Boku Inc (LON:BOKU), a leading provider of global mobile payment solutions, has announced the following unaudited trading update for the six months ended 30 June 2023
Financial Highlights
· Revenues for the half year ended 30 June 2023 expected to be at least $37.5m – up 24% (H1 2022: $30.3m).
o On a constant currency basis*, revenues expected to be approximately 31% higher than H1 2022.
o Majority of revenue growth in H1 from new Local Payment Methods (‘LPMs’), including eWallets and Account to Account payments, which grew 359% to approximately $7.2m, up from $1.6m in 2022-H1.
· Adjusted EBITDA** expected to be 25% higher at approximately $12.0m (H1 2022: $9.5m), despite continued investment in Boku’s mobile-first payment network.
· Full year Revenues and EBITDA now expected to be ahead of the Board’s expectations.
· Total Group cash of at least $114m (30 June 2022: $67.8m). Of this, approximately $52m is Boku’s ‘own cash’ with the balance being merchant cash in transit. The Group is debt free.
· The average daily cash balance, a measure that smooths out the effect of carrier and merchant payments, was $106m (June 2022: $63.3m).
Following the disposal of Boku’s Identity division on 28 February 2022, the comparative 2022 results shown are for the continuing Payments division only and exclude the Identity division results.
Operational Highlights
· Positive Underlying Payments KPI’s:
o 61.2m Monthly Active Users (“MAUs”***) of the Boku platform in June 2023 (June 2022: 46.4m), a 32% increase.
o 32.7m new consumers made their first payment or bundling with Boku during the first half of the year, (H1 2022: 29.3m).
o Total Payment Volume (“TPV”)**** of $5.0 bn in H1 2023 up 15% (H1 2022: $4.3bn).
· Continued strong growth in the new Local Payment Methods (‘LPMs’).
o MAUs of eWallets and Real Time Payments increased 122% to over 4.7m in June 2023 (June 2022: 2.1m).
o New users of LPMs increased by 97% to 6.3m in H1 2023 (up from 3.2m in the same period in 2022).
· Take rate increased marginally to 0.76% as a result of higher take rates from LPMs.
· Mobile-first payments network expanded to reach over 7.5bn end user accounts, 46% of which are non-Direct Carrier Billing (“DCB”).
· A total of nearly 50 new launches in H1 with existing and new merchants including Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Sony, Spotify, Sky and Tencent. Launches took place in 18 countries across Asia, Europe and the Middle East; two thirds were for LPMs.
· As announced separately this morning, Jon Prideaux is to retire as CEO on 31 December 2023. He will remain on the Board as Non-executive Director. Stuart Neal, former CFO of Boku has today re-joined Boku as CEO designate and will take over as CEO from 1 January 2024.
Jon Prideaux, Boku’s CEO, commented: “The strong end to 2022 has continued into the first half of 2023 and we now expect both revenues and EBITDA to exceed the Board’s prior expectations for the full year. With the majority of our key merchants now using our services for the newer eWallets and Account to Account based payments, our growth strategy is manifestly working. The story is one of steady growth in DCB being complemented by triple digit growth rates on Local Payment methods. As I transition from CEO to being a Non-executive Director, I look forward with considerable confidence to the remainder of this year and beyond.”
* Constant currency calculated by applying the monthly average foreign exchange rates in 2022 to the actual 2023 monthly results.
** Adjusted EBITDA (Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization): Adjusted for stock option expenses, foreign exchange gains/losses and Exceptional items.
*** Monthly Active Users (MAU) data includes all users who successfully processed a payment or had an active bundle during the last month of the period.
**** TPV is the US$ value of transactions processed by the Boku platform and includes transactions from DCB, Bundling, eWallets and account to account/real-time payments.
