CURRENC Group - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello and welcome to Currenc Group Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Liz, Company's IR Counsel. Liz, please go ahead.

Liz (IR Counsel)

Thank you, Operator. Hello everyone, and welcome to Currenc Group's Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. The company's results were issued earlier today and are posted online. Joining me on the call today is Mr. Ronnie Hui, Currenc Group's Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Hui will provide an overview of the company's business and financial highlights, followed by a discussion of its business transformation and AI initiatives. Before we continue, I refer you to our safe harbor statement in the earnings press release, which applies to this call as we will make forward-looking statements. Also, please note that this call includes discussions of certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings release, which contains a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures. Finally, please note that, unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this call are in US dollars.

I will now turn the call over to Currenc Group's CEO, Mr. Ronnie Hui. Ronnie, please go ahead.

Ronnie Ka Wah Hui (CEO)

Thank you, Liz. Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us on our first earnings call as a publicly listed company. It's truly an important milestone for Currenc Group and a privilege to address our new and long-standing shareholders as we embark on this new chapter. We greatly appreciate your support and look forward to maintaining transparent, consistent communication with the investment community. Now, for those who are not well familiar with Currenc Group, we are a fintech pioneer empowering financial institutions which provides AI solutions worldwide. We got our start in cross-border digital remittance and airtime transfer, and now we are trying to build a global platform providing both individuals and financial institutions with safe, cost-effective ways to move money across the border for over 150 countries. Now, we are undergoing a very important business transformation to extend our AI-powered offerings.

While we still remain grounded in our broader mission of serving the financial institution and advancing financial inclusivity, going forward, we will be focusing on creating more AI-driven solutions that can reduce costs and boost the operating efficiency and enhance the customer experiences. Now, let's review our existing core business line first. Today, I mean, in the year 2024, our main bulk of business is the digital remittance business. It's conducted through our subsidiary Triangle, which we provide B2B and B2C cross-border transfers through a powerful unified API that can integrate over 5,000 banks and 35 e-wallets, which cover 150 countries. Now, in 2024, Triangle processed 11.4 million remittance transactions, and the total processing value, the TPV, reached $5.14 billion. Now, we close out 2024 on a high note in terms of remittance and strong growth and solid growth momentum.

Both the transaction volume and the TPV total processing value increased in 2024, which reflect the strong demands in key corridors such as the U.K., Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, and as well as some new markets throughout Southeast Asia. Now, we have harnessed the most attractive growth opportunities in cross-border payments, and we have built new partnerships, growing our active user base despite the intense competition in the markets. We also have improved our technological infrastructure during the year, which positions us to deliver sustainable growth and more shareholder value in the years ahead. We also have a global airtime transfer business for the moment, which also is provided by Triangle. Through another subsidiary Watercool, we provide local airtime in Indonesia. Watercool served around 128,000 customers as of the end of 2024 and distributed airtime with a total value of $14.5 million for the full year of 2024.

Despite that, the airtime segment has historically served as a key means of revenue diversification. Going forward, we strategically believe that we should de-emphasize this business, so as to focus more our resources on the digital remittance business as well as the new AI solutions business, which we believe will deliver more stronger long-term growth opportunities and profitability. Now, some highlights for the full year of 2024. Firstly, the digital remittance business, meaning those processed through Triangle, the total processing value was $5.14 billion, which compared to 2023, $4.54 billion, was a 13.2% year-on-year growth. Total number of transactions increased to 11.4 million transactions for the year of 2024. Now, there may be a lot of confusion if you read the financial statement because the 2024 financial statement includes other subsidiaries like TNG Asia and GEA, which were already carved out before the completion of this grant.

I would like to draw your attention to those really meaningful figures for us, i.e., the total revenues excluding TNG Asia and GEA. Now, for the total revenues excluding TNG Asia and GEA for the year 2024, it was $42 million, which represents to 2023 was a mild decline of 3.4%. Actually, the decline was mostly due to a quite big decline of 23.8% in global airtime revenue. I would also like to remind everyone that as TNG Asia and GEA were already divested in the year of 2024, in the fourth quarter and going forward, their revenues will not be counted. We should look at the revenue contributed by Triangle remittance business, by Triangle and Watercool airtime business, as well as the new AI solutions-driven revenue.

Now, as the main bulk of our business was still the digital remittance, let's focus on the digital remittance revenues and take a look at how it fared in the year of 2024. The total remittance revenues, excluding TNG Asia and GEA, that is, the revenues contributed mostly by digital remittance of Triangle, was $18.2 million for the full year of 2024, which compared to 2023 was an increase of 6.4%. Despite that, the TPV processed, the total processing value processed by Triangle, was an increase of 13.2%. During this period, the overall tick rate of Triangle declined from 0.43% in 2023 down to 0.37% in 2024. That decline was mainly due to intense competition in the market, as we want to be more and more price competitive. We want to launch more price concessions so as to capture more and more markets.

In other words, we are kind of sacrificing the tick rate in order to get a higher and higher business volume. Also, for the full year of 2024, the on-demand liquidity of RippleNet represents only 4.5% of total TPV. Ripple transaction is not a very significant segment of the company. Traditionally, Ripple's flow carries a lower tick rate. With lower and lower Ripple's ODL flows, we expect that the overall tick rate should bottom out, and we are expecting a bottom out or the declining trend of the tick rate will come to a halt. Now, let's go to another business, the global airtime business. This was the segment that sustained a significant decline in the year of 2024, and that contributed to a decrease in the total revenue as well as the profitability.

For the global airtime transfer revenue for the year of 2024, it was $9.3 million, which represents a 23.8% decline as compared to the year 2023. The reason was that the market has changed quite a lot in the past three to four years, especially before and after the COVID. There was an increasing growing availability of free Wi-Fi in Southeast Asian countries, especially the Malaysia and Indonesia. Therefore, this led to a declining demand for the Malaysian-Indonesian airtime transfers. That led to a decline in Triangle's global airtime business in 2024. We expect that decline will be kind of continuing given the market has changed. We expect that as more new markets like Africa or other countries, we might possibly explore or expand new markets there on the global airtime transfer business.

However, we don't want to place too much emphasis on the airtime transfer business because of two reasons. One is that they carry a lower gross margin ratio. The second is that they have an account receivable issue, meaning that we have to provide working capital for that. We believe that it would be more useful for the company to make use of the capital and allocate in expanding its digital remittance business as well as in expanding its new AI businesses. Now, on the other hand, if you look at the total direct cost for revenue, which excludes TNG Asia and GEA, it was $28.9 million for the year of 2024, which represents a decline of 8% as compared to 2023.

This was in line with the decline in the global airtime business, but also this reflects that we have successfully controlled the direct PR ratio for our digital remittance business. If you look at the direct PR rate for Triangle's remittance business, in the year 2023, we paid 0.15% to our PR agents for the digital remittance business. In 2024, the PR ratio declined to 0.12%, meaning that we can get a high margin despite that our overall tick rate was also declining. If you look at the gross profit margin for the remittance business, which excluding TNG Asia and GEA, for the year of 2024, it was 62%, which compared to 58% of 2023. We can see that our gross profit margin for the digital remittance business actually improved because we have successfully controlled the PR ratio.

As for the overall gross profit margin for the full year of 2024, it was 31%, which compared to 28% of 2023, it was also showing an increase. Now, another key figure that I'd like to draw your attention is the total operating expenses. Because if you look at the total operating expenses, it was a massive $42 million for the year 2024, which compared to $24 million for the year 2023. Now, the substantial increase was mainly due to a non-cash item, which is $20.9 million in recognition of the incentive shares granted to employees because the scheme was granted only when there was a completion on the dispatch. That's why we have to book the incentive share scheme, the non-cash item in the year of 2024.

There was a 1 million shares expense, again, non-cash, granted to Roth because we have engaged them as our capital market advisor. As I stated before, since Currenc Group divested TNG Asia and GEA in August and July last year, going forward, the operating costs should reflect the operating costs of Triangle, Watercool, and also the headquarters only. There might be new AI initiatives which would incur also the operating costs. Therefore, I would like to draw your attention to the Triangle operating costs for the full year 2024, which was $12.9 million, representing an increase of 4.9% as compared to 2023. The operating expenses of Triangle actually increased in line with its total processing value. There's not much surprise on that. For Watercool, their total operating cost was even lower, $1.2 million for 2024, which compared to $1.5 million for 2023.

Again, it's because of our stringent cost control. Now, as for the headquarter, there are many expenses which I would come to later on, but one key expense is the legal and professional fee. For year 2024, it's $1.7 million. For 2023, it's $4.7 million. Now, almost most of these legal and professional fees were incurred in connection to the dispatch. Much of the expenses were used in the extension of the SPAC before the completion. There's also another item that I need to elaborate a little bit, is that there is an item called other income or other loss. Right now, we have booked other loss, $2.2 million for the full year 2024. Out of this $2.2 million, there are many big items.

Number one is do we have a gain on $20.5 million because we divested GEA, and so we have also divested its debt to Ripple. There are a number of impairment loss on the Watercool, Triangle, TNG Asia, GEA, and the intercompany balance, which I think more or less will clean up most of the intangible assets or goodwill so that we could have a fresh start to look at in 2025 year ahead. Now, in order to see how the company what is the profitability or true profitability of the company, we'd like to draw attention to the EBITDA analysis. Now, if you look at the total EBITDA for the full year 2024, including TNG Asia and GEA, there was a loss of $6.5 million. However, if you isolate the Triangle and Watercool, there was an EBITDA profit for 2024 of $2.05 million.

Now, there was a loss on TNG Asia and GEA combined EBITDA loss, but this will have no impact on the companies from the fourth quarter onward because they were already divested. Now, one key element to look at is the headquarter expenses and the EBITDA loss of $29.8 million. That was the reason why the company has sustained such a big EBITDA loss. Now, out of $29.8 million, $20.9 million being the operating expenses for recognition of the incentive shares, which I've explained, $1 million also for non-cash item for recognition of shares given to Roth. There is a loss, income loss of $3.2 million. Now, in the above, you see that there was an income loss, other loss of $2.2 million because the headquarter actually incurred $3.2 million, but there was a gain in the subsidiary level.

That's why if you look at the headquarter level, there was a loss of $3.2 million. There were legal expenses, intangible asset amortization, and other. The real rental general expense mean expenses for the year was only $1.8 million. Going forward, we're expecting that $1.8 million will be quite a regular expenses for the headquarters because the headquarters has no real operations in it. The actual headquarter expenses will be including the D&O insurance, the auditing fee, and also the director fee, the chief officer fee, chief officer salary, something like that. It should be in the range of $1.8-$2 million. Now, for the year of 2024, if you look at the net loss, it was $38.8 million. Again, it was contributed mostly by the net loss of $32 million by the headquarter and adjustment, which I have explained before.

There was a loss of $3.7 million contributed by TNG Asia and GEA. Now, again, as both TNG Asia and GEA fully divested, we are now moving forward. We will focus our strategy, our core competency in Triangle's remittance network, and also in accelerating our AI new initiatives. We believe that, number one, we have streamlined all our portfolio so as to enhance our top-line growth and profitability. Number two, being a listed company, we can have increased brand recognition, and hopefully, we can find more strategic partners to work with us. We believe that from a macro perspective, the demand for digital remittance remains robust.

I think our AI initiatives can also create a whole lot of synergy for the company because we would help those financial institutions, especially in countries like the Middle East, like Africa, to set up AI call center, AI HR training platform for them. Now, during this AI initiative, we'll recruit new clienteles, and these new clienteles could also be enrolled to become the clienteles for our digital remittance business. We believe that the new AI business will create a whole lot of synergy for the digital remittance. Right now, we are getting a fresh start, and we hope that we can execute the strategic transformation and capitalize on the rising opportunities in the AI era. Any questions, Chris?

Operator (participant)

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to return your question, press star one again.

Ronnie Ka Wah Hui (CEO)

I think I can briefly talk about the AI transformation, but I believe the audience would like to ask more questions on the early results. Let me finish on the AI transformation for the time being. Now, the audit officer, we have been in a financial institution for quite a number of years. We know the pain points. There are a number of things that should be handled more efficiently and effectively. Now that the AI is progressing so rapidly, we believe that the financial services landscape should also change rapidly. The one critical way for these financial institutions to transform and to become competitive and to engage in more customer interactions or to improve the operating efficiencies is through the use of AI so that we can provide the trading platform for these financial institutions.

We can provide call center so that they don't need to recruit a team of call center staff to answer routine questions from the customers. They can even have a team of AI Staff to cross-sell to promote their products. They have a team of AI to recruit the workers and train the workers. Now, there's also another angle that we want to focus on recruiting the employers because there's a huge cost on these HR departments. We have now launched the AI for Hire, which can replace almost 90-something percent of the functions of all the HR departments, no matter whether they're talking about financial institutions or construction workers, construction workers. Our main target is actually helping those employees who have a lot of migrant workers, like the construction workers, transportation workers who worked in the Middle East.

Imagine that if we can help them to serve the HR function, to distribute the salaries to the staff, and also to help the staff to send the money back to their homeland. It is a one-off thing that we are trying to achieve. These are all the AI new initiatives that we are now trying to push ahead. There are something like AIDC, the AI data center, which can solve the problem of computing power needs. I think we would come across that later on if we have more concrete details. You guys can refer to the announcement we have posted. Let's.

Liz (IR Counsel)

Yeah. Thank you. Operators, shall we take Q&A now?

Operator (participant)

Absolutely. Sorry for the interruption earlier. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to return your question, press star one again. Your first question comes from the line of Andrew Scott with Roth Capital. Andrew, please go ahead.

Andrew Scott (Analyst)

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Hey, how are you, Ronnie? Congrats on the strong results. My first question here is around your announcement of your first customer for Seamless AI. I was kind of wondering what your expectations were there for the partnership in 2025, maybe when can we expect revenues. Also, if you could just kind of update us on the pipeline of maybe other customers, potential customers you're talking with for the product and the Staff or Hire.

Ronnie Ka Wah Hui (CEO)

Now, we have, as in the announcement, we have cut the deal with Corncove, which is the financial institution in Oman. Now, we are now handling the details like the total setup, the deliverables, this and that. It is very exciting and encouraging that actually we met with the minister of Oman, talked about helping the whole country, all the small and medium enterprises, whether they are the financial institutions or not. We can help these companies to provide the service for AI hire and AI staff for them. I think as for the timeline, we hope that we can have a clear-cut revenue stream in the second half, at least firstly from Corncove. We are expecting others to come.

Given the negotiation period and time, we might be expecting by the end of this year or early next year that we can see more and more revenue stream from the AI services as well as new clients there. One important reason is we want to not just provide these companies with trading platforms because these financial institutions, they have the licenses, they may have the capital, but they do not have the know-how. They do not know how to run the business. They mostly do not have any experience on the so-called digital remittance, how to conduct the digital remittance, how to transact, how to grow it. One of our objectives actually is helping these financial institutions to make use of Triangle's network and grow their remittance business in their locality, in their home country. There are two ways to do it.

One way would be to provide them with the infrastructure and take up the fee. We are more interested in co-share with them the revenue stream as well as the profit stream, meaning that they provide the licenses, they provide the clienteles, and we provide the infrastructure, and we launch a digital remittance through these financial institutions, and we take a share of the revenue stream or the profit stream. These are all we are trying to figure out. I give you an example. The retail players, typically, they charge something like 1.5%-2.5% take rate. While using Triangle as their corridors, they only pay out 0.37%, meaning that they will enjoy a very high gross profit margin.

One strategy is for us to go with them into the remittance business there while we provide the platforms, we provide all the technology know-how, and we share the revenue. We are still in a very intense negotiation. I could not disclose too much on this one unless we can make an announcement.

Andrew Scott (Analyst)

No, thank you. You provided a lot of great information there, so I appreciate it. Second one for me on the AI transition, the announcement in March regarding the 500-megawatt AI data center. Looks like construction is planned for maybe the end of 2026. Can you kind of just talk about Currenc's role in the partnership, any additional details around that announcement kind of would be greatly appreciated.

Ronnie Ka Wah Hui (CEO)

I have to be cautious.

Liz (IR Counsel)

Yeah. If you can't now, I totally understand, and I can move on because we've got some questions here on Tranglo.

Ronnie Ka Wah Hui (CEO)

Yeah, I know. The issue is like this. We are now working closely with AIDC, very renowned operators. I couldn't disclose the name because we have to get their approval first. They have been doing the AIDC for quite some time, at least 10 years. They will provide all the clienteles for us. They will provide all the technological support for us. We will be responsible for sourcing the land, the government support in Malaysia. Mind you, Alex is a Malaysian. He has a very good relationship with Malaysia. Once we cut a deal with the clients, we will then work out with the local government, with the government to get the land, and also to get the bank approval for the financing for such a project.

The project can be held for a good return, but it can also be sold out to investment funds. We have also lined up with a number of funds who are willing to take up high-return AIDC center as a long-term investment opportunity. We can work in being a facilitator. We can also work like buy-and-sell kind of thing.

Andrew Scott (Analyst)

Perfect. Now, the background information there was very helpful. Shifting kind of to the core businesses.

Ronnie Ka Wah Hui (CEO)

Yeah.

Andrew Scott (Analyst)

Yeah, with Triangle. My first question, the margins were very strong. Take rate was reduced. You mentioned kind of some improvements to the tech stack in the call and some strong cost improvements there. Can you just kind of talk about the margin trajectory of the business?

Ronnie Ka Wah Hui (CEO)

Now, the strategy is like this. The market competition has been very keen. That is why the whole industry, the tech rate, has been declining. Last year or the year before, we have been trying to capture more markets through low-price strategy. Since this year onward, we have been giving the new instruction to the management that they should not sacrifice the tech rate so as to capture more markets. We want to maintain our profitability. We want to maintain our revenue stream. This year onward, our instruction to Triangle team is that we want to see the overall tech rate bottom out at this level. Secondly, we are setting a KPI for the management that we want to grow the remittance revenue at least by 12.5% this year.

The whole team is now working to increase the remittance revenue, the TPV, without sacrificing the take rate from this year onward. As for the payout rate, we've been trying to select more and more payout agents, more and more price competitive payout agents. Meaning that on one hand, we are under price pressure from our clients. On the other hand, we are exerting more and more price pressure on our payout agents. That's why the payout rate actually decreased from 0.15% to 0.12%. As a matter of fact, we believe that there is still room for further compression on the payout agent. For instance, if you choose e-wallets, then the payout fee will be even lower. If you choose cash pickup, then the payout rate will be higher.

One way to cut the deal is we would find more and more competitive e-wallet payout agents. On the other hand, we also will approach more and more banks to get a lower payout agent fee from them.

Andrew Scott (Analyst)

Thank you. That was a great breakdown. Last for me, if I may, before I jump back in the queue, you're talking about revenue growth in Tranglo, and I know a lot of that will hopefully come from traction in new geographies. Can you kind of talk about your progress expanding into new countries?

Ronnie Ka Wah Hui (CEO)

Yeah. We initially reported that we should try to develop our own retail business in the Middle East, in Dubai, in Abu Dhabi, in Saudi, so as to contribute more and more corridors, more and more users for Triangle. Now, we think that it's even more efficient and cost-effective for us to make use of AI solutions so as to reach out to more clients like Corncove, like small financial institutions in the Middle East, in Africa, so that they could become the new clients of Triangle's corridor. In this way, we could, on one hand, develop AI new businesses. On the other hand, we are helping Triangle to explore or expand its reach to the Middle East and in other African countries.

Andrew Scott (Analyst)

Great. Thanks again for taking my questions and congrats on the strong results.

Ronnie Ka Wah Hui (CEO)

Thank you. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Liz for closing remarks. Liz?

Liz (IR Counsel)

Thank you again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact our investor relations team. Now, that concludes today's call, and the company looks forward to speaking with you again soon. Thank you and goodbye.

Ronnie Ka Wah Hui (CEO)

Thank you. All right.

Operator (participant)

That concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.