability.

In the past, our traffic numbers in markets such as Philippines and Taiwan were inflated by expensive broad digital marketing campaigns that brought in millions of visitors who had no near-term intent to actually apply for financial products from our website. So by stopping those low ROI campaigns, we allowed our traffic and unique user metrics to normalize to the true baseline of high-intent consumers who come to our platform to actually actively compare and select products.

Our Q1 performance is a very strong indicator of that. This stabilization effort is working beautifully as group revenue still increased by 15% year-over-year to $16.5 million despite the drop. What is most important is that our revenue mix has shifted rapidly towards high-margin products with our wealth and also insurance segments growing 31% year-over-year on a combined basis.

So in fact, our total MoneyHero Group members, which track users who actually register and build a relationship with us, grew 24% to 9.8 million. We didn't lose our core consumers. We simply stop paying for anticlicks. That allow us to narrow our adjusted EBITDA loss by connecting high-value users with our commercial partners.

Okay. That sounds good. I would like to have a follow-up question on that. You can see that the Hong Kong and Singapore are effectively carrying their entire business with revenue contribution of approximately 85%, while the Philippines and the Taiwan's revenue contribution actually contracted to 17% and 12%, respectively, alongside, of course, a massive collapse in monthly unique users.

So are we witnessing an intentional strategic soft exit or downsizing of these secondary markets due to unviable unit economics? Or on the other hand, are you rapidly losing market share to local competitors there?

Thanks again, Calvin. Yes, I'll be happy to answer the question. What you're witnessing is the strict execution of our mandate to achieve sustainable adjusted EBITDA profitability. You have rightly pointed out that Hong Kong and Singapore process our strongest unit economics, the highest lifetime value per customers and the most mature digital financial ecosystems. So we have intentionally reallocated our capital, technology and marketing resources towards these 2 markets because quite simply, they yield immediate and highly profitable returns.

On the other hand, in Taiwan and in Philippines, we have experienced contractions in our organic traffic visits year-over-year. As the broader digital research, search landscape evolves and as we see changes in how search engines and AI impact traffic, organic discovery is facing pressure across all of our platforms. This is particularly true in both Taiwan and the Philippines, where our brand mode is still developing compared to our dominance in Hong Kong and in Singapore. However, the narrative of a collapse or a soft exit completely misses how we actively manage the P&L in response to these organic headwinds.

We did not just blindly buy expensive traffic to plug the organic gap. Instead, we actually optimized for unit economics. In the case as in the Philippines, we slashed our performance marketing spend by 57% year-over-year, bringing it down from around $1.1 million to roughly $400,000 specifically to protect our margins.

So as a result, yes, top line revenue contracted by 17%, but because we monetized the remaining traffic so efficiently and cut our acquisition costs, our GP in the Philippines actually grew. The story in Taiwan is very similar. Despite significant organic traffic headwinds, we managed the downstream funnel conversion so effectively that revenue actually only fell 12%.

At the same time, we optimized our reward costs and paid marketing, which improved the Taiwan's GP also. So to answer your questions, we are not stop exiting nor are we bleeding out to local competitors. We are proving the absolute resilience of our model. Ultimately, we successfully extracted over 40% more GP from both of these markets, even while navigating one of the toughest organic top of the bundle environment we have ever seen.

And the next question will come from William Gregozeski with Greenridge Global.

There's obviously been quite a few changes to the Board since the last conference call. Given everything that was speculated on in the media, and I realize it's just speculation ahead of that call, what are the takeaways we should have from viewing the changes?

Thank you, William, for your questions. Yes. So to begin, all our recent Board adjustment strategic refreshments directly align with our current business inflection point. We have now fully exited the restructuring and cost reduction phase that defined the past 2 years.

What I can say is today, we are firmly in a profitable scaling stage and focused on AI-driven margin expansion and delivering sustainable long-term shareholders' returns. This Board refresh is intentionally tailored to bring in the exact expertise required for this new growth era. Specifically, our Board brings deep experience across fintech scaling, digital consumer platforms, capital allocation and M&A governance. These are the core capabilities critical to overseeing our next chapter.

And also crucially, there is full alignment between the refreshed Board and the interim management team regarding the company's strategic priorities. So moving forward, we are completely united on 4 key pillars: scaling AI across all functions; and second of all, growing our high-margin wealth and insurance revenue; thirdly, to maintain strict cost discipline and also in advancing steadily towards consistent and also positive adjusted EBITDA.

Okay. Great. And then since there's not the permanent CEO yet, you said that's still underway. Can you talk about the Board's view on M&A or any possible uses of cash we should look for now that you're running around breakeven?

Yes. Sure. Yes. Thanks for the question, William. Regarding our search for a permanent CEO, the Board's formal process remains active and ongoing. As you can appreciate, we want to ensure we find the right leader for our next chapter. So we will provide updates to the market only when we have a concrete milestone to share.

Turning to your other questions on -- about capital allocation and M&A. Now that we are operating towards breakeven or better, our balance sheet remains completely debt-free with a very healthy cash reserves. Our capital priority continues to be organic reinvestment into our high-return internal growth levers. Specifically, we are funding our group-wide AI rollout and accelerating the scale of our higher-margin verticals in wealth and insurance.

As for M&A, the Board remains open to evaluating selective market consolidation opportunities. However, we are maintaining a highly disciplined approach with that. We will only pursue transactions that meet our straight predefined capital return criteria and clearly enhance long-term shareholders' value.

Thank you. This does conclude today's question-and-answer session. And I would now turn the call back over to Danny for closing remarks.

Thank you, Michelle. Again, thank you all for being here today. Our first quarter results reflect the next phase of MoneyHero's journey. Having completed our strategic turnaround in 2025, delivering our first ever adjusted EBITDA gain and a net profit in the fourth quarter, we are now executing on the next mandate, scaling profitable growth, [indiscernible] and leadership structure built for this chapter.

I want to take this opportunity to thank our team for their continued execution, our partners for their trust and our shareholders for their patience and support as we move into the remainder of 2026. We look forward to sharing our next set of results with you.

Thank you, everyone, and have a good day.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.

Good day and welcome to the MoneyHero Group Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Also note that this call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the call over to [ Gretchen Kwan ], Corporate Communications Lead. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to MoneyHero 2025 Q4 and Full Year Earnings Conference Call. I'm Gretchen Kwan, Corporate Communications Lead at MoneyHero. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that today's call will include forward-looking statements, which are inherently subject to risk and uncertainties and may not be realized in the future for various reasons as stated in our earnings release, which was issued earlier today and is also available on our IR website. In addition, please note that today's discussion will include both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures for comparison purpose only.

For reconciliations of these non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures, please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings. Lastly, a webcast replay and a script of this conference call will be available on our IR website. Joining me on the call today is Danny Leung, Interim CEO and CFO, who will go over our strategy and business updates, operating highlights and financial performance of the Q4 and full year 2025. This will be followed by a Q&A section.

With that, let me turn the call over to Danny.

Thank you, Gretchen. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. It is a privilege to speak with you as we close out what has truly been a transformative year and quarter for MoneyHero. Before diving into our results, I want to briefly address the leadership transition announced earlier this month. Since stepping into the interim CEO role, I've reflected on my time with MoneyHero since late 2024 when the company began navigating a strategic repositioning. I want to thank Rohith for his contribution during his tenure. As MoneyHero pivots to scaling profitable growth, the Board has initiated a search for permanent CEO to lead this next phase.

Having guided us through our 2-year transformation, I'm fully confident in our management team's ability to execute seamlessly during this interim period. Our strategic vision remains unchanged and our focus is entirely on capitalizing on the opportunities ahead and those opportunities are built on a rapidly strengthening foundation. I'm pleased to report that we delivered fourth quarter net profit of $0.5 million, a significant turnaround from a net loss of $18.8 million in the same period last year. This was achieved alongside adjusted EBITDA of $0.7 million marking our first-ever adjusted EBITDA gain since we listed on NASDAQ.

Our performance throughout 2025 demonstrates this clear sequential execution towards achieving better revenue mix, cost base and technology platform. This momentum was built consistently throughout the year with our adjusted EBITDA path improving quarter by quarters. We systematically progressed from an adjusted EBITDA loss of $3.3 million in the first quarter to a loss of $2 million in the second quarter, narrowing further to a loss of $1.8 million in the third quarter before finally crossing the breakeven point this quarter. For the full year, adjusted EBITDA loss improved 73% to $6.4 million from $23.7 million last year.

And our net loss narrowed 86% to $5.2 million from $37.8 million. This performance validates our strategic repositioning towards achieving better revenue mix, cost base and technology platform. Fourth quarter revenue grew 27% year-over-year to $20 million driven by a strong performance in our core markets with Singapore revenue surging 56% year-over-year and Hong Kong growing 27% year-over-year. Together, these 2 markets represent 86% of revenue during the quarter, up from 79% a year ago reflecting our deliberate concentrations on markets with the strongest unit economics.

At the same time, Taiwan and the Philippines continue to gradually recover as the operational issues seen earlier in the year following the exit of Citibank fade. Full year 2025 revenue was $73.4 million representing our strategic pivot towards healthier revenue quality and accelerating momentum toward year-end. Crucially, our cost of revenue for the full year also declined 7 percentage points year-over-year to 51% of revenue. This structural improvement was driven by a shift in revenue mix and optimized reward cost.

Our deliberate shift towards higher-quality, higher-margin verticals, particularly insurance and wealth, is directly expanding our margins and reinforcing the structural strength of our business. During the fourth quarter, revenue from insurance and wealth products together accounted for approximately 30% of revenue highlighted by wealth revenue accelerating strongly with 50% year-over-year growth. We see a clear path for our high-margin verticals to make a meaningfully larger share of our revenue mix over next few years.

These verticals already delivered twice the incremental profitability of our lower-margin verticals and generate steady recurring customers even before AI upside. This deliberate mix shift we have seen signaling all year combined with disciplined capital allocation into these segments is central to how we are building durable compounding earning power rather than chasing volume-led growth. Ultimately, this structural evolution in our mix coupled with better approval rates and optimized reward cost is expanding our margins and elevating the overall quality of our earnings.

For the full year 2025, total operating cost and expenses, excluding foreign exchange difference, fell 27% year-over-year while fourth quarter expenses declined 15% year-over-year. Technology costs dropped 59% and employee benefit expenses fell 33% in the full year supported by AI automation, which now touches up to 70% of customer service queries. This is a clear demonstration of margin first execution. In practical terms, this means our cost base will not reinflate as we scale. Instead, incremental revenue will increasingly flow through to the bottom line reinforcing our confidence in sustaining and compounding the profitability we have now achieved.

We have made strong progress with our AI initiatives. During the year, AI automation touched up to 70% of customer service queries. Crucially, in December 2025, AI successfully resolved 47% of customer service queries without any human intervention demonstrating how we are scaling operations and product support without proportionally adding headcount. The impact of this leverage is already highly visible in the fourth quarter allowing us to deliver 12% more approved applications year-over-year in the fourth quarter while simultaneously cutting employee benefit expenses by 32%.

We are systematically driving improvements in approval quality, customer acquisition cost efficiency and funnel conversion. For example in Singapore, our Car Insurance SaverBot is now in beta in WhatsApp delivering a natural conversational AI experience that replaces complex forms and meaningfully reduce acquisition cost. In Hong Kong, Credit Hero Club is building a recurring base of high intent users through personalized credit insights and monitoring. Importantly, our AI are continuously trained on proprietary intent, behavioral and approval data from our 9.4 million members.

This creates a highly defensible data mode positioning MoneyHero as one of Southeast Asia's most advanced AI-native financial decisioning platform. I will take the next few minutes to walk through the mechanics of our P&L focusing on the data, the operational drivers behind these numbers and how our financial profile has structurally evolved across both the fourth quarter and the full year. Let me begin with revenue. For the fourth quarter, we reported $20 million in revenue, 27% year-over-year increase. This represents the strongest quarterly top line growth we have seen in 2025 proving that the recovery pattern we established midyear has compounded into sustainable momentum.

When looking at the full year, revenue fell 8% year-over-year to $73.4 million. That decline needs to be interpreted precisely in the context of the deliberate reshaping of our volume mix, particularly in the first half of the year. We intentionally scaled back low-margin, high-volume products to prioritize margin discipline and healthier revenue quality. Crucially, this strategy yields exactly the structural leverage we intended. Our cost of revenue for the full year decreased by 19% year-over-year to $37.3 million dropping 7 percentage points to account for just 51% of revenue.

The modest annual headline revenue decline is a sign that our strategic pivot is a success. We shed unprofitable volume, optimized reward cost and are now growing rapidly again on structurally stronger higher margin base. What gives us absolute confidence in this path is the rapidly improving quality of our revenue base. During the fourth quarter, combined revenue from insurance and wealth products increased 31% year-over-year to $5.9 million accounting for 30% of total revenue. Looking at the full year, wealth revenue grew 19% to $10.1 million accelerating to a massive 50% year-over-year growth in Q4 alone while insurance revenue grew 11% to $9.1 million.

Together, they now represent 26% of our full year revenue, up from 21% a year ago and just 12% in 2023. The fundamental shift in our foundation is the core engine of our margin expansion, improving the predictability and durability of our earnings. At the same time, we saw a resurgence in our core credit card vertical, which grew 38% year-over-year in the fourth quarter proving we can rapidly expand high margin products without sacrificing the strength of our core business. Looking geographically, Singapore and Hong Kong continue to serve as the primary growth engines.

Singapore was a standout performer in the quarter with revenue surging 56% to $7.9 million. Hong Kong also delivered exceptional growth, up 27% to $9.4 million demonstrating our ability to build a recurring base of high intent users. Together, these 2 high unit economic markets represent 86% of our total Q4 revenue. Meanwhile, Taiwan and the Philippines generated $1.2 million and $1.5 million, respectively, in the fourth quarter. These markets are steadily recovering as the operational disruption seen earlier in the year following the exit of Citibank are now firmly behind us.

Now let me turn to operating expenses. Our focus has been on driving operating leverage across every major category. Total operating costs and expenses, excluding foreign exchange differences, decreased 15% year-over-year to $21.4 million in the fourth quarter and 27% year-over-year to $84.2 million for the full year 2025. Looking at the specific expense lines. Technology costs declined sharply by 71% year-over-year to $0.4 million in Q4 and 59% year-over-year to $3 million for the full year. By retiring legacy platforms, consolidating vendors and embedding AI-driven automation; we are enabling the business to ship features faster without inflating our cost base.

Advertising and marketing expenses decreased 20% year-over-year to $17.3 million for the full year reflecting more target data-driven campaign allocations. Employee benefit expenses were notably lower decreasing 32% year-over-year to $4 million in Q4 and 33% year-over-year to $16.2 million for the full year. As we highlighted earlier, this sets the stage for multiyear operating leverage. Increases in approved application volumes, which grew 12% this quarter, no longer require proportional increase in personnel. For the fourth quarter, it contributed to our first positive adjusted EBITDA of $0.7 million and a net profit of $0.5 million, a substantial turnaround from the $18.8 million net loss a year ago.

For the full year, our adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed sharply by 73% to $6.4 million, and our net loss improved at 86% to $52 million (sic) [ $5.2 million ]. From a balance sheet perspective, we are operating from a position of resilience. We ended the year completely debt-free with $31.2 million in cash and cash equivalents and $37.5 million in net current assets. Crucially, our cash position represents a sequential increase of $3.3 million from $27.9 million from Q3 highlighting our gradual transition into a cash-generative business. We have now reached this profitability point in Q4 as we have been working toward.

These milestones validate the difficult, but deliberate choice we made over the past 2 years and set a strong foundation as we transition from turnaround to sustainable cash generative growth in a capital-light member-centric model. Looking ahead, we expect our full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA to exceed 2025 levels. This will be driven by the continued expansion of our high-margin insurance and wealth verticals, AI-driven operating leverage and the strong conversion of member base into recurring multiproduct customers.

Thank you. So perhaps, we can start the Q&A section.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from William Gregozeski with Greenridge Global.

Danny, congratulations on the great quarter. Can you provide a bit more color on the sudden leadership transition? Why was the decision made to change CEOs right as the company hit profitability inflection point?

Sure. Thank you for the question. I understand why the timing might seem sudden, but this transition is actually very deliberate and comes at a pivotal moment for us. We have just finished a 2-year strategic repositioning of the entire company. As you can see from our fourth quarter results specifically hitting our first adjusted EBITDA profit since listing, that foundational work is now successfully complete. Essentially, we are moving into a scaling phase. Because the mission has changed, the Board decided it was the right time to find a permanent CEO whose specific expertise aligns with this next chapter of the profitable growth.

While that search is underway, my focus is on maintaining the absolute operational discipline that got us to where we are in the first place. I want to focus on improving our EBITDA in 2026 from 2025. Our strategy is already clearly mapped out in our financials. We are shifting our revenue mix toward those higher-margin insurance and wealth products, keeping a very tight lead on cost and using AI to drive massive operational efficiency. So this leadership transition isn't a change in direction. It is about supporting our momentum and ensuring we have the right leadership structure in place as we execute on the next level of growth.

Our next question comes from [ Calvin Wong ] with [indiscernible].

I have a few questions. Maybe I'll ask one by one. What are the key -- the first one is about the business segment. What are the key opportunities to grow within the insurance segment? Are there more insurance verticals the company can start offering? Are you having measurable success with the SaverBot beta on WhatsApp?

Thank you, Calvin, for the question. Yes, insurance is a core high-margin part of our business and the growth we are seeing there is incredibly strong. To give you the hard numbers. Our full year 2025 revenue for this segment grew 11% to $9.1 million with $2.3 million of that coming in just the fourth quarter. What is even more exciting is how much this segment is shifting the weight of our entire business. If you look back to 2023, insurance and wealth made up only 12% of our total revenue. That jumped to 21% last year and today, it represents over 1/4 of our business at 26%.

We see a significant runway to keep this going by leaning into deeper partner integrations and using AI to personalize the experience for our users. We are also looking at expanding our product offering even further by leveraging the dominant market positions we already hold in Singapore and Hong Kong. Moving on to your question about SaverBot. The early results from our beta in Singapore are very encouraging. The bot provides a seamless conversational experience on WhatsApp that fundamentally change how users discover products.

It is a triple win for us because it simplifies the journey for the customer, lowers our acquisition cost and improves the quality of the application we send to our partners. This isn't just a pilot project. It's a core part of our infrastructure that is already driving real operating leverage. You can see the proof in our efficiency metrics. In December 2025 alone, our AI successfully resolved 47% of all customer service queries without any human intervention at all. We can scale our volume significantly while keeping our costs under control, which is exactly why we plan to continue driving profitable growth.

Great to hear that. My next question is more related to the revenue. We've seen that full year revenue was down 8%. By looking at the current quarterly trends, do you feel you have now established a stable baseline for future revenue growth?

That's a very good question again, Calvin. To answer your question directly, yes, we absolutely feel we have established a stable and much healthier baseline. While the full year revenue of $73.4 million was down 8%, that was actually a very deliberate result of our strategic transition. We moved away from a model that was focused on scaling top line and moved towards one focused on healthy unit economics and real profit. It is important to remember that our 2025 results were compared against a very high base from the first half of 2024, which is a period where the company was spending aggressively to grab market shares.

Since then, we have completely repositioned the business to prioritize the quality of our revenue over the size of it. If you want to see our new baseline, the fourth quarter is a better indicator of where we are now. In Q4 our revenue actually grew 27% year-over-year hitting $20 million, but the real story is the mix of that revenue. We are shifting towards much higher-margin products. For example, wealth and insurance grew to represent 30% of our total revenue this quarter with wealth specifically growing by 50% year-over-year.

By focusing on these high-margin areas and keeping a strict eye on our expenses, we managed to bring our group-wide cost of revenue down from 58% to 51% for the full year. What we have built is a structurally resilient engine. It is designed to be efficient ensuring that we generate real profit on every single incremental dollar we bring in from here on out.

Looks amazing. I have 2 other questions, if I may. Maybe I'll start with the first one, which is more related to the expenses side. You reported a significant 27% reduction in total operating cost this year with technology costs specifically falling by 59%. As the business stabilizes, as you mentioned, how much of this cost savings is permanent? And how are you using AI to ensure you can scale efficiently without cost returning to negative levels?

Thanks, Calvin, again for the questions. Yes, the efficiency gains you are seeing are structural not just a temporary dip. We didn't simply cut spending. We fundamentally changed how we operate by retiring our legacy systems and consolidating our entire technology stack. A major driver for this shift is our transition into an AI-first organization. We are already seeing the financial benefits of this transformation in our daily operations. Today, a significant majority of our customer service interaction involve AI automations. What is even more promising is the resolution rate.

Our AI tools have reached a point where they can fully handle and close a large portion of all customer queries without any help from our staff. It is exactly how we are able to support a much larger user base while keeping our team significantly leaner. Beyond customer service, we are using advanced tools and generative AI to boost productivity across every department. For example, we are piloting solutions that help our team scale content production much more efficiently than before. By embedding these technologies directly into our workflows and our conversational interface like SaverBot, we have built a highly automated engine.

This allows us to handle much higher transaction volumes like the 12% growth in approved application we saw this quarter while maintaining the disciplined cost structure we have worked so hard to build. This efficiency is exactly what led to our Q4 net profit of $0.5 million and our first ever positive adjusted EBITDA of $0.7 million. So we are confident that we can continue to grow our top line without letting our costs return to those old legacy levels. Thanks again for your questions.

Great to hear about the AI deployment. Okay. Sorry to keep it long. But finally, just a small question. Why did you restate your historical members and applications metrics this quarter?

Thanks again for the question. It's very good that someone caught that information. Just to explain the reason. As part of our broader structural repositioning, we conducted a full audit of our legacy data infrastructure and then we realized that some of our old methods for tracking operational metrics were based on fragmented logic that simply couldn't scale as we grew. So because of that, we have updated our numbers to ensure they are accurate moving forward. Just to give you an example, we found 2 main issues with how we are counting members.

First, there was a legacy processing error where certain e-mail address weren't being standardized properly before they were encrypted. This occasionally led to the same person being assigned multiple IDs, which created duplicate counts. Second, specifically in the Philippines, we have moved our source of truth directly to our core CRM. This eliminates the discrepancies we were seeing from our older layer reporting systems. We saw something similar with how we track applications. Historically, that system was a bit of a patchwork. It relied on very specific hard-coded rules for different banks or dual stage.

The problem was that if we added a new partner or a new stage, it didn't perfectly match that old logic. Some valid applications were accidentally left out of the total count. We have now replaced that with a standardized system-wide definition for submission dates. So we are capturing our true volume accurately across every partner we work with. It is important to note that these revisions had absolutely no impact on our financial statements. Our revenue has always been recognized based on actual confirmed product approvals and fulfilled actions with our partners. This change was strictly about cleaning up our internal operational metrics to make sure that the data we use to run the business is as precise and accurate as possible.

[Operator Instructions] And our next question is a follow-up from William Gregozeski with Greenridge Global.

Danny, 2 more questions. I'm going to ask them together real quick. How is your AI initiative advancing beyond the cost reductions and what are the CapEx and OpEx implications for that for 2026? And then second is, if you can, can you comment on the news article talking about the merger talks with you and Voltech?

I'll get your first question first about AI. So our AI transformation is doing a lot more than just cutting cost. It is fundamentally reshaping how we generate revenue. To give you an idea of the operational side first, the benefits have been structural and very clear. By consolidating our platforms and embedding AI across the business, our technology costs dropped by an incredible 71% in the fourth quarter and 59% for the full year. Today, AI automation handles up to 70% of all customer service queries. This is a game changer because it allows us to scale our user base significantly, but without needing to hire a proportional number of new staff.

And moving forward, we are shifting our focus to the revenue side as well essentially using AI as an advanced marketing engine. We are already seeing this work through better approval quality, more efficient customer acquisition costs and higher conversion rates. You can see this leverage play out in our core credit card business, which grew 38% year-over-year in the fourth quarter. We have proven that we can scale volume efficiently. In Q4 our approved application grew by 12% to 190,000. Yet at the same time, our employee benefit expenses actually declined by 33%.

So this shows that we are getting more output from a leaner, more tech-driven organization. And as we look forward to 2026, the beauty of this strategy is that the savings we have generated from AI are now actively funding our next round of innovation. Because of this, we don't anticipate needing any outsized capital expenditure. Our goal for the coming year is to integrate our back-end system directly with our AI to hit a 60% 0 touch resolution rate even for more complex inquiries. This will allow us to provide true 24/7 support and continue to grow our top line revenue without reinflating our cost base. We are effectively decoupling our growth from our expenses.

And on to your second question about the recent news about the acquisition, the merger between Voltech and MoneyHero. Yes, we are aware of the recent media reports regarding potential acquisition activity involving MoneyHero Group. As a matter of company policy, we do not confirm, deny or comment on market speculations. Our management team remains fully focused on executing our long-term strategy. Our priority is now sustaining and scaling profitability. This includes driving growth across our high-margin insurance, wealth and lending verticals while continuing to leverage our AI-driven operating model across our 4 core markets.

Shareholders are reminded to rely only on official announcements and disclosures made by the company and to exercise cautious when considering information from unofficial or media sources.

Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Danny for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Michelle. So thank you all for being here today. 2025 was a crucial year for MoneyHero. We have successfully completed our 2-year strategic repositioning by delivering our first-ever adjusted EBITDA gain and a net profit this quarter. As we head into 2026, our mandate is clear. We are here to scale profitable growth. A central part of that evolution is our shift into an AI-first organization. We have already used AI to separate our operating cost from our growth and our road map for 2026 is focused on plugging that AI even more deeply into our revenue engine. We are excited about the momentum we have and we look forward to sharing our next set of results with you on the next call. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.

Good day, and welcome to the MoneyHero Group Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call may be recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Miner Pan. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to MoneyHero's 2025 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. I am Miner Pan, the Head of Corporate Development. Before we begin, I would like to remind you today's call will include forward-looking statements, which are inherent subject to risks and uncertainties and may not be realized in the future for various reasons as stated in our earnings press release, which was issued earlier today and is also available on our IR website. In addition, please note that today's discussion will include both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures for comparison purposes only.

For reconciliation of these non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures, please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings. Lastly, a webcast replay and a script of this conference call will be available on our IR website. Joining me today are Rohith Murthy, CEO; and Danny Leung, CFO. Our management will share the strategy and business updates, operating highlights and financial performance for the third quarter of 2025. This will be followed by a Q&A session. With that, let me turn the call over to Rohith.

Thank you, Miner. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. This is our final earnings call of 2025, and it marks the inflection point where MoneyHero completes its strategic reset and enters the next phase with an immediate line of sight to structural profitability and value creation than at any point since listing. Now before getting into the quarter, I want to anchor the long-term picture because this really frames where the company is heading and why we believe our execution will ultimately be reflected in the share price that better matches our intrinsic value. Now over the next few years, we expect to deliver healthy annual revenue growth, continued margin expansion and sustained positive free cash flow, driven by our ongoing revenue mix shift towards higher-margin products, AI-enabled operating leverage through Project Odyssey, and structurally lower operating costs and the new growth engines launched in Q4.

This is the algorithm guiding the company, and it's the lens through which we want investors to view our performance as we move through Q4 and into our medium-term trajectory. Now let me get into Q3 where this turnaround has become visible. Now Q3 delivered $21.1 million in revenue, up 17% quarter-on-quarter and 1% year-on-year. This was our second consecutive quarter of double-digit sequential revenue growth reflecting a recovery built on healthier unit economics rather than volume alone. More importantly, Q3 makes the structural operating leverage of the model more visible.

Adjusted EBITDA loss improved 68% Y-o-Y to negative $1.8 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin improved over 1,800 basis points Y-o-Y from minus 26.5% to minus 8.4%. Over the past 9 months, adjusted EBITDA improved 67% Y-o-Y, while our net loss narrowed from $19.6 million to $5.7 million. This is not one-off. It's the continuation of the trend we have been signaling all year and a foundation for closing the valuation gap that exists today. Now let me talk about the revenue mix. Our revenue quality is materially stronger than what it was 18, 24 months ago. Insurance and wealth now account for 23% of revenue with insurance up 13% Y-o-Y and wealth up 5% Y-o-Y.

We see a clear path for our high-margin verticals to take on meaningfully larger share of our revenue mix over the next few years. These verticals already delivered twice the incremental profitability of our lower-margin verticals even before AI upside. This deliberate mix shift we have been signaling combined with disciplined capital allocation into these segments, is central to how we're building durable compounding earnings power rather than chasing volume-led growth. I would like to talk about the cost base now. Our operating costs, excluding FX, fell 13% Y-o-Y to $23.9 million. Our tech costs dropped from $2 million to $0.9 million, employee benefit expenses from $5.7 million to $4.2 million, with 70% to 80% of our service inquiries now automated. We expect operating costs such as tech costs, employee benefit expenses and other operating expenses to remain broadly flat next year against strong revenue growth, a clear demonstration of margin first execution.

In practical terms, this means incremental revenue will increasingly flow through to the bottom line reinforcing our confidence in sustaining profitable growth once we cross the Q4 inflection point. I would like to talk about Project Odyssey and how this is a strategic advantage and not just efficiency. Now Project Odyssey is a core pillar of our medium-term value creation. It brings together performance marketing, content automation, credit scoring intelligence, membership enrichment, conversational journeys and service automation into a single coordinated AI stack. Our pilots are already live, and we expect steady improvement in CAC efficiency, approval prediction, funnel conversion and reward optimizations, while automating more than 60% of service interactions without increasing headcount.

Based on the work streams launched this year, and pipeline scheduled for 2026, we see Project Odyssey driving meaningful uplift in unit economics across every major verticals from lower CAC for approved customer and higher approval quality to our TransUnion-powered models to smarter routing across lenders and insurers, better organic traffic efficiency and a higher repeat usage through membership and personalized journeys. When aggregated, these work streams are projected to deliver a substantial improvement in annual EBITDA over the next few years with further upside as adoption deepens.

Importantly, Odyssey is being trained on providing right content, behavioral approval data from 8.8 million members, giving us a defensible data moat and positioning MoneyHero as one of the region's first AI-native financial decisioning platforms. This is not just an efficiency program, it's a structural driver of margin expansion and a key catalyst for our long-term rerating potential.

It also reinforces our regulatory first approach as we design AI journeys to closely align with regulators and partners to ensure suitability, transparency and consumer protection are all embedded from day one. I would like to talk about Q4 now, the profitability inflection. We expect Q4 adjusted EBITDA to be positive. The first profitable quarter on an adjusted EBITDA basis since listing. And this is driven by the mixed tailwinds in insurance and wealth, strong partner budgets in Singapore and Hong Kong. Growth in Hong Kong personal loans through the newly launched Credit Hero Club and the tax-alone season, the cost reset already in the P&L and ongoing improvements in marketing efficiency. Q4 will be the inflection point that we have been signaling all year, the catalyst for the business to be viewed fundamentally different in the market.

From there, the focus shifts from proving profitability once to delivering it consistently and scaling it with AI and high-margin verticals doing more of the heavy lifting while the cost base remains tightly controlled. Now in terms of value creation, as we think about closing the gap between our intrinsic value and share price, I would like to sort of speak directly to why we believe our progress will ultimately be reflected in a share price that better matches our intrinsic value. Firstly, after proving profitability in Q4, we will consistently deliver and scale it. For the full year 2026 next year, we target to drive solid top line growth, meaningful improvement in profitability and a further revenue mix towards insurance and wealth moving beyond the roughly 23% they contribute today into the next band of our revenue mix.

Second, we will -- the equity story with more proactive IR, clear medium-term guidance and more emphasis on our mix shift. And our auditory-driven margin expansion and our leadership in a fragmented market. Sequential revenue growth of 26% and 17% in the past 2 quarters already show what the new foundation can deliver.

Third, we will pursue disciplined capital allocation and strategic optionality. Our priorities are clear: invest in Odyssey, the Credit Hero Club and real-time car insurance journeys, explore consolidation opportunities where we can unlock revenue and cost synergies and evaluate share repurchases once free cash flow is established. Across global fintech, there are very few companies capable of combining profitable growth, structural expansion and capital-light free cash flow, and our objective is to make it increasingly obvious that MoneyHero belongs in that group. I would like to close with the summary. 2024 was the year of reset, 2025 was the rebuild and path to profitability, 2026 will be the profitable scale up. Thank you. I'll now hand it over to Danny for our detailed financial review.

Thank you, Rohith, and hello, everyone. I'll take the next several minutes to walk through our third quarter financials with a focus on data. The operational drivers behind the numbers and how the financial profile of the business continues to evolve. Let me begin with revenue. For the third quarter, we reported $21.1 million in revenue, representing a 17% sequential increase from Q2 and a 1% year-over-year growth. This is now our second consecutive quarter of double-digit sequential revenue growth and it demonstrates a consistent recovery pattern built on healthy unit economics rather than the volume-driven growth we saw prior to the model reset last year. That 1% year-over-year increase needs to be interpreted in the context of the deliberate reshaping of our volume mix.

As we have outlined in prior quarters, the company intentionally scaled back lower-margin products such as credit cards. So modest headline revenue growth is a sign that the strategic pivot is working as intended. We are growing again, but this time on a structurally stronger base. What gives us the confidence is the quality of revenue, which continues to improve. Insurance revenue grew 13% year-on-year to $2.3 million and wealth revenue grew 5% to $2.6 million. Together, they represent 23% of group revenue, compared to 21% a year ago. The shift reflects the fundamental change in our foundation, one that is already raising margins, improving predictability and strengthening the durability of earnings. Both internal data and external research highlight insurance and wealth as the core engines of long-term gross profit compounding and the Q3 data confirms that momentum.

Looking geographically, Singapore was a standout performer with revenue rising to $10.2 million versus $7.9 million a year ago. That growth reflects improved approval quality, healthier participation from back-end insurers and broader product debt. Hong Kong delivered $7.5 billion in revenue slightly lower year-on-year, but in line with our expectation due to the proactive reduction of low-margin credit card campaign. Importantly, Hong Kong showed sequential stabilization as car insurance integrations deepened and Credit Hero Club continue to scale membership. Taiwan and the Philippines, which were reflected -- affected last year by the exit of Citibank's operations came in at $1 million and $2.4 million, respectively.

These markets are recovering gradually, consistent with partners own acquisition strategy resets. Neither market is yet back to full run rate, but the operational issues seen earlier in the year are now largely behind us. Now let me turn to operating expenses. Operating costs, excluding FX, fell to $23.9 million, a 13% reduction year-over-year. This is consistent with our stated objective of reshaping our cost base and reflects progress across every major category. Advertising and marketing costs declined as we executed fewer low-yield campaigns and increased our use of fixed fee and sponsorship arrangement with partners, something we spoke about extensively during the Singapore Best of Awards, which attracted more than 170 guests.

Technology costs also declined meaningfully year-on-year, decreasing from $2 million to $900,000. By consolidating platforms, reducing vendor count, and embedding AI-driven automation in internal workflows. We are enabling the business to ship more product features and handle more operational work without increasing cost. Employee benefit expenses were notably lower versus last year, decreasing from $5.7 million to $4.2 million. This is partly due to our restructuring efforts completed earlier in 2024. But just as importantly, due to the scaling impact of AI. As we shared on the prior quarter, our support and service automation now handles 70% to 80% of incoming queries. This enables us to maintain a flat headcount even as application volumes and member engagement grow. It's worth noting that this sets the stage for multiyear operating leverage.

Increase in throughput will no longer require proportional increase in personnel. For Q3, adjusted EBITDA improved to a loss of $1.8 million compared to $5.5 million a year ago, an improvement of 68%. Adjusted EBITDA loss margin improved from 26.5% to 8.4%. This is the second consecutive quarter of sequential improvement and underlying drivers mix shift, operating leverage and reduce the cost of revenue remained consistent. Let me close by discussing our outlook. The leading indicators impacted in the Q3 results, rising share of insurance wealth, stable to improving approval quality, consistent cost discipline and increasing contribution from AI-enabled workflows all support the guidance we have provided throughout the year.

We expect Q4 to be our first quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA since listing. Our cost base is structurally lower. Our revenue mix is structurally stronger, and the benefit of Project Odyssey are becoming visible, not only in service automation but also in conversion and acquisition efficiency. We will continue allocating capital to the higher-return verticals, namely insurance, wealth and personal loans. Overall, Q3 shows a company that continues to progress, operationally, financially and structurally towards our stated goal of sustainable, profitable growth. Thank you. And I will now hand the call back to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from [ Calvin Wong with Sticker Capital ].

I would like to ask 4 questions, if I may. And then pre more on business strategies and one on financials. The first one related to your crypto. What is the plan for the crypto segment since you have announced the partnership with OSL, HashKey and the survey with Coinbase so any revenue target or goal from this segment; and two, about AI. Can you elaborate about the AI displacement risk because you are a comparison platform. And three, you've mentioned many times in the press release that you're backed by a few partners like Palantir, [ Thiel ], Pacific Century. Can you share with us if there is any further partnership potential?

And finally, on financials, we've seen that revenue basically flat year-on-year in the third quarter, but adjusted EBITDA actually improved quite significantly. So is that within your expectation? Any -- what are the drivers of this improvement? And why are you so confident in Q4 and beyond. So to recap one on crypto and one on AI and then another one on partnership and finally, about your profitability.

Dan, do you want to start with the profitability and then I'll take those 3.

Okay. Yes, perhaps I'll answer the first question about revenue first and then the one on Q4. Okay. So yes, thank you for your questions again. So while revenue was essentially flat year-over-year at $21.1 million. The economics under the hood of the business shift very meaningfully. The core driver of the 68% improvement in adjusted EBITDA was the combination of high-quality revenue mix and structurally lower operating costs, both of which reflect the execution of our modest -- model reset over the past 12 to 15 months. On the revenue side, you can see that insurance grew 13% year-on-year and wealth grew 5%, together accounting for 23% of group revenue, up from 21% last year.

These verticals carry significantly higher contribution margins compared to credit cards, and the shift towards them has a direct positive impact on adjusted EBITDA. At the same time, operating costs, excluding FX, fell 13% year-over-year from $27.4 million to $23.9 million, as you can see. And we continue to optimize marketing spend, consolidate technology platforms and scale AI-driven automation across workforce. Notably, technology costs declined from $2 million to $900,000. Employee benefit expenses fell from $5.7 million to $4.2 million, enabled in part by our AI stack now handling 70% to 80% of service periods. Advertising and marketing efficiency improved as we prioritize higher yield campaigns and increased fixed fee structures with partners. So despite flat reported revenue compared to last year, the quality of what we earn and the efficiency with which we operate have both improved sharply, and that is what is being shown in the adjusted EBITDA. And on your second question about Q4 and beyond.

Our confidence in Q4 and in the medium-term trajectory is anchored in both structural revenue mix improvements and sustained operating leverage. First, the revenue mix is fundamentally stronger now. Insurance and wealth are most profitable verticals now represent 23% of revenue. We have visibility towards taking this mix into next band of our revenue over the next few years, which will continue to rise margins and earnings durability. Second, sequential growth momentum is building. Q3 was our second consecutive quarter of double-digit sequential growth, and that growth came from healthy unit economics, non aggressive reinvestment. Singapore, in particular, saw strong product activity, and we expect that strength to continue into Q4.

Third, our cost base is now fundamentally different from a year ago. So this all creates multiyear operating leverage that continues expanding EBITDA margins as we grow. Combining all these factors, Q4 is positioned to be the inflection point, the first quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA since listing and 2026 is set up to be the year in which we scale profitability while continuing to invest in insurance, wealth and AI impacted operating leverage. And I'll pass it on to Rohith.

Sure. I'll take the crypto question first. Look, our approach to crypto has been very deliberate, regulated and compliance first. You're right, a partnership with OSL gives us a very licensed sort of institutional-grade partner for execution. Recently, we partnered with Coinbase and we launched the pulse of crypto Singapore, a survey that actually provides like market insight, credibility and alignment with our regulatory expectations. We work very closely with the local regulators to ensure all our user journeys remain suitability aligned and compliant.

And in the near term, our role is to educate, compare and route users to regulated platforms. We're not here to take any balance sheet risk. And over time, we'll integrate these digital assets into broader wealth journey so users can see crypto alongside cash and savings and traditional investments rather than just a stand-alone speculative category.

We're not really setting a stand-alone crypto revenue target externally. Instead, we plan to underwrite it as an upside within the wealth segment with the goals that the digital assets become a meaningful contributor over the next 2 to 3 years. So that's on crypto. Now on the AI, that's an interesting question. And my response would be if we were just a static comparison platform, then yes, we would definitely look at AI as a risk. But when you think about us, a, we have vertical integration and insurance; b, deeper integrations and credit, we've been moving towards journeys with very meaningful data-driven insights rather than just a page of options. And now we have Project Odyssey.

So if you put these together, we see AI actually as an amplifier of our value. Users still need someone to aggregate, normalize and curate across dozens of banks, insurers and wealth platforms, and that's us. Our partners still need a cost-effective, data-rich acquisition channel. And our job is to be the AI enhanced layer between users and providers not just a mere static list. And I think finally, on your question around partnership potentials, we're always in close dialogue with our major backers, including Pacific Century Group. We routinely explore partnerships within the ecosystem, particularly in Hong Kong, where we do see a strategic threat. And I think our relationship with Bolttech is a very good example of how these collaborations can really create value when the infrastructure and capability is really aligned with our distribution and product strategy. Thank you for the questions.

Our next question comes from William Gregozeski with Greenridge Global.

Rohith, yes, congratulations on the work you guys have done over the last year, really reshaping the company and getting ready for profitability. A couple of questions for you. With the talk about the positive cash flow coming here, is there any plans to use that on M&A? Or do you think you're just going to focus on the existing business and driving that profitability before looking outside the company?

Great question, Bill, and good to hear from you. Look, our capital allocation philosophy, as I would like to believe it's been very simple in sequence. The first thing we do is we invest organically in the core engine. And you're right, we've really rebuilt that core engine. Second, we're really looking at scaling Project Odyssey, we want to really deepen our AI advantages and even really accelerate our go-to-market for a lot of new capabilities. For example, the Credit Hero Club, the real-time car insurance journeys and even expanding our higher-margin insurance and wealth verticals. And these are where we believe have the highest return on our invested capital and it directly drive our revenue growth and margin expansion. So that's the first lens we have.

The second lens, as you asked, we will pursue M&A but in a very disciplined way because we do believe, as the industry consolidation accelerates, we want to focus on acquisitions that will offer very clear revenue or cost synergies or both, stronger capabilities, a strategic scale, and now more so importantly, they need to fit our AI-enabled operating model.

Okay. Great. You mentioned the Credit Hero Club and you just launched that. Can you kind of talk about how that reception is going and just kind of give an update on how the loan segment is looking for the fourth quarter with that launch and then in 2026?

That's the question. Look, the Credit Hero Club is really sort of a marquee membership program we have launched in Hong Kong. It's the first of its kind in partnership with TransUnion. There's a lot of work that has happened throughout the year. And we're very happy we were able to get this launched this year. So the power of the membership program is consumers in Hong Kong will be able to get detailed information about their credit profile for free, credit score for free and through this, we will be able to make very personalized offers on credit products, very powerful in that sense. And to a large extent, it's related in terms of how we think about the personal loan segment in Hong Kong, it's a very important vertical for us.

We have a category leadership there. But you're right, Hong Kong is a very unique market where we do have seasonality around tax loans, and we are in the tax loan season as we speak. And that's been great for us. It's a great contributor to our lending business. It continues to be every time we do have a tax loan season, more and more consumers pick us as a platform to find the best offers, and we've also been improving our overall user experience to make it easier for them to compare offers. We have great partnerships with exclusive offers that we provide. So that will continue to be a very attractive part of our loan strategy.

But now bringing in the Credit Hero Club, we not only amplify seasonality like tax loans, but during, like, say, off seasonality, we are able to now be a lot more contextual, real time and really understand the credit needs of our consumers. And that capability is going to be extremely critical as we think about scaling personal loans so in that sense, we're very excited that we've also launched the Credit Hero Club in the tax loan season, and we really hope to scale this membership program in Hong Kong.

Okay. Great. Great. And last question is, you've been touching on the revenue mix and the margin profiles of the different segments. Can you just kind of give not necessarily guidance, but just some kind of outlook we should be looking for on the different segments for '26?

Absolutely. Now when you think about our business, credit cards will continue to remain a core vertical. And the way we think about credit cards is you have a medium to high-intent users. They are very rewards-driven. There is moderate seasonality and you're right, it's a low to medium margin profile. That's how we think about credit cards. When we look at personal loans, they are a lot more cyclical, but there's still a large essential category where margins continue to improve, especially as we shift towards higher approvals, better economic campaigns, Credit Hero Club being a big, big driver of that. And then there's insurance where we have motor, home and other general lines, these offer lower seasonality, there's a stronger repeat intent, and they structurally have higher margins.

And this makes it like a really core EBITDA anchor for us as we really expand into real-time pricing and more end-to-end journeys. And travel insurance is more seasonal with lower margins, but really high volume. And this year, we've done a lot of work on wealth, whether that's brokerage accounts, savings products, investment marketplaces and digital assets that we spoke about. And these carry again, moderate to high margins, and we really believe there's a lot of meaningful long-term upside.

So across the portfolio, each segment serves, I would like to believe, need-based demand, but they all differ in seasonality and margin structure. And that's why our strategy is steadily shifting towards recurring, higher-margin verticals. And we really -- with the target of bringing them from 23% level, which is there today into the next band of mix contribution in the next few years. And we plan to do this while improving economics in some of those cyclical categories I spoke about.

This was a very disciplined expenses, cost disciplines and a sustained revenue momentum, we believe and we expect very strong operating leverage. And that was one of the strategic pillars we always laid out. And this is a dynamic that's going to carry into next year, which is why, as Danny mentioned, we expect EBITDA to improve significantly versus 2025, and this momentum and progress should go into 2027 and beyond.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions. I'd like to turn the call back over to Rohith for closing remarks.

Again, this is the last earnings call, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank every member in MoneyHero, who has worked incredibly hard to reshape and return this business. We're very proud of what we've achieved, and we have a lot more to do in the coming year. We want to like -- we would like to thank our partners, our investors, our shareholders, who continue to believe in this business. And I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all in advance Merry Christmas and happy holidays. We'll see you all in the next earnings call. Thank you.

Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Good day.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to MoneyHero's 2025 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on this call today are Rohith Murthy, CEO; and Danny Leung, CFO.

Our earnings release was issued earlier today and is now available on our IR website as well as via Global Newswire service. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that today's call will include forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Please refer to the safe harbor statement in our earnings press release, which applies to this call. In addition, please note that today's discussion will include both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures for comparison purpose only. For reconciliation of the non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures, please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings. All material referenced will be in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise stated. Lastly, a replay of this conference call will be available on our IR website.

I will now turn the call over to Rohith, our CEO of MoneyHero Group. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and thanks to everyone for joining. When I became CEO last year, we set a simple goal: reshape MoneyHero for durable, profitable growth, prioritize quality over quantity, compound gross profit and operating discipline.

Q2 shows that plan working. Revenue mix continues to shift towards higher-margin verticals. Cost of revenue is down materially and adjusted EBITDA losses again. This puts us firmly on track for positive adjusted EBITDA in the second half of 2025. We are carrying strong momentum into H2, driven by over 20% sequential growth and a clear path to achieving our EBITDA goals. Now for Q2 at a glance, we generated $80 million in revenue.

Adjusted EBITDA came in at a loss of $1.95 million. Cost of revenue was 51% and around 27% of total revenue was contributed by insurance and wealth. We also reported net income of $0.2 million in the quarter. From Q1 to Q2, revenue grew by over 20% sequentially. This all reflects strong execution on the key levers we have prioritized, mix, margin and operating discipline.

Now for the progress versus the goals we set out in 2024, we organized execution around 5 pillars: consumer pull, conversion expertise, insurance brokerage, strong provider partnerships and operating leverage. We've stayed on that trumbeat. Traffic is getting smarter, journeys are faster, insurance and wealth are rising as a share of revenue and our cost base is leaner even as product velocity increases.

Now for the business highlights, I will focus on four key areas. First, we are in insurance and wealth, including in the digital asset space. Auto insurance is scaling with real-time pricing and end-to-end digital journeys across Hong Kong and Singapore. This has significantly boosted win rates as our integrations deepen. Travel insurance is now a 3-click purchase with materially higher completion rates

In wealth, we've broadened our marketplace. This includes regulated collaborations with leading digital asset platforms like OSL, giving our consumers more choice through our disciplined regulatory first approach. Now to be clear, OSL is not a one-off. It reflects a measured, pragmatic strategy to participate in the digital asset space through license partners, ensuring both strong consumer utility and robust compliance.

Second, our provider partnerships are strengthening our monetization engine. Our MoneyHero Best of Awards in Singapore attracted over 170 clients, enabling us to strengthen our partner relationships, unlock new fixed fee opportunities and significantly bolster our brand, effectively converting the trust in our ecosystem into high-quality revenue.

Third, we are further realizing the potential of AI integration in our operations with clear and measurable outcomes. We are operationalizing AI with rewards intelligence, approval intelligence, yield intelligence and AI assisted service going live in select scenarios with holdouts and guardrails firmly in place. We're also lowering CAC per approved application, improving approval quality and raising first contact resolution. This approach is allowing us to deliver more with a flat headcount.

And fourth, our unwavering cost discipline is driving real operating leverage. Our operating expenses remain tight as we continue to modernize our technology stack and tools. That discipline, paired with our shift to higher-margin verticals drive sequential EBITDA improvement even as we invest in our business road map and partner integrations.

Now let's turn our attention to our outlook guidance and our broader value creation framework. Now looking ahead, our H2 guidance reflects continued growth and profitability. We saw encouraging sequential revenue growth of over 20% from quarter 1 and expect to achieve similar levels of sequential revenue growth throughout the second half of the year. This trajectory will keep us on track for adjusted EBITDA breakeven in the second half of 2025, and we expect this to be driven by new bank and insurer actions, insurance and scaling and also our fixed fee programs.

In general, we believe the current market environment is positive for fintech that combine profitable growth with visible catalysts and our H2 plan is built around those catalysts. This confidence is also built on our market leadership and industry consolidation. We are in a uniquely strong position, 8.6 million members, rising exposure to high-margin verticals, 260-plus provider partnerships and the strategic connectivity of our backers, all in markets experiencing attractive long-term adoption of digital finance. This creates a dispensable flywheel that we continue to compound.

Now as the market consolidates our scale, balance sheet strength and partner ecosystem puts us in full position. As such, we will act only when opportunities are strategically aligned and return equities. Now as for the next 2, 3 years, we see a clear cost to achieving 5% to 10% adjusted EBITDA margins. We expect this to be driven by our market leadership, improved revenue mix and quality, renewal economics and insurance, recurring wealth, monetization and an AI-enabled operating leverage.

That said, these are objectives, not formal guidance. We will continue to report progress with clarity and discipline. In closing, it's clear we are a simpler, stronger and more focused company than we were a year ago. This is reflected in our improved mix, rising margins and controlled operating expenses. Our H2 priorities, 20% or more sequential growth, EBITDA breakeven and measured expansion in high-margin verticals are already in motion.

With that, thank you to our teams, partners and communities, your dedication and ingenuity empower us as we face the future, confident in our ability to deliver continued growth and profitability.

Now I'll hand it to Danny to discuss the financials.

Thank you, Rohith, and we appreciate everyone taking the time to join us. As Rohith mentioned, when we pivot the business in the second half of 2024, we set very clear financial priorities: improve the quality of revenue, expand gross margins and tighten operating discipline. The numbers you'll hear from us today reinforce that the business model is structurally healthier than it was a year ago. And we are maintaining our clear path to sustainable profitability.

Let me walk through the quarter in more detail, starting with revenue and mix. We reported revenue of $18 million in Q2, down 13% year-over-year. That said, this discipline was the result of a very deliberate measure is our decision to moderate lower margin credit card volume in favor of higher quality, higher-margin verticals. The results show this. Insurance revenue grew from 11% to 14% of total revenue year-over-year. And wealth grew from 11% to 13%. While credit cards by design ticked down slightly from 62% to 61%. Taken together, insurance and wealth contributed 27% of group revenue this quarter, up from 22% in the same period last year. This is exactly the kind of mix evolution we set out to achieve, more recurring, more defensible and higher-margin categories.

Now let's turn to gross margins and cost of revenue. Cost of revenue declined at 34% year-over-year, landing at 51% of revenue versus 67% in Q2 of last year. This material improvement reflects disciplined reward collaboration, smart traffic and stronger approval quality. But simply, we are acquiring customers more efficiently and delivering applications with higher approval rates. These translate directly into healthier unit economics and ultimately, strong profitability.

On the cost side, operating expenses, excluding net foreign exchange expenses fell 37% year-over-year to $20.6 million. The savings were broad-based, advertising and marketing expenses were down 31%, technology costs down 58%, employee benefit down 45% and G&A expenses down 27%. This reduction reflects a more disciplined and efficient way of operating, making better use of our platforms, processes and tools, while still investing selectively in AI infrastructure, customer acquisition and platform optimization. The result is a cost base that is higher, but also sharper and more productive.

Next, profitability. As a result of the improvement in margins and reduced that operating expenses, profitability strengthened across every measure. Net income was $0.2 million in Q2, compared to a net loss of $12.2 million in the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to $2 million, an improvement from $3.3 million in Q1 and $9.3 million a year ago.

The numbers paint a clear picture. Sequential progress is consistent and visible. Each quarter, the losses narrow, margins expand and the business becomes more durable. This is exactly the path we are lined and we remain confident in delivering positive adjusted EBITDA in the later part of 2025.

On capital allocation, we remain -- we are deliberately reinvesting to the higher-margin verticals like insurance, personal loans and wealth, which are growing as a share of revenue and over more great economics. We are also leaning into strategic initiatives such as CreditHero clubs with TransUnion in Hong Kong and regulated digital asset collaboration with licensed partners like OSR.

As Rohith mentioned, this is not opportunistic doubling. This is a programmatic, compliant first strategy to participate in the digital asset ecosystem where we can add consumer value responsibly. Going forward, we expect to continue seeing margin expansion and strong operating leverage as the mix continues to improve and our cost discipline holds.

The structural improvement are already visible in the numbers, and they provide a strong foundation for the quarters ahead. With that in mind, our financial priorities remain unchanged. Deliver sustainable profitability, strengthen the balance sheet and maximize long-term shareholders' value. We have come a long way in just 1 year.

Revenue mix is healthier, cost are leaner and margins are materially stronger. With these fundamentals in place, we are entering the second half of 2025 with confidence in both growth and profitability.

That concludes our prepared remarks for today. I will now turn the call over to the operator to begin the Q&A session. Operator, please go ahead.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from William Gregozeski with Greenridge Global.

Rohith, great quarter. I have a couple of questions for you. You've made references to using AI in the business. Can you talk a little bit more in detail on some of the initiatives you're actually doing with it, whether it's cost savings or revenue generation or kind of what the depth of AI you're using is?

Thanks, Will, sure. We're embedding AI in how we acquire, convert and serve customers. We've sort of really prioritized now production use cases and we have clear holdouts and KPIs. And the impact shows up in a lower cost to serve, a better conversion and faster shipping without adding headcount.

Now in terms of like what's live now, there are a couple of use cases I can talk about. One is in AI and customer support. We are automating 70% to 80% of incoming inquiries, while maintaining our CSAT. And the benefit is threefold. Number one, there's a 24/7 coverage now, so it's reduced abandonment. This instant response versus like a multi-minute fuse and just the ability to absorb volume spike without proportional stopping. And as a result, the net effect is we have a lower service cost per case and a higher first contact resolution.

Second, is an AI competitive intelligence platform. So we have an automated collection and analysis of all competitor offers, U.S. changes and discuss manual research time by approximately 90%. Now this feed pricing and reward decisions and really help us prioritize product work where it moves conversion and also improves our approval adjusted CAC and cost per approval.

Now in terms of like near-term revenue drivers, some of them are already and some of them are piloting, one is the Whatsapp AI court agent. This is with the auto insurance we launched in Singapore, and we're testing it and soon to be ready for deployment. What this essentially does is the agent guides the customer from a needs discovery to core comparison and handoff for buying inside a messaging platform like Whatsapp. And we expect meaningful conversion lift versus a web-based user journey.

Second is AI media creation and permeation. Now this is in development. Our goal is 70% to 80% reduction in just pure creative production spend. And just testing cycles. I think hundreds of sort of compliant, variants generated, and we can score them automatically just so that we can scale all of this across these markets.

And why all of this matters is just three points. One is the unit economics. We want a lower cost per approval and a lower cost to serve with our cost of rewards held in the low 50s and really improve our gross profit per dollar of revenue.

Second is our operating leverage. Automation just allows us to keep head count flat while throughput increases. And finally, conversion and revenue. Guided journeys like the Whatsapp agent I mentioned, it just raises conversion rates and protects the funnel throughput outside business offers.

Okay. Great. Great. I have three additional questions and there might be some overlap in them. So if you don't mind, I'll just ask all three and you can answer either group or separately, if that makes sense for you.

I was curious about the key growth drivers of -- for 2026 that you're looking for as far as top line and bottom line? And then specifically, what the plans are for the insurance business to build that up and if there's milestones we should look for?

And then finally, just an update on the wealth and crypto side? And just if you can update on where we are in that process of expanding that business.

Absolutely. Why don't I start with the wealth and crypto, and then I'll talk about the insurance, and then I'll finally touch upon how we're thinking about 2026. So when it comes to wealth, we really view well, including digital assets as an adjacency that extends our marketplace, just beyond just cards and loans.

And we do this with a very capital-like partner-led economics. I do want to emphasize our approach is regulatory first. So we route consumers only to license providers in each market, and we monetize this via a mix of a CPA per funded account in some cases, a tier revenue share on flow products or just fixed fee sponsorships.

Now in terms of like partnerships and initiatives that I can talk about. One is our partnership with oversell in Hong Kong. We announced that collaboration, OSL, a licensed virtual asset platform in Hong Kong. And again, this work stream is focused on compliant onboarding journey, investor education and a campaign-based acquisition. No balance sheet exposure for MoneyHero and no custody of customer assets.

In terms of investment brokers, we continue to partner with a portfolio of licensed retail brokers across Hong Kong and Singapore. Again, these are relationships are a mix of CPA for funded accounts, revenue share on selected products and fixed fee, sort of sponsorships both around product launches and campaigns.

I'll take the insurance question that you mentioned about. Now, for us, insurance is really a compounding engine. And what I mean by that, is it carries structurally for us higher margins. It renews annually in many lines and it really benefits directly from our data, technology and AI start. Now our strategy has three parts when it comes to insurance.

One, is expand the supply debt and products; second, streamline our journey, and we're using AI for that; and three, keep tightening the unit economics so that insurance and wealth continues to rise as a share of revenue, while our conversion and profitability improve.

Now let me talk a little bit about these three strategic sort of drivers. One is expand the supply test and products and we're doing that by rolling out more real-time and end-to-end integration, both in auto and other sort of general insurance across Hong Kong and Singapore. And what that simply means that customers can quote, find and just pay seamlessly on our way.

This is a single biggest driver of conversion and economics. I just speak about travel insurance, where we have a 3-click purchasing journey that's already live and is delivering more than 40% end-to-end completion in Q2 alone. And we're extending that U.S. to additional products and partners.

And finally, we need to broaden the shelf with clients, and we are exploring even life insurance in Singapore via broker partnerships or even just structuring it as a profit share rather than a per lead.

Number two, streamlining our journeys and lifting conversions. Now AI is going to be a big part of it. I spoke about our playbook. This is really helping just target shoppers better recommend the right sort of result service faster. And all of this will help us with lower accrual adjusted cash, lower cost per accrual and just shorter fulfillment times.

We're really excited about what we're testing with the AI-assisted Whatsapp service. I spoke about in auto insurance in Singapore and we believe this can really improve conversion rates. And you want to take the same sort of playbook also to scale our travel insurance completion rates where we do combine real-time pricing, end-to-end APIs. And as I mentioned, we even have a 3-click design.

And finally, I spoke about tighter unit economics and monetization. We want to target insurance and wealth as a mix to be around 28% to 30% of group revenue in the second half, and this is very consistent with our second half profitability milestones. And if we can do this while keeping our cost of revenue in the low 50s as Danny mentioned, with smaller reward calibration and approval of our bidding.

And combine that with our real strong partner partnerships I spoke about, that come in sponsorship programs, fixed fees. These are really material and repeatable for us. And that's why our MoneyHero's Best of Awards attracted 170-plus clients, and that really reinforces the engagement and monetization. And I think finally, a great question around how we think about 2026, because we are in terms of what the growth levers are.

And frankly, though, the growth levers -- the structure and growth levers are already in place, which we spoke about. And what we're doing is we're building on that prudently as we think about even 2026. And just to recap the growth levers for us, insurance and well scaling. Now we want this mix to continuously improve and contribute 30% or more of our group revenues, and we want this supported by broader end-to-end coverage, a higher core turbine conversions, and as I mentioned, newer product lines in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Conversion rate improvements, these are continuous. We want to sustain our travel insurance 3-click journeys. We want to scale our auto insurance real-time pricing and end-to-end into more markets, including the Philippines. And as I mentioned, AI-driven efficiency is going to be a very critical part for us to continue lifting high-quality traffic, reducing our CAC and just keeping that operating leverage intact.

And provider partnerships will continue to be a very, very important structural sort of lever. And on top of that, we're adding new initiatives. We're launching and we'll be monetizing the CreditHero club membership in Hong Kong in partnership with TransUnion, we will have a membership program in Singapore.

And all this -- what it does is it really deepens our consumer engagement and newer revenue streams. I just speak about the fact that we're also exploring like insurance partnerships in Singapore and Hong Kong. And then when it comes to Philippines, we truly want to digitally transform the Philippines market. We believe by doing this, we can really unlock like newer growth opportunities even in cards and personal loans, again, supported by our provider partnerships there.

And finally, we are very selective and thoughtful expansion of digital asset partnerships with licensed brokers, and we want to continue doing this in a regulatory first and capital-light way. So that's how we're thinking about going into 2026.

Our next question comes from [ Stephen Wall ] with Speaker Capital.

Can you hear me? So let me ask a question. Similar to Q1, I've seen that the Q2 revenue has decreased year-over-year. What initiatives would the company take to resolve the revenue to the last year's level?

Okay. May I take this question?

Yes.

Okay. Thanks for the question. As I mentioned, our Q2 revenue was $18 million, down 13% year-over-year. That decline reflects the strategic result we begin in the second half of last year to prioritize revenue quality and unit economics.

And importantly, on a sequential basis, revenue actually grew more than 20% from Q1 to Q2. That shows that momentum is already returning on this half year base. The half of the model has also improved. Cost of revenue is down 51% and insurance and wealth reached 27% of revenue. And our focus now is to layer growth back on to its stronger foundation.

And concretely speaking, first, we will aim to scale higher-margin verticals like insurance and wealth, such as auto and travel insurance. by expanding real-time pricing and end-to-end integration in Hong Kong and Singapore. To sustain the free click flow in travel and roll the pattern into [ Opto ] more insurer API goes live.

As for wealth and digital assets, we'll continue a regulatory first partner-led approach, like our collaboration with OSR in Hong Kong. We target to move insurance and wealth to 28% to 30% of revenue in the second half to support gross profit compounding.

Secondly, we'll deepen member engagement like with CreditHero Club and TransUnion in Hong Kong, where we provide free credit scores, monitoring and personalized offer to drive more qualified applications and cross-sell of homes, cards, insurance and wealth. We will also focus on AI exist journeys, such as on applying our rewards, approvals, use, intelligence and AI existed service.

We are testing an AI exist Whatsapp as Rohith already mentioned, for auto insurance in Singapore to speed, coding and resolution, which we expect to leave conversion. Thirdly, we will leverage on commercial momentum and selective reinvestment such as fixed fee and sponsorship program with banks and insurers are now material and repeatable. These add high-margin dollars alongside transactional commissions.

Our cost base gives room to reinvest selectively in growth channels and content while keeping our cost of revenue in the low 50s. Thank you.

I have a question to follow up. So like -- whilst I think that the revenue drops, this has been consistencies, I've also seen that the net loss and the EBITDA have improved while year-over-year. So like would you mind clearly illustrate the factors that contributed to this improvement?

Sure. I'll take this one as well. First, that's a great question. The improvement is really about building a structurally healthier business model, and that is showing clearly in the numbers, three drivers standouts, I would think. Firstly, mix shift towards higher margin products. Insurance and wealth contributed 27% of revenue in Q2. That is up from 20% a year ago. These verticals are structurally higher margin and more recurring. So every revenue dollar contributes more gross profit than before.

And secondly, unit economics and cost discipline, cost of revenue improved to 51% of revenue from 67% last year, a 16-point gain, driven by tighter reward collaboration, better approval quality and improved partner terms. And operating costs fell 37% year-over-year to $20.6 million as we reduced spend across marketing, technology and also employee cost. Importantly, AI is now embedded in service, approvals and reward optimization. That helps us scale throughout while keeping head count flat.

And thirdly, adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to $2 million in Q2 from $9.3 million a year ago. And net income this quarter was positive $0.2 million compared to $12.2 million loss. These gains are not one-off. They reflect structural changes that will continue into the second half.

So even with lower revenue year-over-year, this cost structure is leaner. The revenue mix is stronger and the path to profitability is clear. That is why we remain confident in reaching positive adjusted EBITDA in the later part of 2025.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions. I'd like to turn the call back over to Rohith for closing remarks.

Thank you all for your time, and thank you all for the questions. We are very happy and pleased to discuss our Q2 results with you. And as we mentioned, we are very excited of what's in store for us in the second half as we continue our path to profitability, and we look forward to sharing our next Q3 results on the next call. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.